I had a really good long talk with Nick about what he does and why he chooses to use letterpress printing over digital processes, which was really insightful for me and I have learned a lot about how the process is used in the modern day.
Digital print has created a throwaway culture as it is easily accessible and cheap to create. We come into contact with digitally printed material on a daily basis and so it has become to norm to throw it away. Letterpress however is an art form and needs a lot of skill to create. It used to be that many people would work in a letterpress studio, each with their own set of skills, but now Nick works along most of the time and has had to become skilled in many different areas.
New technologies have moved letterpress forward, such as using laser cut wood to create patterns and shapes to incorporate into the practice and use alongside the traditional type.
Letterpress van use a lot of stocks and so it has a more tactile quality to the work, unlike digital print where they had to create new kinds of stock so that the machines could use them. Digital printing doesn't have this tactile quality as much, as the paper can be very different.
Digital print is wasteful and uses a lot of ink when printing. The prints coming out of a digital machine usually are not alined and so this creates even more waste of paper when the excess paper is cut. Letterpress on the other hand is a very precise process and so the waste can be easily managed.
There are limitations to letterpress in that the size of the press determines how large a print can be, whereas digital printing can be much larger because they can use rolls of paper instead of single sheets.
The design process has moved away from being a hands on and tactile process with the rise of digital technologies. Instead of first drawing and planning, we tend to go straight to our laptops. This has contributed to the rise of the 'diy designer' and away from skilled, hands on design.
Glastonbury Free Press- a collective of letterpress printers that Nick describes as an "underground scene"
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