Design Production for Print//Letterpress II.

Today Claudia, Sarah and I went down to the Vernon Street college campus for our second session of Lettepress- printing up our work. Tutor Roger was really helpful, and gave us a really good induction to using the press and helped with a pre-flight typo check, as well as introducing us to the printing press before allowing us to print ourselves. A really great session- something refreshing and new that I could definitely see myself doing more of in the future- I'm really loving traditional printing methods of late, and certainly need to pursue them more readily (especially considering the facilities to do so are so accessible). We each chose our typeset quote to support our design production for print 'what is good' subject with different typefaces and content so we could see variation without the time being individually exhausted. I've really enjoyed spending more time working with Claudia and Sarah too, a fun working team!

A few examples of the work we printed (below) on a great variety of stocks, colours and paper weights- a really interesting process of printing- I won't look digital in the eye the same way again.

On certain print (from a web offset print newspaper) the ink created a really glossy finish- almost like a spot varnish. I suspect it may have a great deal to do with the reactions with the inks used, though I will try and ask Lorenzo tomorrow a bit more about it to find out if it were possible to create this effect again- and perhaps apply it in my own design outcomes for the design production for print module.

Roger told us at the start of the session that Letterpress should be printed to "skim" the surface with ink- not to emboss it (as is a very "Americanised" production method...apparently!) however, on this occasion the press did create an emboss effect... sorry Roger... but I'm quite a fan!

Our first sheet of pre-flight letterpress- here, checking any typos or errors- just my spaces that needed amending- and I got unlucky with an over-inked 'm'... quite pleased for first attempts! The Univers Light typeface worked pretty well too.