Another month, another edition of Print & Play in the printmaking studio.
During the first evening we work on abstract monoprint experiments. Shape and negative shape, on a black and on a white background, working from high to low contrast.
Then, composing with wood type. Initially on new sheets of paper to see the direct results.
After some adjustments, maybe use it as a second layer on one of last weeks’ prints as well.
And then there’s multiple colors as additional design aspect to consider!
Such a talented group, again. Looking forward to what will be created during the third session.
Explore the basics of monoprint and letterpress printing in three evening sessions with the Print & Play workshop. It’s an accessible introduction to printmaking techniques. We work in a small group of max 6 participants. The ideal (re)start for your own creative practice!
Raise your hand at a meeting and voila, a project: 650 ‘Copper monday’ prints please, thank you.
Well, lets get to work then.
Topic for the design had to be the foundations fiftieth birthday of course. Stichting Drukwerk in de Marge translates as Foundation Printing in the Margin. For the design I took both ’the margin’ and ‘in’ literally, visually. Which gave me that vertical line, in the same red-ish pink that you still find in your exercise book. That line then provided the base for positioning the other bits of text, where ‘in the margin’ had to end up exactly in that margin. Of course it wouldn’t be a print made at our studio without a bit of LEGO Letterpress using the Hilversum Method. The number 50 uses customised versions of the numerals in the QUNZ type family designed by Martijn van der Blom.
All of that made this a technical exercise in exact positioning. So that line exactly vertical. So that the blue text would print exactly right over the red line (which I managed to achieve in one go). So that the smallest text would really be inside the margin (which required adjustments when the forme was alreay in the press), etcetera.
The first print run was for just that red line. Width 1 cicero, exactly 25 cicero from the left side of the paper. Even after more than six hundred prints that line was still in that same position. The combination of a thousand kilos worth of printing press and the razor-sharp precision you can achieve with it is truly fascinating.
The second print run added the blue text. I was chuffed when it immediately showed up in the right place because I had correctly calculated my points and ciceros. The third and final print run in black used the most complex forme. Combining small, subtle type with the relatively large solid areas of the LEGO numerals and getting both to print nicely was challenging.
And we changed presses for this third run, moving from the manually operated Vandercook to the electrically driven Grafix. A smaller and faster press which perhaps was a bit more suited for this challenging forme. Not only getting everything to print evenly was challenging. Calculations made during composition turned out to be miscalculations this time. A few points of line height had to be shuffled around to get things aligned nicely. Eventually we sorted that out as well. My thanks to Thomas and Martijn for their help with this part, and producing all those copies.
The paper used is 90 gsm A3 biotop. Maybe this light weight can help save on postage :)
Getting 700 sheets out of the drying rack and stacking them is work, too. Nothing is ‘quickly’ with these numbers.
You need quite a bit of drying rack anyway…
Speed of manual printing was around three sheets per minute, around 180 per hour. On the semi-automatic press that was around 250 sheets per hour.
You get the sheet including ‘gripper white’ and all. That too is (in the) margin.
Congratulations to the board members of Stichting Drukwerk in de Marge, to all contributors and printers in the low countries. Here’s to the next fifty years!
The original Dutch version of this article first appeared in the Drukwerk in de Marge Newsletter nr. 191
In 2024 I made a conscious effort to learn more about and get better at traditional letterpress printing. Although the principles are the same (because principles, duh), the distinction between small type and large type is useful to me.
Small type
To improve my skills in working with lead type I joined the Poetry on the Press programma at Atelier t. in Belgium, last May. A full week of setting and printing small type. 12 Point Palatino to be exact. More on this very rewarding experience here (in Dutch).
Inspired by what I learned there I designed and produced the ‘to be, continue’ print in our own letterpress workshop. Hey while we’re at it, why not try and use 8 point type? The first version of this design was printed on A5 sized sheets, as part of a collection made for the 2025 edition of Letterpress Workers in Milan. In the second edition I used a much taller format that allowed for more space and more jellyfish!
Since I’m mostly still learning all this I’ve collected these prints under the Practium project here.
Large type
Designing posters is how I discover the possibilities of our wood type collection. Primary use case: GAH exhibition posters, and a smaller version of one I made earlier.
This Zines poster might have happened at the tail end of 2023 but I’m including it anyway. A small catalogue of typographic options in itself.
Most of the promotion material for my 50 birds exhibition was produced digitally, printed elsewhere. There was a list of all birds on those and I wanted to see if I could produce that full list in letterpress as well. It turned into this dyptich. I’d love to say I had calculated that things would all fit as nicely as they did beforehand, but no. Sheer dumb luck. We have two complete founts of this letter, which made it possible to set this much text in one go. (A fount is the full set of letters and symbols for a given font at a specific size. Many e’s, fewer w’s. An English fount has more y’s than a Dutch fount, etc.)
The When in doubt poster was an extensive exercise in getting all those characters in different stages of run-down-ness to an even printing height. Much proofing and putting small bits of paper under things for this one. Available to buy, even. Here.
workshops
March saw an international group of printers work with our collection and produce work inspired by the Kwadraatbladen. The report, in Dutch is here.
Posters à la Brattinga was the theme for another work week, producing posters using the 3 x 5 squares grid by Dutch designer Pieter Brattinga. Still needs its own writeup, that.
The poster printing workshop was fun. As they say, to really learn something, teach it. Looking forward to do this a couple more times and streamline the process. As for the small type, I want to combine traditional lead type designs with LEGO letterpress and/or monoprinting techniques and see what that brings us.
Figuring out the list of projects for the first part of the year:
zines: my own and helping somebody else to produce their first one, which I’m really looking forward too. There’s an experiment in a follow-up product in there.
bird prints, which ones, in which order that matches with upcoming events.
And need to wrap up some loose ends as well.
Think in projects, one at the time whenever possible. Know its context (time, place, people, events, hashtags…), then share it as effectively as possible.
