Letter Press

Playful Type, Letter Press

The project Playful Type was one of the best projects as it allowed me to learn a new skill that I never had the chance to previously. At first the process of letter press was tricky and I often found that my words were in the wrong order and would come out backwards. However the experience was amazing and showed me that letter pressed work can easily outrank digitalised typography because pieces that are pressed by hand instantly have a characteristic about them that cannot be replicated.

I moved on to try to represent the text with the way the type was laid out. E.g. I used the term “locked” as another word relating to “Boundary” and laid out the characters so that they were locked together on a rectangle almost creating the illusion of a padlock.

The use of colour and different textured paper also helped to create a different outcome from the letter press. On several of my letter press I experiment with the different types of paper I found that each one always gave a different impression from the characters being very solid because the paper socked up the ink better to tracing paper that created a nice delicate finish.