Saturday 8 August 2009

Letterpress and illustration



So, here are a selection of new birthday cards that I have designed. As you can probably tell from the second image, the top of the P and Y perished away whilst printing which I was quite upset about. But I carried on printing regardless. In a way, I am feeling slightly rebellious and I am going to use wooden type that DOESN'T leave a perfect impression. I personally thin that it gives more character to the print. I don't know? Maybe that's just my strange design style!

I wish I had more inks that I could play with but at the moment I only have the green. These were printed on to a 400mic (around 300gsm) white pulb board. It prints beautifully and leaves a small but effective impression on the paper.

I have purposely left some of the letters out so that I could fill them in myself. I plan on merging letterpress and illustration/hand rendered typography. I would like to sell cards this way. maybe even sell some blank for those who are like minded, to fill in the gaps themselves.

4 comments:

  1. Great cards, love the green. I like the idea of merging letterpress and illustration.

    I think you should go with your rebellious instincts and not worry about getting a perfect impression. It all adds to the charm, I think.

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  2. yeh that will be good, you can get some polymer plates done when John get set up, exposure unit already in place! jax x

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  3. Hey. Thanks FF.

    Yeah, I like the traditional use of the letterpress but because my personal designs are more modern and way-ward,they kind of clash. The only way to support this illness is to merge the two together.

    Which personally, I enjoy.

    Yeah Jax, I think I am going to.
    I will design a few different styles and get them all plated.
    Just makes things a bit easier then for mass production!!

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  4. Hi, just found your website !

    Interesting post! I feel the whole beauty of wood type is in its imperfections (maybe not the right word). I really like the way the woodgrain shows up on the resulting print, and that not all impressions give the same result.

    I like your idea to merge Letterpress with illustration. I have decided to turn to Linocut to fill my graphics requirement for use alongside letterpress.

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