Offsetting litho’s print dominance

In the US, hot metal is hot. The US has a thriving community of letterpress printers, many of whom learned their skills either in college or as an apprentice, and now run letterpress print shops that employ a handful of staff or more. Their staple fare is the kind of thing beloved of small jobbing printers in the UK until around 15 years ago: invitations, stationery, tickets, single- and two-colour flyers and small posters. It’s a far cry from the UK, where letterpress has been sidelined by offset litho, the inexorable march of which has brought with it the culture of print as a manufacturing process rather than, as still survives in pockets across the US, print as craft.

4 July, 2008