Letterpress – A Timeless Print Form

GSM takes a look at the timeless print form that is – Letterpress

Letterpress is an old-school form of mass-printing. It dates back almost 600 years to when German-born Johann Gutenberg printed 180 copies of a 1,282 page Bible on his new invention. In it’s most basic form, Letterpress employs individual letterforms, or ‘moveable type’, that are ‘typeset’  within a frame or ‘Galley’. The printer loads the Galley onto the Letterpress and proceeds to ink and ‘press’ it onto the paper. When the printer has finished the job, he breaks up the Galley and the cleans the letterforms for reuse in the next project. This concept of ‘moveable type’ is much older than Johann’s ‘Gutenberg Bible’. It dates back to 11th Century China. However, it was in Europe that the idea really took off heralding the mass-printing of books for the first time. This, in turn, eventually lead to a need for mass-education, universal literacy and deep social change. Letterpress remained the dominant form of mass printing globally until the mid-1900s when it was superseded by the faster, more efficient Lithographic ‘offset’ process. The invention is one of the defining moments in human history.

The letterpress Comeback…

All but retired to the museum by the 1970s, Letterpress has in recent years made somewhat of a comeback as a bespoke form of short-run printing. This is thanks to its unique tactile ‘organic’, debossed crafted look and feel. You can’t beat the luxurious look and feel of Letterpress on quality paper for invitations, business cards & stationery, certificates and art prints.

The World Before MAC…

For Centuries, Letterpress employed individual letterforms made from wood and/or metal. In the 19th Century, moulded lead letterforms known as ‘hot type’ became standard. Traditionally, ‘Type Foundries’ made hot type—hence the use of this term today to describe a company that creates typefaces. One disadvantage with hot type was wear and tear through constant reuse. Hot type was therefore phased out and ‘single-use’ moulded lines-of-type—‘linotype’ replaced it. This process employs compositing individual letterform moulds together to form sentences or lines.

The printer then casts these lines to create a singular ‘slug’.

After which he sets these slugs  in a Galley with strips of metal ‘leading’.

The ‘leading’ is inserted between words to create line spacing. Thus forming a complete page ready for loading onto the letterpress.

At the end of a print job, the printer disassembles the Galley and melts the slugs down to repour.

Understandably, this process requires vast amounts of character moulds which the printery must store. – There are multiple copies of alphabetical letters, numerals and glyphs needed for every font, point size and weight. Subsequently, todays’ Letterpress printeries generally only offer a limited range of fonts and sizes when working with hot type. The modern alternative is the use of digitally generated photopolymer plates which allow significantly more flexibility in design.

The Letterpress Printing Process

Letterpress is not a CMYK based process but predominantly uses Pantone Spot colours. This requires the printery to hold the base inks for the Pantone system.

Pantone colours are mixed by hand with the assistance of a Spectrophotometer,

which reads the colour density, to ensure the mix is accurate.

The printer loads a photopolymer plate onto the Letterpress.

and adds the ink to the Letterpress by hand.

It then runs through a series of rollers to even the spread.

Once the Letterpress is running, the final ink roller passes over the printing plate

which leaves ink on the raised relief.

A series of suction cups scoops the paper stock up.

The paper is then fed into the press and stamped onto the plate.

The printer leaves the resulting printed sheets to dry before trimming them down on a guillotine to the finished piece —this example is a business card.

You can clearly see how the stamping has pressed into the paper stock giving a debossed effect.

Letterpress lives on in Typographic Terminology

In the age of digitally generated artwork, the legacy of Letterpress still lives on in many of the typographic terms we use today. For example, ‘upper case’ and ‘lower case’ originate from the storage of the movable type. Printers stores lower case letters which, of course, comprise the bulk of body copy, in boxes called ‘cases’ on lower shelves for easy access. And they stored upper case characters, used less frequently, in cases on the upper shelves. Another example is the strips of metal that printers placed between the lines of ‘moveable type’ in order to space them apart. Printers cast these spacers in lead—hence the term ‘leading’.

Read all about How to Create Artwork for Letterpress here…

GSM would like to extend our thanks to the team at Laserfoil Design & Print (Auckland) for allowing us access to their printery and assisting with the technical information in this article.

Photos by Xavier Murphy@xalacreative

This article was originally published in GSM17. To read this and other great articles purchase this issue here.