Some deep impressions and some lighter impressions work together in this piece to give this it a multi-layered look.
Since the depth of the impression can be controlled, just as the color of the ink and the position of the image can, designing for letterpress involves 3 dimensions.
There are a lot of tasty, thick papers that can be used to nice effect when printing with the letterpress process.
Shown here is a sample of printing which has been done on 190 pound blotter paper. The irregular rate of ink absorption reflects the rough nature of the paper’s fibers. The rougher the paper is, the more erratic the transfer of ink from the printing plate to the sheet will be.
Rough, long fibered paper will suck ink up at different rates at different places on its surface. The resulting printed image will have a degree of “pin-holing” which will be quite apparent on the large print areas though almost unnoticeable on the small print areas.
The result is quite appealing.
When I was helping to plan my own wedding (nearly 20 years ago now) I had the opportunity to create the greatest wedding invitation in the history of weddings. I was a budding letterpress printer and had just started my printing company, The Nomadic Press, and my best friend (and bride-to-be) was a graphic designer.
She was sewing her own dress and I was printing the invitations, so we had a bit of money that we could spend on materials. With all the confidence of youth, we believed that we had lots of skill and talent to apply to the design and production of our invitations. For weeks (and on into months) we worked on design after design and made mock-ups until our tables were buried under the empty shells of a myriad of glue-sticks.
And still the first guest had not been invited to the big event.
Finally, a friend of ours sent us an invitation to our own wedding with a note that gently reminded us that if we did not get some kind of invitation out soon, then it was unlikely that people would be able to fit our wedding into their schedules.
We settled for a nice invitation, not the best in the history of marriage, but good enough. Like the example that accompanies this post (which I printed for Scott and Deborah), not the best ever, but quite nice all the same.
Oh, the woman I married is still doing graphic design, I am still a letterpress printer, and we are still happily hitched to each other. Ahhh, letterpress.
Within the history of letterpress printing there has been, at its heart, a struggle to ride the line between light and heavy impressions. Too light an impression and the ink will not transfer well to the paper, while too much impression damages metal type (which, ideally, is to be laid back into the case and used again and again).
Modern letterpress printing enjoys the advantages of using printing plates made from polymer. These plates are tough and relatively easy to produce, and since they are job-specific, they can by sorely abused while leaving a clean and deep impression. If one plate gets trashed in the process of executing the work, a new one can step in to take its place.
Typographer and sculptor Eric Gill wrote that “A print is properly a dent made by pressing; the history of letterpress printing is the history of the abolition of that dent”. Today that ‘dent’ is what letterpress is all about. A sculptural impression, or heavy kiss, pressed into a sensuous paper is exactly what people are looking for when they turn to letterpress printing to convey their message.
After all, a passionate kiss leaves quite a memorable impression.