Today we had the chance to try out Letterpress which I found really interesting. As I have never done this before and I do not particularly enjoy screen printing I thought that I would not enjoy the workshop. As it happened I found it very educational and also useful. When we arrived at the workshop we were asked to write down a statement or few sentences which we wanted to letterpress. I chose my favourite saying 'Everything happens for a reason'.
As we were such a small group this meant we could all choose a different typeface to letterpress. I chose Claredon Bold 30pt.
The fonts are laid out in large draws. Each compartment holds either a letterform, glyph or spacer.
To lay out our phrase we had to place our letters inside a device which enabled us to complete the phrase without each letter moving around. It was interesting to find out how spaces are used in letterpress, each typeface has a selection of thins, thicks, middles, quads and 1,2,3's. These are used to separate words.
The layout of the draw was displayed on a piece of paper which made it a lot easier to navigate.
Once each letterform was in place we then had to pack to rest of the space with thicks and quads. After this we could then slide out our phrase and pack it into a steel frame using furniture and mechanisms to keep the type in place.
When this was done we went over to the press and fixed our steel frame into the machine bed which meant it would be secure. We then had to turn the wheel in order to ink up the letters for printing. We did this by rolling the wheel left to right.
In order to get a clean print we added a few extra pieces of paper as padding. Carefully lining up the paper with the press we secured it with some small handles. When we were happy with the setup we could then feed the paper through the press whilst turning the wheel.
Final Prints..
Tissue Paper
Newsprint
Shiny
Printer paper
