The London Design Festival 13-21 September 2014

Today found Dan and I at The London Design Festival at the V&A.

Yesterday whilst checking Design Taxi, I noticed a really cool article about 3D printed type. Instantly interested, I had a read and showed this to my colleague Ben, who has just built a 3D printer, see his tweets here. He also printed me a letter R which you can see on my Instagram here. He's looking for new little projects and cool things to print whilst he's prototyping and learning to built design in CAD.

After a little research into this cool little project, I realised it was The London Design Festival 13-21 September 2014. We looked online and I instantly knew that we should be attending this short film held at the V&A.

Before that though, whilst checking out this really cool 3D typeface project, I was led onto a Vimeo page of Adrian Harrison. I was watching a film he made on 'Learn to Sign Write' with Joby Carter who is a traditional signwriter and sign restorer. His work is truly inspiring. I remember for my birthday a couple of years ago, asking for a couple of sign writing books to pick up this fantastic art form after watching David Adrian Smith create something similar with glass. I found him after researching who did John Mayer's intricate album cover for his 'Born and Raised' album. I was blown away by this incredible skill. I still have yet to get round to digging out my signwriting books and making a start but I hope to soon as I've been so inspired.


So, back to today. Dan and I headed our way to the room in the V&A and noticed the guys were giving an extra screening of the film at 1pm - perfect timing! They had the 3D printed typeface on the desk and Beatrice from the New North Press was creating some prints in front of us. It was a pleasure just watching it. Shortly after sitting down, the film was played, introduced by Adrian Harrison. I was thinking "Where do I know that name? I know that name!" before realising is was the film-maker who created the short film for Joby Carter the day previous. Awesome sauce. The film was fantastic and Richard Ardagh talked through his idea about bringing the old letterpress with the new 3D printing technology which is now taking off and being used reasonably wildly. Richard went through the initial idea to the prototyping, with the font designed by A2-Type and 3D-printed by Chalk Studios and through to final testing and adding it to the thousands of typefaces they store at New North Press as an actual working font. This film, this work reminded me of why I got into design. Why I was excited. I found it exciting. It reminded me of the work experience at Newton Press Ltd a couple of years ago when I was still studying. I was learning about the old letterpress machinery, from the heidelberg's to the new Presstek 34DI digital offset printing press.

After the short film, Dan and I got chatting to Adrian and I told him I'd seen his previous films. We were chatting about his current work and some exciting projects he's got coming up. I'll be posting his short film about the A23D, a 3D-printed letterpress font when it's published on his Vimeo.

After having a good old chinwag with these very talented people, I even got the chance to letterpress my own initial with their 3D printed typeface. Absolutely so chuffed.

I cannot get over how creative and refreshing this idea is. I'm throughly impressed and it's great there are so many talented individuals in this project. Check out the New North Press's website for more info.

Thanks to all those there today who inspired me.