Lecture on my practice and the place of Letterpress within a wider design context.

Letterpress, we were once told, was a thing of the past. Yet, now it is very clearly the focus of renewed enthusiasm. Interest in setting types by hand continues to grow, with an increase in letterpress activity further fuelled by an ongoing concern with visual authenticity. For many, letterpress offers something beyond straightforward graphic reproduction. It offers the means to create hand-made objects of worth. But to what extent are we still looking backwards rather than forwards? Much contemporary practice certainly seems to have settled into something of a retro-groove. In the midst of all the nostalgia, there are people who offer alternatives to this potential dead-end, reinventing their practices and working in more exploratory ways.