Walking along a drizzly day in Oxford Street, I Just had to stop and stare at these lenticular screens used on French Connection’s store-front displays. The black and white lenticular photos are being used as part of the fashion store’s This Is Man/This Is Woman campaign. As you walk along the store, the woman’s eyes open and close whilst the man turns around. I thought it was very innovative and actually commands the public’s attention.

From PrintWeek

Something else that caught my eye on Saturday was a new Giclée -print shop. It seems the current trend in small print outfits is proving quite popular. I spotted the pop-up print shop near Carnaby Street. Outline Editions is selling limited edition printworks from the likes of Anthony Burrill and James Jarvis. I was quite tempted by Robert Green's A Matter of Life and Death. It opened on Friday (28^th May) and lasts till July 3.

From PrintWeek

From PrintWeek

 

While rapper Kanye West was spotted living it up at a Luella show, and Sienna Miller hogged the headlines when she unveiled her own line of clothing, one person that escaped the glare of the paparazzi at London Fashion Week, but managed to catch the attention of fashionistas was Flora McLean, head designer at House of Flora.

With the help of Danny Flynn of Astonish Me Press, McLean created fashion accessories and jewellery inspired by letterpress printing – with a twist! The designs could also be used to print with and came with their own inking pots so the wearer could quite literally print on the go. Rubber embossed belts turned into rollers along with laser cut roller handbags and cuffs bearing laser-cut text. I caught up with printer Danny Flynn following a lecture that he gave at the London College of Communication last week. Subjects up for discussion included his fascination with a dying art form, his Stella Artois commissions and the work that he undertook on the Hollywood blockbuster Gladiator.

When did you start working with letterpress? My flatmate below me at the time asked if I could store a little Adana press for him. For a while I didn’t touch it but then I discovered it was something that I could use to print at a cost of next to nothing. At the time I had a full-time job in graphic design. It was a small press for business card printing and after I’d found a plate maker so I could make my own plates and drawings I taught myself - starting out with business and greetings cards.

How easy was it to pick up? I learnt the mechanic physical aspect of it quite quickly but it takes you a while to see and understand the print aspect of it. I’ve been printing for 20 years now and can print very well.

Why letterpress? It does have an authority about it that other print processes would not have. It’s craft based printing. You’ve worked with some big names for your commercial work using letterpress. Could you tell me a bit more about this work? I did some posters for Stella Artois – I think they also commissioned some screen prints for the same campaign from another printer – but it all achieved a different look and feel even though it’s the same paper. They commissioned them to be photographed and then re-produced at bigger volumes for billboard advertising. They were printed on GS Smith fine paper because that had a texture and nice colour to it. I laser cut the letters out of acrylic and wood block from a screen based design. I also produced work for the title sequence on the film Gladiator. The laser cut characters from letterpress letters were filmed to produce the title sequences. And I produced work for alphabet soup produced using salt and pepper and tomato soup powder and printed on a little Adana press. This was included at a Tate Millbank exhibition in 2000.

I heard that you also like to put up letterpress graffiti on the underground as well? Yes. Each one was only about 20 in an edition. The obvious format we chose was resemblance to poetry on the underground. There is so much effort that has gone into letterpress printing – choosing quality paper, with gold tools etc. Although the public don’t know much about print, they do recognise letterpress - they see and perceive it as letterpress print.

How did the idea for the letterhead dress come about? Flora was inspired by incorporating some kind of letterpress into her fashion work. It made sense to use laser to etch into the rubber so the fashion items could double up as rubber stamps with water-based ink to print with. Using topic font sans serif we etched into the rubbers words such as letterhead and letterheadress.

What are you working on next? Right now I am working on a book with bookbinder Eri Funazaki using letterpress illustration with a metal type, which will exhibit in April. I am also in the process of producing screen prints of Derek Ridgers photographs. Ridgers chronicled punk in the 80s. I’m experimenting with different powders, and salts. So I’m producing a photograph of Kylie Minogue using milk, as well as metal powders. This is done by putting the powders on the screenprint while it’s still wet.

I strolled along to the Affordable Art fair recently thinking I’d be bombarded with thousands of delicately painted Van Gogh renditions that I wouldn’t care for. (It was really an excuse to find time to stroll along Battersea Park to be, pardon the pun, fair). But on arriving at the venue I was pleasantly surprised, that my initial fears proved unfounded. Admittedly, at first I was perturbed by the vast array of childlike doodles plastered over the walls of the fair’s printmaking demo area.

They were strewn everywhere - mountainous towers on desks, piled messily next to overflowing bins. Regardless of their location these doodles possessed an eerie similarity, but it was only when I took a closer look that it all became clear. These infantile works of art were not pen-on-paper originals, but prints imaged from plates that the show’s most youthful visitors were given to scribble on.

Through ventures such as this, organizations like the Affordable Art Fair, are doing their damndest to ensure that traditional print techniques - screenprinting, lithography, intaglio and even monotypes - are striking a chord with a new, younger audience. (The erstwhile efforts of artists such as Ann D’Arcy, and Robert Ryan, who have demonstrated that these traditional techniques can even prove quite lucrative if you have the patience for the process, have also helped).

Although the fair’s printmaking lessons were offered free of charge over the show’s three days, it was amazing to see how willing the general public was to open their wallets for the chance to ogle an old printing press or to learn about basic print techniques. What was also interesting was the combination of new and old processes being utilised.

On some stalls, artworks created using traditional lithography, intaglio print processes and giclee prints were mixed with more modern techniques such as lenticular – it appears as if one of Drupa’s buzzwords has spiralled into the art world as well. My own personal pick from the veritable smorgasbord of printed art work on show sat at opposite ends of the print spectrum, with Jane Sampson’s Rauchenbirds - the most beautiful execution of screen print I’ve ever seen – with its roots firmly embedded in the traditional camp, and a more modern series of giant lenticular digitally printed posters of the Beatles, at the other end of the scale.

 

From printgeek

 

 

From PrintWeek

Regardless of personal taste it was a real pleasure to see the interest traditional printmaking attracted at the fair, which is providing many artists with their big breaks. It was also marvellous to see young artists talking about digital, screen or litho printing with such passion and knowledge, that you would normally associate with someone who has been in the trade for a lifetime. http://www.brightonprintmaking.co.uk/ http://www.affordableartfair.com/