Letterpress Workshop

Back in December I had the chance to be introduced to the type printing facilities here at Plymouth University, one of three such places available in the UK apparently.

Paul Collier, the excellent print technician, showed us the ropes. The piece shown here is the collective work between the four of us, finding and placing the right letters and spacing pieces, before placing them together into a frame for printing. It takes ages, and requires a lot of patience and attention to detail.

For more info' I found a blog post by Creative Brkfst about their visit:
http://www.tee-dp.com/2010/11/november-2010-plymouth-uni-letterpress/

I went to the workshop just for the experience, after all I'm unlikely to see anything like it again once I've left uni. The result looks lovely. The pressure of the press embosses the paper so you can certainly notice the difference compared to inkjet or laser printing. I think I may use it to make some business cards for the end of year degree exhibition our course has in late May. 

As part of the workshop we were tasked with producing our name and two words to describe ourselves. The morning of the workshop was the same morning as the hand in for one of our degree modules, and I'd been up 'till late that night and I hadn't the time to have breakfast, so while others spent ages pondered their most notable qualities, I knew decidedly how to describe myself. :P