We are surrounded by print; bus tickets, books, billboards, newspapers, business cards, clothing, timetables, calendars, money, bills, leaflets, crisps packets, wrapping paper, graffiti, tattoos, postcards, maps, magazines, artworks, contracts, instruction manuals, litter, bumper stickers. All are imprints made on the world. Some are permanent, preserved as part of the world forever. Others are temporary, ephemeral, throwaway.
Our second years were recently introduced to this notion by making their own typographic images using a number of traditional printmaking techniques. For their subject matter, each student had to choose a famous speech to respond to, and these ranged from the political – including J. Robert Oppenheimer’s remarks upon the testing of the first H-bomb and Maximilien Robespierre’s On the organization of the National Guard – to the philosophical, such as Socrates’ “The unexamined life is not worth living”, and famous speeches from film, such as Peter Finch’s rant in Network.
The methods of collagraph, etching, lino-cut, woodblock letterpress and monotype were all employed in what manifested in a playful, vibrant and powerful collection of typographic experiments. Have a look below!
Terri Po
Jo Ruessman
Sophie Demery
Miranda Smith
Michael Black
Laura Richmond
