Why run a letterpress workshop in the 21st century? Hacking Gutenberg p98a are no nostalgia addicts, nor are they Luddites. They believe in the coexistence of all media, be they digital or analogue. “With digital, we miss touching the material. Grasping means understanding, and that is exactly what you do in a letterpress workshop. You actually touch the white space, use only what’s available.”
The studio is not home to billions of colours nor 150k fonts. In fact, they thrive on constraints. Everything may take a little longer and there is no command-Z. Their presses are pretty indestructible and will survive us, but the knowledge of how to use them is disappearing, and they are here to preserve it.
Hacking Gutenberg p98a are using type that’s been around for hundreds of years, making new letters with lasers and CNC machines. They send data directly from their computers to their Heidelberg Cylinder press from 1954 – That’s what Gutenberg would have done 500 years ago.
Join them in their effort to preserve the craft, the type, the machinery and the joy of working with our hands, and become a Freund of Hacking Gutenberg.
The studio are looking for people or institutions to help save Germany’s largest private collection of historic printing presses and typefaces. p98a.berlin is a living museum in the rooms of the historic girls’ painting school on Potsdamer Straße in Berlin and a workshop at the interface between the digital and the analogue. Under the motto “Hacking Gutenberg”, a team of designers, typesetters and printers combines the classic craft of printing with the latest digital technologies.
The place is ideal for workshops, seminars and master classes in all professions that have to do with words, letters, type and graphics. p98a.berlin is an experimental space for creatives who break new ground in the interaction of traditional printing presses and computers. And finally, the workshop, located in a magnificent backyard, is perfect for team-building activities. So far, all the guests have been thrilled to set and print a poster or postcard together with others – and to go home with printer’s ink on their fingers.
The p98a.berlin workshop promotes haptic skills, preserves knowledge and provides the conditions for creating something new. After all, when we hold things in our hands, our brains are better able to comprehend. But to secure the workshop’s long-term future, it needs help. In order to be able to continue paying rent, keep the machines in good shape and organise events, p98a.berlin needs either money or entrepreneurial partners.
The mastermind behind p98a.berlin is art historian, information designer and type designer Erik Spiekermann. He has been shaping the visual world since the 1970s. From Deutsche Bahn to Audi and Bosch to the Economist, he has given many companies an unmistakable image. Spiekermann was awarded the Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award by the German Design Council and was named Royal Designer for Industry by the British Queen.
Learn more about becoming a Freunde here.
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