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Letterpress Technician Takes Printing Craft to Canadian Design Students
Friday 24. May 2013 - The RCA's School of Communication letterpress technician, Ian Gabb, has led a workshop with students from Université de Québec à Montréal's (UQAM), teaching them to set metal type and letterpress printing for the very first time.
The workshop, which aimed to bridge the disconnect between the design process and the act of printing a finished product, was part of UQAM’s Design International Conference, which ran from 27 April to 4 May.
As part of the annual conference, UQAM invites a number of guest practitioners to devise a series of workshops for its design students. Ian, who works closely with the RCA’s Visual Communication programme, was chosen by professor and RCA alumna Judith Poirier, who teaches on UQAM’s BA Graphic Design programme.
Letterpress, within the RCA’s School of Communication, has a strong standing within industry. Graphic designers such as Jonathan Barnbrook, whose work embodied a renewed interest in traditional graphic design techniques, were greatly influenced by it while at the RCA.
The week-long workshop tasked students with creating an ‘A-Z’ book of printing and typographical terms – from content and layout design right through to printing and binding. Each student was allocated a letter; wrote the copy; illustrated the page and then set the type for printing. Students exhibited their work at the end of the week.
It was the first time the students had ever set metal or wood type or worked with letterpress, as, according to Ian, ‘they work with computers all the time’.
‘It got them thinking about the process of printing. Fifty years ago designers would have had direct experience of printing, but now they just send off a file to the printers with little real understanding of the processes or materials involved,’ he explained.
‘The craft of letterpress printing is about getting the optimum amount of ink, balancing it with the right amount of pressure. I love the whole process of making things – from concept right through to execution. It’s important that students understand the processes. It’s all very well pushing the boundaries but you can only do that when you know what the boundaries are,’ he added.
Ian was one of several guest practitioners to hold workshops at the UQAM Design International Conference. Others included French architect Éric Lapierre; Italian urbanist Enrico Chapel; German architect France Markus Bader and Belgian product designer, Alain Berteau.