Letterpress is my new love. Everyone else's too it seems.

I recently produced my business cards on a traditional letterpress using wood and metal type. I was lucky enough to find someone who would teach me the basics and let me experiment with my ideas.

I had no idea how limiting letterpress design actually was. Sure it's easy to make a plate and run it through the press and make it look traditional, antique even.
But that's not what I was after. I wanted to set the type myself, position it and figure out how it would work. Not an easy task. I set my card about four times until I reached my final design. This process took ages with only a limited choice of typefaces and sizes for each. Lack of experience caused me to set a few lines of copy without realising my last line was too long to fit with the size I used. Sometimes missing letters forced me to rethink my design.

I started by picking each letter from the case, making sure it wasn't placed upside down, then placing the leading between each line. Then setting in the frame and doing a test print only to discover that, it just doesn't look like I thought it would... Put each letter back in the case and start again. It was tedious but I loved the process.

But after a day in the print room, I found that I had quickly acquired a letterpress elitist attitude towards any design with an impression into the paper. This is only because hours earlier I had learned that the original moveable metal and wood type are never meant to press into the paper leaving an indentation, but should just merely kiss the paper, leaving only ink. Let's be fair though, that impression is what people are after, I'm just glad to know the difference now.

In the end I settled on Gill Sans Bold and Gill Sans Narrow, and I used GFSmith Colorflute Rye (a corrugated 100% recycled stock). Because my stock was corrugated on one side and smooth on the other, I ended up with impressions of the 'flutes' showing through on the smooth printed side. This is actually what sold me on the stock. It has a lovely texture when you hold it and the way it interacts with the ink I found really exciting. I knew that every card would look different depending on the amount of ink and the amount of pressure I used with each turn.

When printing time came, damn, that was HARD! I'm a short lady, and these machines are made for men. I got a good work out running each page through the press nine times! I finished with about 200 cards that I can proudly say were each made of my own labour of love.