Letterpress Visual Research

Now I have carried out all of my research for my dissertation I will start on the practical element taking into consideration what I have learned over the past few months. By getting involved with letterpress and testing out the traditional process I will learn the fundamental rules of typography. It will hopefully help to give a better understanding of the issues surrounding type setting. The process will also help with my understanding of typography the grid and layout. I will produce a series of letterpress posters which will have key statements I have composed from the research I have carried out so far. I think it is important to try and keep the statements as short as possible and to the point as the posters need to have a strong impact and be readable. I have summarized points which my primary sources have made in order to condense the information. I will document my experience with setting type and the benefits that the experience gives me. This form of action research will help to put my theory into practice and also highlight my results from the theoretical aspect of the project.

I will research letterpress artists and their work in order to get an idea of the visual style I could use. I am looking for something with a strong visual identity which has a strong impact on the viewer. From the primary research I carried out it was brought to light that Anthony Burrills work would be good to look at as his work consists of core typography and he is one of the leading letterpress designers in the country producing very inspirational famous pieces of design. Another person I will look into was Alan Kitching who I saw at the Leeds Festival print talks last year. Alan works with letterpress and does lots of large wood block typography prints which suit my project well.

Anthony Burrill

Anthony's work is a brilliant example of letterpress design, he explores the use of typography throughout his work. He works primarily with core typography and produces many short inspirational typographic prints which have a strong visual impact and showcase the imperfections and handcrafted qualities that letterpress offers. The composition of his posters are well balanced have maximum impact. He generally uses a combination of 2 typefaces and sometimes just one. This mix of serif and sans serif fonts helps to break the piece up and adds some variation to the typography, it also helps to create something that is much more unique and different to printing the words all in one typeface at one particular size. I think using black ink for the lettering works best for the type of work I am doing and this will also stay true to the traditional visual style of Gutenberg in terms of colour. The design needs to function as a piece of letterpress.

Alan Kitching

Alan's work is truly inspirational, and showcases beautifully set type in a contemporary manor. Alan's work is much more experimental and involves layering and an excessive use of colour in many of his designs. I absolutely love his visual style and the colours and composition of his work, they are have a very strong impact on the viewer and it is clear how far he has pushed the boundaries of letterpress. He definitely has a much more modern style of working with letterpress. However for the type of posters I am producing I think it will be more appropriate to concentrate more on the message and the readability rather than taking some of the attention away by using a range of colours and a crazy composition as beautiful as Alan's work is.

Mikey Burton 

Mikey Burton is an illustrator and designer who works with various mediums including letterpress. His style of letterpress is much different to Alan and Anthony and mixes illustration into imagery with his typography. This is a much more modern way of working and gives it a much more experimental contempoary look to the work. He is much less interested with the quality of the print leaving the imperfections and cracks which letterpress is famous for, he experiments overlapping and overprinting to create unique and interesting pieces.