The Dafi Kühne Printing Show™ is an entertaining educational online video series. Designer and letterpress printer Dafi Kühne shows his bag of tricks and brings dusty traditional printing technology to the 21th century. The visual language and the metaphor of a cooking show has been used to make the videos short and entertaining. Dafi does not claim to have invented everything in his shows—he just shows his approach of using the old tools and technology in a fresh way. By doing so, he opens up a old field for a younger generation.
Letterpress technology is finite. Neither presses nor physical type is being produced in a broad range. And though commercially letterpress technology does not have much importance anymore, it used to be the commercially most used printing technology world wide for more than 500 years. Letterpress technology is part of our cultural heritage of printing. It boosted the broad availability of books which is the base of our distribution of knowledge. And letterpress technology also shaped the type system, that we are still working with today on the computer.
And while letterpress technology has not been further developed commercially in the last 40 years, Dafi tries to update the process with fresh approaches. Make it available, understandable, reproducible and enjoyable for a younger generation. No dusty history lesson. Somewhat entertaining, but still rich in information. Well worth watching.
