New Masters of Poster Design

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52 ★ NEW MASTERS OF POSTER DESIGN

Letterpress was the manner in which printed materials were

produced for hundreds of years, and it instantly gives each

piece a nostalgic feel.

Hammerpress may practice an old-school way of printing, but that

mindset is not reflected in its creativity, just in its craftsmanship.

Hammerpress often incorporates idiosyncratic illustrations and

found art with typesetting and block printing. Combined with

vibrant inks and overlapping elements, the result is an intoxicating

mix of the past and the future on a single sheet of paper.

The designers also have a playful streak that comes out when

you learn a little of the behind-the-scenes goings-on in the print

shop. The firm’s unique approach to design is its single parameter

for each piece: The last element inserted into the current piece

must form the first element of the one to follow. This makes for

a string of posters forever linked by the studio but invisible to

the viewer, and it keeps the designers challenged at every turn.

Each poster bleeds into the firm’s other work as well. Vest says,

“We try to keep the boundaries open between the format and

function of different kinds of work. The poster work is a direct

influence on smaller, more commercial work, and vice versa.”

TOUCH ME, TEACH ME

Long in love with Jim Dine’s drawings and etchings, Vest had

something closer to home to absorb as an influence. “The

father of a friend in my high school art class was an art professor

at the local university. [The work] blew me away! There was a real

physicality and history to the work that I had never seen before.

Areas of the paper nearly disintegrated from drawing and erasing

so many times.” This fascination with the effect of process

continued in college, where Vest’s printmaking instructor was

Hugh Merril. “His work, at the time, was mostly sequential

series of etchings, and he would pull a whole body of work

off of one zinc etching plate until it was just a thin sheet

of metal with holes eaten through it. The medium was not just

a production method but an integral part of the work as well.”

Assorted ephemera pop into Vest’s consciousness as well.

He confesses to regular study of “Asian pharmacy boxes,

matchbook art, old tickets, old billboards with nothing on them,

and old grade-school textbook covers.” Almost anything printed

is fair game. Vest admits that, to him, a successful poster “is

primarily a beautiful print.“ He knows “this may go against

some opinions of what a well-designed poster should be but we

at Hammerpress are not as concerned with illustrating an idea

as we are concerned with working the print to make something

that is really unusual and new and exciting while advertising

an event.”

ABSOLUTE CREATIVE CONTROL

Hammerpress has served to bring some peace to Vest and his

crew as well. When he started out as a college student doing

posters and packaging for friends’ bands, “it was a total labor

of love and completely trial and error.” As designing became

a full-time job, he found himself embroiled in the day-to-day

drudgery of printing for other firms and agencies. Vest admits,

“Mentally, I couldn’t justify the posters for quite a while

because there is not a lot of money in them.” Finally giving in, he

got back to “doing stuff I enjoyed with absolute creative control.

It became a way to balance myself.”

It doesn’t take much effort to visualize Vest lovingly nestling metal

type together to form the beginning of another balanced day.

“The medium was not just a production method but an integral

part of the work as well.”

★

HAMMERPRESS

★

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, USA

TOUCH ME, FEEL ME

The maker of the most tactile posters featured in this book, Hammerpress of Kansas City,

carries on a proud tradition of printing that requires a different approach to design than that

of many contemporaries—the beloved letterpress. Designer and printer Brady Vest is one

in a long line of devotees to this printing process. With its metal type and custom-engraved

plates biting into the paper, this age-old process provides vivid color and the unique

characteristics of hand-set type and borders married to custom images.

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