To feed your hunger for more letterpress knowledge, check out the DesignCast Freaks of Fancy, and Everything You Wanted to Know About Wild, 19-Century Printing Techniques.
If you’re a designer with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of all things print — keep reading. Below you’ll find tips that cover the ins and outs of designing and preparing your work for letterpress printing. Letterpress is a centuries-old method of printing using mainly hand-fed presses to create tactile relief prints. Originally, each lead or wood character would be set by hand, one-by-one, but luckily for today’s designers, the process has been modified to work with digital files. We are no longer limited to what bits of lead and wood type are in the print shop — any font or vector-based art you create on your computer can be made into polymer plates.
Simple considerations in the design process can help take your project to the next level when it comes time for letterpress printing. Kat Feuerstein, founder of Gilah Press + Design, tells designers what to expect when designing for letterpress printing.
1. Unless you are looking to achieve a half-tone effect, it is best to avoid using photographs and continuous tone images, such as gradients. (ex:1a)
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Kudos and thanks to Kat for such an informative article.
The information contained in her article should help designers get the most out of letterpress, and not go down paths that cause frustration and disapointment.
One other point I would like to share is that the final look of a specified color is dependent upon the chosen substrate. The color on your screen may be quite different from the printed piece. A Pantone book is an investment, but wise one.
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