When I first read ‘This looks great – Letterpress on your iPad’ on my twitter feed, I instantly thought…BRILLIANT PRINT REALLY IS DEAD!! But more importantly I don’t own an iPad, so even if this does look great and is great I wouldn’t be able to indulge in such technological typographic experiments. My gutt reaction left a foul taste in my mouth, it was as though I had just licked a recently inked wood block. Although being the enquisitive young whipper snapper that I am, I persued, clicking on the tiny url attached to the enthusiastic 43 character tweet, not knowing what I might find at the end of the promise laiden link.
I was quickly redirected to kickstarter the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. (pretty big statement) ‘Every month, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.’ An interesting idea home to a thousand and one more interesting ideas all of which are looking for some spondoolies to get them off the ground.
One of these ideas as earlier positively tipped is LetterMpress™ ‘a virtual letterpress environment – released first on the iPad – allowing anyone to create authentic-looking letterpress designs and prints’
The premise is simple. As long as these guys can rustle up a grand total of 15,000 US Dollars this unique and beautiful letterpress process can be readily available (for a small sum) to all you lucky iPad owners out there. Available for you to create some delicious digital letterpress designs when and wherever you want. All without getting a single finger covered in ink.
Of course it’s a crying shame that this once integral printing process has become obsolete in our modern technological swamped world. Although having said that it’s even more important that those behind LetterMpress™ are backed and supported. At least to give the now struggling artform a fighting chance of surviving at least another 100 years, on top of it’s already impressive 700 odd year existance.
To understand the project a little further watch this delightful little video…
If you would like to read more and donate some of your hard earned reddies go here.