An absolutely wonderful video of David Dabner at the London College of Printing:
Some interesting points that were mentioned:
- To many, letterpress seems like an obsolete practice, but even to this day David teaches letterpress to his students.
- Computers make students sloppy. And that makes for sloppy thinking and sloppy approach.
- Good typographers can think; if you can’t think you produce a lot of nonsense, and in thinking you can delete the non-essential.
- They stop actually using pencil and paper and they work directly on the computer, which in itself is OK, but I think the computer inhibits their ability to develop.
- An analogy could be someone playing jazz, you have to learn how to use the instrument first, otherwise the music will sound terrible.
- It’s a tool, and just like any other tool you need to learn how to use it.
- You do become elitist because you care, you need to be a little bit elitist, there’s nothing wrong with that.
- You’ve got to care about what you’re doing.