Educational Interlude
0.918 / 23.32mm??



Before we continue I just want to quickly explain how type is used on a Letterpress and why the height of type is very VERY important! It’s basic but it has a massive impact on how we use type, it’s so important that letterpress type produced in France can’t be used on an English Letterpress, yes I know, crazy!

A Letterpress printing machine works by pushing paper into the type block which has been inked. The pressure between the roller and the type block is high and it forces the ink from the type block onto the paper, easy! The difficulty is that Letterpress rollers unlike etching presses are fixed, meaning they can only print of type which is a certain height, known as ‘type height’. This exact height is important as a millimeter lower and it doesn’t create a clean print, and a millimeter higher and the roller will not be able to travel over type block, damaging the type and the roller. 

The funny thing is that ‘type height’ is not universal, meaning some countries cannot use each other type. For example, The Netherlands is 24.85 mm,  German is 23.56 mm, America is 23.32 mm and Russia is 23.82mm.

This is something I will have to consider in my experimentation, I can either decide to design the type to a height, or try and ditch this constricting traditional rule which makes printing with type such a pain.