PDLPX: The Post-Digital Letterpress Print Exchange: Methodological Innovation in the Exploration of Contemporary Letterpress Practice

Over recent years letterpress has increasingly been employed by artists and designers as a conspicuous alternative to established digital technologies (Jury, 2004; Suzuki, 2011; Williamson, 2013). The medium is being employed by design educators as a catalyst to instil creativity and convey design conventions to their students (Cooper, Gridneff and Haslam, 2014; Rigley, 2005). Other practitioners, such as Anthony Burrill (Tate, 2016) and Amos Paul Kennedy Jr (Fulleylove, 2020), are printing with archaic analogue techniques to signal a reassessment of modern technology and the culture that it represents. This study focuses on an alternative and more progressive approach taken by a growing number of creative practitioners who are integrating analogue and digital technology through the appropriation of letterpress within their practice (Fleishman, 2017; Double Dagger, 2020). These explorative endeavours reappraise the traditional techniques of letterpress by combining relief printing with a range of digital manufacturing techniques, including 3D printing, CNC machining and laser-cutting. Notable examples of such practice include A23D from New North Press (New North Press, 2020), Thomas Mayo’s laser-engraved woodtype (Hamilton Wood Type Museum, 2020), experimental type production at p98a typographic workshop (p98a, 2016) and Dafi Kühne’s creative poster work (Kühne, 2017).