Print work shop gridula

During a visit by Gridula, a traditional print company based in leeds who are running 'The print project', I decided to get a camera out from photography, after I got to grips with using the camera, the focus and the macro settings, i began taking photos of all of the printing equipment and the print processes that one must go through to create type and sentences using letter blocks.

Exploiting the natural light of the studio, I managed to grab some very exciting shots of the printing equipment. The way that the metal letter blocks reflected the light was stunning.

The fact that these letter blocks came as a massive collection meant they were really exciting to photograph. The traditional wood cases had great detail of grain and a lovely archaic feel to them.

I was very proud with the shots I managed to get, in total taking over 300 snaps of this process.

The old and bulky print presses/rollers were lovely to photograph and the camera captured their industrial feel and all of the detail and craftsmanship which had gone into creating these beautiful pieces.

The sentences which people had spelt out using different typefaces came out really well under the glint of the natural light.

The various uses of metals in this process and the different pieces of equipment each had a lovely texture.

The vibrancy of the coloured inks came out well in these photographs and at this stage it was very exciting to see how the final prints were going to look.

The way that the red ink only coated the letters on the letter blocks was something magical, knowing this was going to be a great print, the paper was laid onto the rollers and the poster creating began.

Over all I had a great day learning about the tradition typesetting processes and think it is something crucial a modern day designer should learn so that he can get to grips with the no longer used DNA of design. I don't feel print is 'dead' in this sense, but I can understand why it has been brushed aside for quicker and more diverse methods of design, but traditional methods like this will always have their hands on, charm aspect.