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Hiive | The Value of Print

posted by Marcroy February 9, 2015

We were asked by Hiive – a professional network for the creative industries to get five people to comment on why they value print as a process. We spoke to John Longbottom who is the news and online editor at Kerrang! magazine, who gave us a very witty and clever response, we also spoke to a few professional screen printers and finally a founder of an independent publishers. Just a little food for thought… why do you value print?

John Longbottom
News & Online Editor, Kerrang!
“Hello, person reading this via the internet. You might well have noticed that the world’s an increasingly digital place. In an ocean of digital books, digital magazines and digital messages it’s not hard to feel a pang of nostalgia when considering the physical medium of print. It’s important however, to not let sentimentality alter our perception of print’s place in the world. Print’s not an endangered species that needs preserving for preservation’s sake. It’s not something that’s sick. It’s not fragile. It’s a dependable and wholesome medium that will endure – a beautiful, vibrant and powerful force capable of communicating the most complex or simple of messages. It can hold our attention in ways digital rarely can. Something, something, whatever… this is probably about the limit of what you can be bothered reading online. Resume browsing. LOL.”

Gfeller & Hellsgård
Independent Screen Print Artists
At first, it was the intensity of the colours, the D.I.Y flexibility, the aesthetic of the medium and the fact that you can have control over the whole reproduction process that strucked us. But more recently, we have begun to deconstruct the conventions and techniques of the silkscreening praxis in some very experimental ways. Our work now involves intentional errors, colour overlaps, smudges, misprints, and glitches. In this approach, serigraphy is not just a reproduction tool but it becomes the finality of the work. So… we have been working with this medium for over 20 years, and it is not until a few years that we discovered a whole new range of meta-possibilities and ways to transcendent the printing process itself. So inspiring.

Ben Rider
Screen Printer and Technician
To me, I find much more value in something I can hold and touch, something that’s a product of craft forged from sheer love of process, creativity and working with your hands. It’s the tactile quality of the end result as well as the huge creative potential in the print or any other making process. I love the odd human touch, I love the look and feel that only print and making processes can really achieve. Even the odd ‘mistake’ like the offsets, mis-prints, drips, bleeds etc all these things to me give a certain life and honesty that in it’s own small way acts as a challenge to all that is clean, corporate and impersonal.

Andy MacDougall, ASDPT.
Screenprinter,Canuckistan
10 or 15 years ago, all the smart guys in the room – or at the universities – declared print was dead. A world of digital communication would replace it….now, as they sit smugly congratulating themselves, playing with their iPhone or tablet, they fail to realize both those devices are printed – not just the outer markings but the whole insides, the layers of circuits, the touch screen….and when all the devices and your homes are powered by solar….the energy cells and the batteries – thank a printer, because they made it happen. Dead? Print is just getting started.

Maxwell Anderson
Founder of Bemojake Publishers
Print, as a medium, triggers multiple levels of stimulation to the senses. For example, the way a printed book feels in one’s hands – or even how the inks smell – can alter one’s reading of the work printed on its pages. Print holds the value of objectness, where the materiality becomes as important as the image. Print also has a stable physical existence in the world, which acts as an affirmation of one’s ideas, as well as making small decisions have dramatic affects on your final piece of work. Print is also very versatile, which naturally encourages expression and experimentation. What you do with your printed matter afterwards, and how you do it, extends the print medium’s diversity.