Artist Biography
New North Press is a letterpress print and design studio in East London, UK. Established in 1986 by Graham Bignell and joined by Richard Ardagh in 2008, they have been responsible for two pivotal exhibitions of international letterpress artwork, Reverting to Type in 2010, followed a decade later by Reverting to Type 2020: Protest Posters, and projects such as A23D, a prototype 3D-printed letterpress font.

Description of Process
A collaboration with Nigel Bents, a good friend and ex-Senior Lecturer of BA Graphic Design at Chelsea College of Art. Over the 18 years that Nigel brought student groups to New North Press to learn letterpress, he became well-versed in explaining its many benefits to a generation of budding designers immersed in the digital world. This sermon gradually took shape in poster form as the jam-packed manifesto you see here. It was patiently typeset (and reset after a large section was accidentally dropped!) over several years and eventually was ready to be printed at the end of 2022.

Predominantly set in wood and metal type, some extra artwork elements were added as magnesium plates, where possible rescaling or supplementing illustration blocks from our collection. Printed in two colors tightly registered on an Albion hand press in a limited edition of 100.