Typographer and Printmaker, Alan Kitching
creates typographic poster art which are created all through letter-pressing, he
was first introduced into printmaking at school. This lead to his love for
print, driving him into an apprenticeship with a local printers, this is when
he became aware of typographer Jan Tschichold - who of which gave him the idea
for his earliest experiments with print, this is reflective of his work (see
Figure 1.) (It’s Nice That. N.p., 2016. Web.). Alan has always had an
analogue approach to his work and has never used technology to create
compositions and layouts. Despite not using technology Kitching is far from
restricted, when comparing his work with Mr Smith you can see clear influences from Kitching in Smith’s work much
like Tschichold’s influence on Kitching such as the composition and layout, Smith
has used the way in which the ink, pressure and clean cut edges are applied. There
are subtle differences between the two such as colour , from
looking at previous works it is clear that Smith prefers to explore with
monochrome colours (Figure 2.) whereas Kitching plays around with bold
primary colours this allows Kitching to create new secondary and tertiary colours
by overlaying structures, (See Figure 1.). “I enjoy the construction of the work in 3 dimensions/
building the composition - its an essential part of the design process for me -
the structural allows the detail to be focused and informs the thinking and the
eventual meaning, its a very architectural process.” Smith has a connection
between the physicality of his work and the design, he has thought about the
textures, indentations and composition to create such a crisp and detailed
piece this can be said about Kitching’s work also, unlike Mr Smith – Anthony
Burill (Print maker) has a very different
reason for using the letterpress in his practice ‘Its all about when you pull a draw open and see all the type there.
You just appreciate the beautiful wood type and its particular patina and age,
and then when you start putting it all together to form words it feels very
satisfying. You are using materials that are tried and tested - you can say
anything with it and its going to look really nice.’ (Alderson, R. Posterzine 2016. Print.) from both of these opinions it shows a contrast of knowledge
towards the process, meaning there are more than just one reasoning’s to the
love of letterpress.
Figure 2
http://www.smithsrules.com/imperialseries/
http://www.smithsrules.com/imperialseries/
