When Designers Push Printing Presses:An Exhibition

By.Michael Dooley. February 5, 2016

The exhibition, "Pushing the Presses," is from Typecraft Lithography's Archive Library. Typecraft is a favored printer of Southern California cultural institutions such as LACMA, MOCA, the Hammer Museum, CalArts, Art Center, and Otis. Their client list also extends to political graphics guerrillas such as Shepard Fairey and Robbie Conal. And not surprisingly, demanding designers regularly challenge the company to push the limits of their printing capabilities up to, and occasionally beyond, the limits of their presses.

The show was assembled by Typecraft sales rep David Mayes and Steve Child of the USC Roski School of Fine Arts' Design Department. You'll find an earlier Print feature about David here. Named an AIGA LA Fellow in 2012, he has a deep appreciation for the creative artistry of graphic designers. And they, in turn, are grateful for the professional skills of Typecraft's craftspeople. The show itself is a culmination of David's self-initiated project to build his Archive Library.

So, what motivated the exhibit?

David Mayes I love print, of course, but the people are fascinating. Designers are fun, quirky, and intelligent. Just to have the opportunity to engage with so many interesting folks has made my own work infinitely more interesting. And as it became clear that there's a substantial number of designers who've worked with Typecraft, I felt that this could be a good representation of the community.

Steve Child And for me, it seemed a wonderful opportunity to bring the design library to the public and help David share all of these pieces with the community. Haven Lin-Kirk, the head of our design department at USC, had been in conversation with David about the library a number of years back. Then she offered to design a catalog of the work with our students, I was put in charge of the Special Projects class that produced the catalog. So I became very familiar with the body of work at Typecraft, and I felt connected with David immediately, with his knowledge and passion for design and print. It seemed a natural evolution to propose the exhibit to the Architecture and Design Museum, and involve my students in the process.

What were the advantages of having a print person and design person co-curate?

David Mayes I have no training in design. As a printer I could never pass judgement on a design, I just need to know how many copies you want printed. To be able to work with Steve and ask him which pieces we should display was invaluable. To have his trained eye decide what we show made this a great exhibition.

Steve Child I think we were able to balance our understanding and experience in looking at the work. David's knowledge of the printing process and each piece's history was critical in considering what to choose to display. It also helped to be able to bounce ideas off one another. And working together made it fun to produce the show.

what's one of your favorites?

David Mayes The Lecture Series poster we printed with Brian Roettinger for SCI-Arc was a relatively straightforward project printed with a PMS color and a fluorescent color, but what made it unique is that Brian found a food packing company who would vacuum pack the poster after printing. It was expensive, so one of the ways he made it work was to hand-crunch all of the printed posters with his assistant for two days before giving them to the packing company to seal into small plastic packages. It's neat because the final package is hard as a rock because it's packed so tightly. This package was put into a small box with a postcard and mailed out. It was one of their most popular mailers ever, and they received requests for more copies for months after the original mailing.