Digital Letterpress - Physical Production & Delivery Development

Digital Letterpress - Physical Production & Delivery Development

Preparing for laser cut the whole designs needed to be reversed out and created into one solid shape so the laser cutter could read the whole design as one outline, reversed out so the design then prints the right way round. 

26 Hours later of lasercutting I have all my letterpress blocks with a further 6 hours spent on carving out the rastered space too reveal an edge and indent sufficient for letter pressing, speaking too Lyndon and Mike in the print rom they said between 2cm and 2.4cm would be ideal for letter pressing, so using 20mm MDF allowed this traditional reference to letterpress printing. 

A limitation of the laser cutter had arisen, not in a way that the laser cutter couldn't raster the design more so I couldn't carve out the detail deep enough showing that the laser cut blocks will carry larger shapes and type better rather than fine detail. Showing the potential of digital printing in this case. 

Quick wipe down to take away the oils left in the rastering process as this would interfere with the printing process. 

As a way of referencing digital print process within a traditional outcome I chose to use a CMYK range of inks when pressing.

It would have benefited if I treated the wood before hand as the porous nature stained the wood and didnt allow such an accurate print, but this all comes with the characteristics of letterpress and the weathered look added to the idea of a transition of something historic. 

As a reference too another mass distribtution method of type I screen printed a number of colors to decide what interactions worked the best. The zine was printed on newsprint to keep the DIY feel and have that classic zine feel while the front cover of the book where organic desaturated pastels and neautral colors that had a nice traditional bookish feel. 

As mentioned I wanted a translucent cover too add an engaging aesthetic giving a snapshot preview of the documents inside, adding meaning too the term process showing everything in stages from the outset of interacting with the product. This thin pink acrylic folded beautifully and had a very old VHS cover feel, a good reference too the introduction of the delivery of video material an introduction of cold medias that require little interaction showing the redundancy of typographic communication. 

Printing in metallic blue added to the contemporary aesthetic I wanted to achieve and sat on the acrylic very well, it was nice to screen print on a different material showing the process's other potentials as this would have never gone through a digital printer.

Figuring out colour interactions that balance the traditional and contemporary and work with the red and black ink choices, the brown seems to work the best giving the publications a traditional feel through there stock choice but the red ink starts to interact with the pink cover bringing in that contemporary vibe. 

An Arco clip to bind everything together will work well in adding that industrial feel too contrast with the traditional binds and work with the tactility of the cover, to achieve accuracy and make sure all the documents sit as planned I plotted out a number of equally spaced holes before drilling through with the pillar drill. 

The document can be engaged with as a whole but the aim is too appreciate each entity. 

Having the blocks cut up ready for placing in the type tray I ordered. 

Type tray made working from this rough sketch woodwork did an excellent job, really helped tie the whole project together and add that final deliverable to create the transition back too physical letterpress from all the technological process's.