Yesterday I visited an exhibition of creative Letterpress typography with Heather Kendrick. It was an exhibition by the Tom Paine Printing press who are based in Lewis, West Sussex, UK. The exhibition took place at the ‘Here Gallery’ at 108 Stokes Croft, Bristol, UK.
When visiting this exhibition, it was great to se such an expressive use of letterpress work by designers who live very close to my home town in west sussex. The work showed strong evidence that these designers had a great talent to push the limitations of the letterpress. Some of the work was truely awe inspiring in its form. The prints showed how the letterpress process obviously generates and commands a different way of thinking compared with the approach of typography in computer generated design.
I was also fascinated by the veriety of print formats that were utilised. My favourite pieces were a couple of enormous books
that documented the historical form of londons railways. These enormous books were inspiring as they created a different
user experience than that of a conventional book format because did not require the user to ‘lean’ into the book as they would normally. This reading experience was complemented with the large style of typography used throughout the book, allowing the user to almost lean wack and relax, rather than hunch over the book. Almost a good advertisement for british rail—”Sit back and relax”!
