Printing like Gutenberg

On Friday, we had a taste of being able to print like Gutenberg, with a 'replica' press Coventry University has. The university has cases and cases of different typefaces and fonts, but we got 6 cases up in our room to have a go as part of the typography module. For the task, we were to create a logo for a company a group of us were 'creating'. We included the initials of our names and came up with a quick design to get us onto using the tiles and the ink. We made the logo colourful and eyecatching and I chose to use different typefaces for the letters in the logo to make it more fun and interesting.

However, I couldn't print the letters in the same way that Gutenberg would have, firstly because the press was in the basement and this was just a small taster, and secondly because the letters in the word needed to be perfectly spaced and warped to fit the logo.

The way Gutenberg would have pronted the letters would have been a page at a time, laying all the letters out in order on a tray and using a key to lock them into place. The sheets of paper would have then been pressed upon the inked tray of letters. Instead of doing this, I had to ink each letter individually and stamp them on individually to make sure the spacing was absolutley correct and in line with the illustration on the logo. This method worked well, but would have been slow if I had more than 5 letters to do.

This is how the logo turned out:

Then, as there was some time left in the session, I made this little print for myself of me and my friend's initials. I then decorated it with colours and made it look pretty. I like this as something to put on my wall as a reminder of our friendship group!

I thought Gutenberg's printing method was really fun and would like the opportunity to do it again. Phil, the lecturer said that the people who were interested would get the opportunity to be inducted in the print workshop in the basement using real presses and different coloured inks etc. I would like to do this in the future, as the process created unique prints and really made me think about what I was doing, as there is no undo button when using ink and paper! The work I created is really individual and would work nicely for logos and other designs when type is needed, as the way the ink and paper work means that it gives texture and individuality to the piece. Not each letter is printed perfectly every time, bit this makes the piece organic and quite raw, which is a nice effect.

If I get the opportunity to do the full induction I will make another post about the session, as I imagine the press itself will be quite interesting. I may also be able to use a wider range of ink colours and typography, which will broaden my choices.

For now, I will insert a few photos below from the taster session to show what the letters looked like.