Before today’s printing workshop, I did not fully understand just how cumbersome it is to print from a printing press. And, on that note, I did not fully appreciate it. Now, with the electronic printer being the norm, it is easy to take printing papers that are quite long for granted. The process actually can take some time, particularly with the fine-tuning needed to ensure the final print is flawless. The printer has to first set all of the letters in place (backwards, of course) and then secure them so they do not shift when they are pressed. I have done printing before but mainly with silk screen or rubber blocks. The method of laying out letters and images inside a frame is something entirely new to me.
While the final print can be altered at any point (unlike a print using wooden or metal etchings), it still forces the printer to have a premeditated idea of what the final product is going to be. Furthermore, I came to learn that, when using big blocks that have a lot of surface area, ink has to be applied after every few presses in order to maintain a smooth print. I cannot imagine how time-consuming it must have been when the printing press was first invented to create long books. I can say that my understanding of the process is a little better, but then again I was only printing two words and an image, not a novel.
I agree that I also didn’t understand how cumbersome the printing press is. I can’t imagine how much time and work it would take to print a whole book from the press instead of just a few words and images. The fact that they had to write everything backwards is also very impressive, since you would have to know well in advance what you wanted to say and be able to think about it in the reverse. It seems like a very time consuming process, but I think the product we ended up with when we finished was well worth the effort.
It was super interesting to see how time consuming and intensive the process is! However, I hope that the process sticks around – as much as I love that we can mass print books at fast rates, I don’t want to lose a really cool method of art/writing.
Definitely agree–I had no idea it took so long to print something on a printing press. It’d definitely be interesting to study the evolution of printing. It’s hard to imagine how we got from the labor-intensive printing press to the digital printers we have now.
I agree with you. While I did find the process tedious, I cannot say it was not exciting printing it. In the past it might have been faster to print books but today we seem to find it too time consuming. I think the experience was worth it but I feel that the newer methods of printing are better.