The Distillery

Last week, our Design Studio class had the opportunity to accompany our second year 'babies' design students to a really unique and exciting place in Sydney.

The Distillery is the only one of its kind in Sydney with the capability to produce high numbers of specialty design pieces. They have 3 ‘Original Heidelberg’ printing machines, which require a higher level of manual operation than todays printing methods.

Their main area of expertise is in letterpress, which uses a ‘kissing’ technique to create an ink imprint into the surface of a paper. This technique has become incredibly popular in the past few years and everyone on the excursion was excited to see what The Distillery does.

Whilst there, we were given an opportunity to mix paint to create a specific Pantone swatch colour. This was interesting to me, as I was able to see how manually laborious this process really is. There is no way that this technique could be achieved without human interaction (unlike the digital way of the world nowadays). Unlike what we are used to, sending a document to a printer and receiving it back almost instantly; this printing process can take a number of days on production alone. There are significant checks and tweaks that needs to happen even before a project can be considered ‘ready for print’.

We were also shown through the process of setting a machine up for print, and how each mechanical part in the machine performs its individual function. While the machine operator was explaining this, it seemed an awful lot like trying to learn to drive a manual car (it seems complicated and detailed but once you understand the steps, it becomes easy and fun).

One of the most interesting points that I’ve noted for a later date is that when designing for letter press, the more detailed the design (covering less of an area of a page) the better it will look. Also, the less colour the cheaper, quicker, and easier the job will be to produce.

In summary, I found the printing technique of letterpress to be an art form in itself and have a high appreciation of it. The results are beautiful and unique and definitely something I hope to design for in the future.

Check it out here.