As mentioned in a previous post, I have had contact with Chris Wilson, a printmaker, design educator and doctoral candidate based in Newcastle upon Tyne when I was interviewed as part of his Digilog PhD project. Chris was happy to meet up online for a discussion about my project and to give me some information about his own work. His PhD has been investigating the growing community of contemporary letterpress printers making use of new type production methods and how this integrating of traditional craft with modern techniques affects the medium.
I did not record the session due to a computer error but I made notes about the topics covered and his suggestions for further research.
One subject that came up in our discussion, as we are both design educators, is how beneficial the use of physical tools like letterpress can be when teaching a design student about typography. Observing a physical object and it’s form is very different to experience that same form digitally. To be able to hold something physical, create a print, evaluate the result and make changes based on that evaluation is a powerful tool for imparting the key understanding behind the design process. On this theme he describes it as an act of Remediation, to correct something that is deficient. These corrections made with each print pulled can be observed and compared. Each print pulled documents a different part of a design coming together.
As the discussion progressed, the idea of using my project to create a tool to aid a novice designers understanding of typography and design emerged. With that he suggested I look to some of the teaching methods outline in the HEA documentation for when I trained to become an Associate Fellow of the HEA.
We agreed that another discussion later on in the project would be helpful in evaluating the success of the project and I suggested I present my findings to him at the mid point presentation in June/July.