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Friday, March 14, 2008

My First Print

This winter I decided to indulge some latent creative urges and take a letterpress printing class at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. It was something I’ve wanted to do for awhile. I expected to be one male among a slew of gray-haired and chatty women. When I showed for the first class, though, the only other student was a guy. And the instructors were both male. Weird.

Anyway, above is the result. This print is a mix of handset Goudy Bold type, wood block, polymer plates and three colors of hand-mixed inks. Each print went through the press five times as layer upon layer was added.

I had no idea how manual and tedious the letterpress printing process is. This class gave me a whole new appreciation for the ease of “File… Print.” But it also gave me an appreciation for the slow, methodical, and sometimes surprising letterpress process. It requires a whole new category of thought that I’m not used to in a digital age: How will this light color look when laid on top of this darker color? How will we align these lines so that there aren’t ugly gaps? How do I center this type without that handy little button?

There will be more.

Posted by Aaron on March 14, 2008 5:38 PM