Hi, folks! A couple of years ago I taught a one-day workshop at the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle on marrying laser cutting with letterpress. They are a perfect partnership, and a Glowforge was an excellent tool in a book I printed in 2017 and in subsequent work.
This coming Saturday, June 13, from noon to 2 pm PDT, I am teaching an abbreviated virtual version of that workshop. It’ll be a combination of explanation and objects: I’ll go through what works best with letterpress that you can cut, how to assemble items to “type high,” the necessary height for printing; working with pressure printing (on flat-bed proof presses) for excellent non-traditional effects; and cutting paths for locking up type in non-square ways for greater creativity. I have printed examples of things from the 2017 workshop, my own experiments, and those of others, and some live demos with an overhead kitchen-style Glowforge camera setup.
For those with a Glowforge and access to your own press or at some point to a press in a shop or school, I’ll explain how to use a Glowforge directly. But I’ll also walk through prepping for an online service bureau. I’ve used Ponoko very successfully in the last six months for projects in which I needed multiples, and it’s a great alternative for printing larger format stuff or if you don’t own a laser cutter or have the materials you need on hand.
You can register for the class here; it’s $50, and everyone gets a keepsake mail to them afterwards—a custom measuring tool for stacking cut items to the correct letterpress printing height.
(You may have seen this note in other parts of the forum; I posted in the wrong place initially!)
Some photos from the workshop in 2017:
