The Letterpress Lab
I love the smell of ink & paper in the morning! I know it’s old school, but the super tactile quality of the print itself combined with the semi-translucent ink and the physical labor required to create the thing you want, well, that’s magic! The addition of the Letterpress & Prototyping Lab to the UCO School of Design is one of the things I am most proud of.
I’ve also been incredibly fortunate to have received several grants for this space—the first from the UCO Office of Research and Sponsored Programs and the second from the Kirkpatrick Foundation.
proposal for the letterpress and prototyping lab at the University of Central Oklahoma.
You can see the space and hear Ruki and I talk about the meaning of the lab to UCO Design. Great work by Ghost!
The Letterpress and Prototyping Lab
In the Letterpress Lab & Prototyping Lab, theory is connected to practice, embedded within production techniques.
Much of present-day vocabulary in typography stems from letterpress technology, enabling students to make better connections between content and practice. In terms of educational value and portfolio creation for the design student, the relatively small number of letterpress machines available in the printing world coupled with the knowledge required to use a machine make letterpress available to a select and enviable few. At UCO, we seamlessly blend the ‘fast’ technology of digital printing and the ‘slow’ tactile process of letterpress in the Lab, allowing our students to create unique portfolios in the state, region, and nation.
The work created at the Letterpress Lab is just one of the reasons we have achieved our goal of being named a Top Design School (GDUSA).