LetterMpress to bring a virtual letterpress to your iPad

Story by

Joel Falconer

Joel Falconer is the Features Editor at TNW. He lives on the Gold Coast, Australia with his wife and three kids and can sometimes be found g (show all) Joel Falconer is the Features Editor at TNW. He lives on the Gold Coast, Australia with his wife and three kids and can sometimes be found gaming or consulting. Follow Joel on Twitter.

Kickstarter user and graphic designer John Bonadies is developing an application that will revive the letterpress on your iPad.

The application will allow you to create letterpress designs digitally using a collection of historically accurate wood typefaces and cuts.

“Letterpress has had a growing interest over the past decade amongst designers, artists, and printmakers. Call it a reaction to the “perfect” look of laser-printing,” said John Bonadies on the project’s Kickstarter page. “But unfortunately, much of the letterpress’s traditional technology was sold for scrap metal and replaced with computers over the last 30 years. Wood type was burned, thrown in a landfill, or divided up as knick-knacks in antique and craft shops. The destruction of manual presses and thousands of type collections has made the tools of letterpress a scarce resource these days.”

Bonadies is using Kickstarter, a service that bills itself as “a new way to fund & follow creativity”, to raise the funds needed to acquire a set of original letterpress typefaces from a collector. The minimum contribution is $1 and Bonadies is offering a range of benefits to supporters, including beta access to the application.

The original wood cuts aren’t only needed to ensure the historical veracity of the application. Bonadies intends to introduce a service where a user can have their LetterMpress designs turned into authentic letterpress prints.

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.