The Project

I took a letterpress class this weekend at OCAC in Portland. I took it with my Mom as a birthday present to her. It ended up being really fascinating. I'm not planning on saving for a letterpress anytime soon but oh man, the possibilities.

A lot of the shots here don't really tell a story. But the workshop was a macro lens paradise. It combined two of my favorite elements: type and tiny. If I had been on my own I would have stayed an hour after the class finished on Sunday and just taken pictures with all the type. Drawers and drawers of glorious type.

Letterpress seems to be able to combine a lot of different elements but what we did was a push press with type over the top. First we made our plate, which was a piece of paper divided up into 8 sections. We each got a section.


We added layers of texture to our area. The thicker the texture the darker that part of the plate would print. The the lighter the texture the lighter that part of the plate would print. You really have to learn to think about things in a certain way.

You can see the varying tones. That just means how much ink was on the rollers. We probably reapplied right after a few of those.




So you print all your pages with the pressure plate. Then you take your type and you put it all in the bed of the press. My type was 72 font and like 6 letters. Some type was 10point and over a hundred.

Letterpress includes a LOT of work with numbers, subtracting, and a ruler. This is the part that would probably drive me crazy. B/c it's extact. We had 8 sections of type and we put them all in the press bed at the same time, which means you have to be REALLY careful that they all line up with their corresponding graphics.















Look at the image where you can see the word "cat." Notice there there seems to be the letters. Then surround to the immediate left and right of the letters are metal pieces to make sure the type only goes so wide (the width of the section we each had to work with.) Then between all those chunks of metal and type we put what's called furniture. Wood blocks to fill out the rest of the space in the press bed.


If you look at the whole press bed you can see sections of type and sections of furniture.



Then you mix your type's ink and put it on the roller and run through (by hand) all your sheets again and wallah.



I no longer feel bad about spending $7 on a letterpress card.