p98a | Post-digital Printing

p98a is an experimental letterpress workshop in Berlin dedicated to letters, printing, and paper. They are a group of multi-­disciplined designers, exploring how letterpress can be redefined in the 21st century through research, printing, collecting, publishing, and making things. The team work with hot-metal and wood-type, several proof presses, a Simplex treadle platen and other traditional analogue equipment, which they combine with digital techno­logies including Risograph and a Glowforge laser.

The studio has more than 500 ­cases of poster type made from wood and alterna­tive materials, ranging from 8 to 60 Cicero (the German equi­valent of a “line”) and around 450 ­cases of foundry type from 6 to 96 point. ­Gauges for measuring the height of ­rollers and type as well as the thickness of paper are tools they use daily. p98a also have type specimens and a large collection of books – old and new —about printing, typesetting and typography.

Currently, the workshop are experimenting with different materials and methods for producing their own large type. After trying out acrylic glass and 3D printing, CNC-­milling from hard surfaces like Formica mounted on plywood turned out to be the most promising way.

Their Glowforge laser cuts shapes from plexi, plywood and other materials – to replace missing letters or to make artwork for letterpress printing. The shapes are mounted to be type-high (23.56mm in our case) and can then be printed on their proof-presses. They also cut or engrave objects – gauges, keyrings, labels.

p98a expose polymer plates, cut large size type from digital data, and mill punches to make matrices for casting new hot metal type. They use a direct-to-plate process to output digital plates for letterpress-printing books on a Heidelberg Cylinder from 1954.

@hackinggutenberg_p98a
www.hackinggutenberg.berlin

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