Pressing: Keeping Letterpress Alive
What is typography? Who uses it today? And who will use
typography in ten, twenty, forty years? Those are just some of the questions
that co-directors Andrew P. Quinn and Erin Beck tried to answer in Pressing On:
The Letterpress Film. Anyone can easily set the digital type, on devices as
small as a smartphone, so why get dirty doing typography? If you do not know
the answers to the previous questions, you definitely need to see Pressing. If
you know the answers to the previous questions, you should still see it.
Documenting Design, Explaining Letterpress
Art and Logo design have had
a healthy presence on the big screen and on the small screen during the last
decade, and go back to Helvetica in 2007 by director Gary Hu. Since then, other
documentaries on design have appeared, including, among others, Art & Copy
(2009), as well as Linotype the Film by Doug Wilson (2012) and Graphic Means by
Briar Levitt (2017). The Netflix summary: The art of design (2017) has only had
one season, but is well rounded, including illustrators and shoe designers, and
also car and graphics designers. Pressing On is a recent addition to the genre,
and it does not disappoint.
The director of photography, Joseph Vella, captures the
workshops and tools of the printers in rich lighting, showing these artists,
designers and engineers in their natural habitat (although, for the most part,
a habitat full of people, and full disclosure) , my offices are also full of
design, collectables, and ephemeral things). Focusing primarily on the Midwest,
members of the APA (Amalgamated Printers Association) share their stories,
discussing how they came to typographic printing and why typographic printing
will continue and must continue, regardless of the current challenges and the
challenges that lie ahead. . The inspiring works of Hatch Show Print and
Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum provide a definite wow factor
throughout the entire film, all the design and typography in Pressing On
impressed me.
In addition to learning about practitioners of modern
typography, the historical background establishes a context, returning to the
scribes who wrote and translated texts by hand, up to Gutenberg and the Bible,
towards the digital revolution. Mobile types have never disappeared, despite
typographical and technological advances, such as computer publishing,
on-demand printing and web typography, not to mention the digital type in all
personal electronic devices. Moving away from the computer and entering the
shop, shop or studio, work and machines are forming a habit, in a good way.
Those who have used typography are familiar with its magic, but if the siren
song of typography has never called you, Pressing might catch you.
Stephanie Carpenter
On the screen, "Aesthetics is what attracts
people," says typography printer Stephanie Carpenter, who is also an
assistant director of the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two
Rivers, Wisconsin, and an educator and graphic designer. At the end of Pressing
On, viewers will realize that it is not just about the visual aesthetics of
typographic printing, but all aesthetics. Monuments. The smells sound. Process
methods. Planning printing production. And yet, a lot of time and energy goes
into typography. There are many stories told, some of which overlap, and all
provide that typographic printing is life.
Printing as Privilege
But for some, printing is not a full-time job. It is a
privilege, a word that Tammy Winn uses to describe the printing and the
opportunities that she and her husband Adam have been able to share with each
other and with the community of Iowa through The Red Door Press. "I looked
for typography," Tammy said in a telephone interview, "putting a
1500-pound typography in the garage, the friends I've made, the conversations
I've had, and it's amazing and unexpected." The day you take it for
granted, I will not be printing, but I do not think that will happen, my store
is my happy place. "Tammy and Adam still have their full-time jobs, not as
letterpress printers, so they cannot work in the press as much as they would
like. “If there comes a time when we can give them up," Adam told me,
"then printing full time will be a privilege that we have earned."
Tammy and Adam not only print and print impressions, but
they also collect, and in some cases rescue, typography equipment. One of the
most fascinating scenes of the documentary involved precisely that, to rescue a
printer. (Rescue is all I can say, I do not want to spoil it). During our
interview, Adam said that "community is vital to the survival of
typography," and he and his wife have been a vital part of that effort. ,
especially when it comes to the equipment that they have collected and
restored. When Tammy and Adam go to work, they come together as a team, and you
can see other members of the typography community get together for meetings,
classes and social events, and see how Rich Hopkins's words come to life.
"It's a shared passion," he told me. In the film, sharing is how
teachers and students come together, teach each other, maintain traditions and
inspire not only others, but also the next generation.
For the love of typography
On college campuses, during printing workshops and at design
conferences, I've seen design students and professional designers use
typography once, and want to use it again and again, and again. Pressing shows
why typography is important and how it unites people and, above all, why
touching the typography (physically manipulating it and the ink and paper used
to print) is an experience in itself. Tammy Winn summed it up when she told me:
"For people who fall in love with him, you do not want him to leave."
Everything is a work of love. “After seeing the film and the connections that artists,
designers, engineers, printers and technicians have with the media, and among
them, I have the hope and confidence that this generation and subsequent
generations continue with the tradition of typography. Continuing, in fact.
