On the 12th November our group went to Graham Bignell's letterpress studio in north London. Our class is creating a piece for his exhibition. Our piece is called 'The Cockney Alphabet' and is a play on the alphabet you learn when you are a chiled i.e. A is for Apples B is for Bananas and so on.
I was given the letter F and my sentence was F for Lump or as it would sound Heffalump.
I found the day a really interesting experience I had never done letterpress before and it really made you think about layour and white space and the choice of typefaces and how they are perceived by others and what they convey.
The physicality of letterpress was also really interesting, compared to being sat in front of a computer screen you literally have to build white space . It also gives you a greater appreciation for those who still use this method and those who had to use it in the past and in my eyes it has heightened my appreciation for it as an art form in itself.
Although it was frustrating at times when certain sizes weren't available or the white space wasn't working correctly it is something i would definitely want to try again and experiment with further.
Here are some photos of the studio.




Initial prints trying to decide on a font that felt lumpy or overweight in some way.

Two really interesting stamps i found; the Fat Boy Slim logo and the Zero 7 logo.


My final block with the full text and border in ready to be printed.

Our group's alphabet all on one sheet together.


My prints from the choosing of the letter 'F'. In the end i decided to go with the one in the top right because it really felt the weightiest and had no sharp edges; it felt like everything was spilling over.

I then tried out two variations of the 'for lump' text; one which was also very overweight and the other which contrasted greatly accentuating the heaviness of the F.

I then experimented with borders and really liked the rounded lines. I felt it sat nicely with the F. In the end i went with the fatter text for the secons piece of type so the whole piece felt very heavy and lumpy.