The Printing Types: a practice-based study of design principles in experimental letterpress
Becky Howson (awarded 2023)
Supervisors: Dr Caroline Archer-Parré, Dr Sue May, Dr Sian Vaughan, Dr Jacqueline Taylor, Prof. Tim Wall
External Examnier: Andrew Haslem
This research proposes that the conventions of traditional printing and typographic knowledge does not sufficiently address the design aspects and locations of contemporary experimental letterpress practice. Taking a hybrid method of historical and experimental practice-based approaches to traditional design principles and environments that are applied to individual and collective creative practice.
This study presents a critical dialogue between the old and the new as well as review of the emergent field in experimental letterpress. Its findings contribute a definition of the field of practice through addressing the formulation of design principles, from historical aspects to the development of new perspectives. This investigation highlights the redefinition of research methods and an understanding of inherited techniques in contemporary design and pedagogical practices.
The creative and pedagogical practices of J. H. Mason, Leonard Jay, Anthony Froshaug and Alan Kitching were identified, through a chronological ordering in the literature review. They were recognised as distinguishable in the field and relevant to inform the debate in this multifaceted study. This research demonstrates new ways to connect the rules situated in the practices of Mason, Jay, Froshaug and Kitching and its importance in design and pedagogies.
Such research reimagines the conventions of letterpress printing that are deeply situated in over five hundred years of a standardised system. It has seen many technological, social, industrial and educational changes while the fundamental approaches to the processes remain the same. The thesis proposes that the contexts in which letterpress were constrained by can now be reordered, and the legacies can help to innovate in revealing new typographic forms and visual systems.
