Using the Letterpress - 17.11.22
Today we had a go at making simple letterpress cards. This was to make sure that we could come up with ideas for our outcomes. To come up with something using the letterpress was difficult at my stage as I was already nearing the latter half of my design and trying to incorporate this style, will be difficult (even though the outcomes for this look really nice).
I teamed up with a classmate during this time as there were not enough letter sets and chases (things to put the letter sets and furniture into) for everyone. I also asked if I could film him and add him to my blog to show the process of inking up the press and applying it onto the paper.
Whilst doing the letterpressing stuff, we decided to make a riddle for our first design. Soon after, we would learn that trying to make sure that all the letter blocks were the same way around in the chase was a difficult thing to do. Me and my classmate would only learn about this later after printing onto our very first sheet of paper.
This was then quickly followed by annoyance as we took so much time trying to get the wooden and lead furniture (the blocks of wood/metal inside the chase) to fit the whole sentence into the frame.
We quickly turned a sour design into something that me and him were happy about. The design was changed to the f-word (to reflect the frustration of what was going on), whilst setting the spacing between the letters differently and making one of the letters backward for design aesthetics.
He also came up with a design that would take out the letter C and he would replace it with his own handwritten letter.
I do not think that the serif style of the lettering that me and my classmate chose would have reflected well in my book cover, but it would be nice in a sans serif font.
I feel like the letterpress would offer a really good way to add texture to fonts, but the fonts used must reflect the usage as well. This would also be difficult as there is only a limited amount of fonts available in the print workshop.