Letterpress as a Collaborative Process

Using case studies drawn from over twelve years experience as Designer in Residence in the Caseroom (letterpress collection) at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) this paper will focus on what different forms of value can be found and utilised in the processes of letterpress printing, through the production of both commercial design and experimental art projects. The first section of the talk will examine how the designer and artist’s role could be seen as that of a prospector exploring the potential utility of extant letterpress equipment. By approaching analogue printing technology as both alternative and complementary to digital technologies a whole realm of new uses for this equipment has opened up. This exploration has led me to interrogate the innate physicality of the components of the letterpress process, using techniques as varied as electron microscopy to printing the contents of a bin filled with discarded type. It has also led to large-scale commercial branding projects where a sense of implied aesthetic authenticity is fetishised. The latter section of the paper will single out one of these themes, which is significant, though in my experience, not often enough discussed: letterpress as a collaborative medium. As a designer, printer and researcher, I have found that letterpress offers many opportunities for true collaboration with a wide range of artists, musicians and design clients. The fact that a number of people can be active in the design and printing simultaneously working within a shared environment proves valuable in projects where the output is defined as much by a journey through the process of making as by a preconceived design. The facility at GSA is laid out and organized in such a way as to best facilitate collaborative use, with the presses and type distributed around a large central Setting Stone. Letterpress is a highly specialised technical process, which demands a keen working and historical knowledge of the technology involved. My interest in collaboration lies in the application of this specialised knowledge whilst encountering the challenges and possibilities brought by skilled artists bringing fresh eyes, alternative objectives and new methods of working to the process and allowing a break in the normal commercial chain of artist, designer, printer