For my final Letterpress II project, I wrote, designed, and letterpress printed a drum-leaf, pressure-print–illustrated book on Howard Francis Moffitt, an eccentric and prolific homebuilder who left his mark on Iowa City with hundreds of unique homes and cottages assembled from a variety of reclaimed materials. As an ode to Moffitt, half of the papers incorporated in this printing were sourced for free from cast-off student work from the paper-making studio. I set the type digitally, then produced each block as a polymer plate. The pressure print was created using a layered cut vinyl composition. This project perhaps best represents my deepest passion for experimentation within the boundary waters of digital design and traditional printing.
A quote from the home inspector whose report ultimately led to my partner and I purchasing our Moffitt house.
Close up detail of the raised vinyl template used to create the pressure print. Each color of vinyl represents a layer built on top of preceding layers. When ran over a solid, inked-up block under a sheet of paper, the pressure of the press is enough to imprint a simple, single-color image onto the page.