The 2010 College Art Association Conference was held in Chicago, Illinois, February 10-13, 2010. We presented a panel on Letterpress in Design Education titled “A Case for Letterpress.” The panel was organized by Jeff Pulaski from Wichita State University and Dennis Y. Ichiyama from Purdue University.

A Case for Letterpress panelists included:

Ashley John Pigford, University of Delaware – Thinking through Making: Letterpress in Contemporary Graphic-Design Education. Ashley was unable to present his paper due to weather, but he has posted his presentation on Vimeo. You can access it here.

James Boyd-Brent, University of Minnesota – Putting the Digits Back into the Digital.

Rose Gridneff and Alexander John Cooper, London College of Communication and University of Brighton – The Changing Face of Letterpress: Student and Staff Work from the School of Graphic Design at London College of Communication.

Dawn Hachenski-McCusker, James Madison University – The Twentieth Century Did Not Invent Graphic Design: Returning Letterpress to Design Education.

Catherine Ruggie Saunders and Martha S. Chiplis, School of the Art Institute of Chicago – Tough Love for Heavy Metal: Ensuring the Survival of 15 1/2 Tons of Lead at SAIC.

Announcements made at the session:

The flyer for the paperback reprint of Rob Roy Kelly’s seminal book on American Wood Type can be found here.

The Codex article written by Susanna Edwards, Julia Lockheart and Maziar Raein of Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London can be found here.

The website for the movie Typeface, produced by Kartemquin Films can be found here.

SAIC Reception:

A reception for those attending the session was hosted by the School of the Art Institute on Thursday evening at their wonderful letterpress facility. A few pictures from the event can be seen here.

Faculty and Student letterpress show:

We are organizing a letterpress show made up of faculty and student work from the institutions involved in the panel. The work should be organized by mid-March 2010. More information will be posted here as the work is cataloged. If you would be interested in hosting the show at your university or gallery, please contact Jeff Pulaski.

CAA 2011 get together:

Dennis Ichiyama is organizing a meeting of interested parties to get together at the 2011 CAA Conference in New York City. The discussion will be about letterpress and what has happened since to 2010 conference. The meeting will take place on Thursday, February 10th, 2011, from 2-4 pm. The meeting will be held at the American Folk Art Museum, across the street from the conference hotel.

List Serve:

We are setting up a list serve to keep people informed about letterpress information added to this site. If you are interested in receiving more information, please sign up and you will be added to the list.

More information is coming soon … please check back!