Design and Arts Inspirations: design letterpress letterpress print print
by alice
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Under Pressure
Letterpress printing is a technique that utilizes pressure (relief printing) to produce prints. It dates back to Johannes Gutenburg’s invention of movable type printing in the 15th century (wikipedia). The technique is used to print various things such as business cards, posters, invitations, and announcements. In its most basic form, the letterpress process requires a plate that contains a raised surface of an image or a letter that is inked and pressed onto paper. The result is an imprint of the raised surface on the paper. Depending on what kind of product is to be made, there are three main methods of letterpress printing: rotary, platen, and flatbed. The rotary method is used for magazines and newspapers, while the platen method is used more for announcements, letterheads, and forms (ehow.com).
Today, many options are available for printing solutions: Fedex offers a wide variety of digital print choices, ink-jet and laser printers give users the freedom to print from the comfort of their own homes, and now online services make printing as easy as clicking a button. The next step is even simpler- wait for the delivery. With these convenient choices, the letterpress process is easy to overlook as the first choice when it comes to printing. Moreover, with the given economy, cutting cost and time is a logical approach to staying afloat. With that said, printed material seems to have declined in quality: important announcements and invitations are sometimes printed on paper with low weight, and the ink can look faded and dull. This combination results in an underwhelming presentation.
Fortunately, shops that specialize in letterpress printing still exist; however, there are few of them compared to digital printing options such as Fedex. Because there are few shops, interested clients have to travel some distance to get to one, and that alone can be a deal-breaker to some. Other reasons that might turn some away from opting for letterpress include price (letterpress printing can be expensive due to its specialized nature and labor-intensive production), the time-consuming process (a simple announcement card can take up to several weeks to produce if mishaps in spelling, color-matching, alignment, etc. occur), and the extent to which the client must be involved throughout the process (clients should be heavily involved in the process to ensure that the finished product is exactly how they had envisioned it to be).
Despite the drawbacks that letterpress printing can have, the end result possesses such quality, uniqueness, and aesthetic value that make all the hassles worthwhile. Letterpress printing provides something that digital printing lacks. It creates things that look and feel elegant and textured. It also adds character to printed products and makes them much more memorable. Weddings, the birth of a child, or the opening of a new business - these events mark milestones in lives and should be presented as such. Letterpress printing has the ability to do so by providing a finished product that is undoubtedly crafted and tailored to each event’s specific needs. One glance and touch of a letterpress printed invitation and it is obvious that much work and time has gone into the making of it. Here are some examples of such craftsmanship:
Jessica Hische:
Business card letterpressed on Crane 110lb Lettra, 2 c + 1 blind on front, 1c back
Hollie Garcia:
“I am always looking to expand my skills as an artist and designer, which lead me to learning how to Letterpress print. So when the client came to me wanting a combination of a modern but detailed design using only black and white for her wedding invitations, I thought of no better way to execute the design than to letterpress the invitations.”
Walter Hansen:
“I always thought this crass kiwi saying was pretty wrong – but what if this crude proclamation was actually a heartfelt rumination on one’s true love? Well, if it was, you’d letterpress 30 copies in gold on black Somerset card. 320 x 219 mm. The base typeface is a blackletter called Agincourt by David Quay. Printing by none other than Magpie Press. Available at Endemic World; or if you’re in Wanaka, bowl in to The Wonder Room to check it out.”
The Mandate Press:
Letterpress printed in 2 spot colors on Neenah Neutech 160# paper
4 spot colors on 100% cotton Cranes Lettra paper
At the Press of a Button
“New and improved!” - This can be applied to anything from people to gardening tools. Something that is improved from its previous version implies that it is now better, and as a designer, few things can be better than saving time. We look for tools that make it faster to make something look good, and methods/techniques that make it easier to do something. Unfortunately, doing something the easy way can sometimes mean sacrificing quality. For example, in Photoshop, simply using the Quick Selection Tool to isolate an object might be sufficient enough to select it; however, zooming in and actually hand-selecting or deselecting pixels in detail will get you a much more accurate selection. But of course, that takes time. Wouldn’t it be great to have a tool that is a combination of ease, speed, and quality?
For the casual Photoshop user, converting an image to grayscale may be easy, but there are many many other effects that are possible. For the thousands of other possibilities, it may be fun to explore Photoshop’s many features; however, the user might be overwhelmed with the user interface and not know where to start. Enter Photoshop’s “Actions”. With Actions, a user can perform a task that consists of many steps with just a press of a button. In the case of the casual Photoshop user who wants to do more than just convert an image into grayscale, they can now make an image seem as though it came from a summer wonderland, or even from a different time period entirely.
Actions can be downloaded or recorded by the user themselves. For this entry, a downloaded action pack was used:
( courtesy of Alex Noise )
This action pack contains 5 different styles that the image can be transformed into. Below are samples of each action using another image.
Original image ( courtesy of Robert Knudsen ):
Style 1:
To achieve this look without the action, the user would have had to create the six adjustment layers shown under Group 1. The great thing about these actions is that it gets a user started. Each one of these adjustment layers can be customized if, for example, the image turns out too red or too dark.
With actions, all the user has to do is open up the Actions Panel in Photoshop, select the action, and press the “Play” button at the bottom of the Actions Panel:
After pressing Play, the action will begin to automatically perform the different steps that are required to achieve the style.
Style 2:
Style 3:
Style 4:
Style 5:
These actions are easy to use and save so much time. Actions are not limited to only changing an image’s colors, they can also be used to record mundane procedures that are used over and over. For example, a user can record an action that automatically resizes an image, changes its hue, then save it in a certain format. This is particularly useful if multiple images have to be resized to the same dimension.
Now, say a user doesn’t have Photoshop, but instead has pictures saved on their phone that they want to stylize. No problem - the ease of Photoshop’s Actions is carried over into the mobile realm through apps such as Instagram and Vignette. Of course these apps’ effects aren’t customizable like Photoshop’s Actions, but they are incredibly easy to use and produce effects that are reminiscent of those produced in Photoshop. Below are examples of what these apps are capable of:
( Courtesy of Instagram )
(Courtesy of Vignette )
For more information on how to create your own actions, click here.
For more information about how to use downloaded actions, click here.
Just Plain Old Paper?
If people were to write down the top 5 things that come to their mind when they think of paper, the list might look something like this:
1. white
2. money
3. pen/pencil
4. drawing
5. writing
Words like cool, amazing, or interesting would probably not make the list. Paper, it seems, has been overshadowed by the digital world. As we are becoming more and more “social,” it’s clear that we feel the need to keep in contact with our friends and family, but no one writes letters anymore and the only mail we ever see in the mailbox are either bills or junkmail. Even the bill senders are opting to be more green, giving the option to have statements sent over by email rather than paper. Magazines, newspapers, and books are now rivaled with e-zines, e-newsletters, and e-books. So, in which realm does paper still stand a chance? Of course, in its own: paper art.
Using paper as a medium for art isn’t anything new. Paper cutting, folding, and quilling are just a few examples of paper art that have been around for centuries (Wikipedia, mypaperquilling.com). Each technique requires so much time and dedication which definitely shines through in each finished piece. The intricacy of these pieces is incredible, and it makes you wonder how anyone can possibly have that much patience in them. While it is true that many amazing things can come from digital media (digital painting, data analysis visualization, etc.), paper art techniques yield finished products that are tangible. There is no printing that still needs to be done, no saving on your desktop that needs to be remembered, no fear that the whole file may be erased in the blink of an eye overnight. There is something about being free of those worries that makes traditional art special. It is amazing to see what humans are capable of, equipped with passion and their bare hands. Here is a selection of incredible paper art pieces from even more incredible artists.
Elsa Mora
Karen M. O’Leary
Filianna Karamanli
Peter Callesen
Alex Queral