Our studio team abandoned their Macs last week to head over to Small Town Ink . Turn Key’s Junior Art Director, Jac , explains what the day was about and the insights the team took away from it…
The Small Town Ink Traditional Print Day took place last Wednesday (24 th April) in the Grass Studio at the University of Leeds. It was a celebration of and an education in traditional print techniques, giving young designers (and some ever so slightly older ones) a chance to get their hands dirty and ask questions with those who work with traditional print on a day-to-day basis.
The Traditional Print Day provided the TK studio with a much needed excuse to step away from our computers and see what some of the more experimental printers are doing with letterpress and other print techniques. Letterpress is a traditional relief printing technique in which the printer creates the print plate using individual type that is locked in place (see image below). The printer then rolls ink on the plate and presses the plate on to the page to transfer the ink.
There was some fantastic work on display including a varied offering of zines (small circulation magazines using low tech printing techniques) from Footprint . We were very lucky to make it in time for talks from The Print Project and Richard Lawrence , who were both inspiring and educational. Richard Lawrence gave an exceptional talk on the intricacy of traditional print which was very useful especially as letterpress has recently been making a much-deserved comeback!
A big thank you to Small Town Ink for a brilliant day, we’ve picked up a few tips that will make life easier for our printers and add value for our clients. We also spotted a few unusual techniques that create visually interesting print and will help to complement our work. Here’s a few of the photos we took on the day…
