Post-Digital Letterpress Printing

This book presents an overview of the convergence of traditional letterpress with contemporary digital design and fabrication practices.

Reflecting on the role of letterpress within the emergent hybrid post-digital design process, contributors present historical and contemporary analysis, grounded in case studies and current practice. The main themes covered include the research on letterpress as a technology and medium; a reflection on the contribution of letterpress to arts and design education; and current artistic and communication design practice merging past, present and future digital fabrication processes.

This will be of interest to scholars working in graphic design, communication design, book design, typography, typeface design, design history, printing, and production technologies.

Foreword

Johanna Drucker

Introduction

Part I:Research

The Seven Lives of a Typeface: Material and Immaterial Convergences

Amelia Hugill-Fontanel

1. Appropriating printing

Caroline Archer-Parré

2. Orlando Erasto Portela: relations between the creative process
and letterpress printing methods of an (almost) unknown designer from the mid-twentieth century

Nuno Coelho

3. The Mark on The Wall

Ane Thon Knutsen

Part 2: Education

Poiesis and purpose: lessons in making

Catherine Dixon

4. The role of the letterpress workshop

Rúben Dias & Sofia Meira

5. From letterpress to screen: Learning from a modular type system

Roberto Gamonal Arroyo and Andreu Balius Planelles

6. PDLPX: The Post-digital Letterpress Print Exchange. Methodological Innovation in the exploration of contemporary letterpress practice

Chris Wilson

7. Letterpress experiments in a design course

Rita Carvalho

Part 3: Practice

The Rising Letters - Seven criteria for the typographic design of a letterpress archive

Jorge dos Reis

8. Digital Fabrication: Expanding Access to and Preservation of Letterpress Printing

Erin Beckloff

9. Resisting Hyper-Digitalization Investigating Hybrid-Practices in Contemporary Graphic Design

Lucrezia Russo

10. Computational Design Letterpress: from procedural programming to modular printing

Pedro Amado and Ana Catarina Silva