This three-hour workshop teaches students how to make detailed photopolymer plates that result in high-quality letterpress prints. The course includes discussions of how to produce both metal-backed and sticky-backed plates from film and digital files. No prior darkroom experience is needed, but a basic knowledge of letterpress printing or computer typesetting is helpful. Students have to take Polymer Core 1: Digital Design for Letterpress before taking this class. The Photopolymer Platemaking Lab qualifies participants to rent SFCB’s photopolymer plate maker.

Materials to bring: None

Prerequisite: Polymer Core 1: Digital Desing for Letterpress

Materials Fee: Students submitting their own files to make plates will be charged $20.00 for plate material at the end of the class. 

Workshop Fee: $115

Date & Time: Monday, August 31, 2015 | 6:30pm-9:30pm

Location: 375 Rhode Island St, San Francisco, CA 94103

Note: Please read over the SFCB Registration Policies before signing up for a class

REGISTRATION WILL CLOSE 3 DAYS PRIOR TO THE START DATE OF THIS WORKSHOP.

About the Instructor | Annemarie Munn

I'm always looking for more old presses to print on and learn about, and the weirder the better; so far I've printed on 14 different models of letterpress, plus four different kinds of foilstamper, and counting. I especially love printing with unusual forms or on unusual substrates, and experimenting with hot foil stamping processes. I usually create my illustrations and hand lettering by painting with Sumi ink, then printing the images from polymer plates, though of course I also love wood and lead type and old found images (who doesn't?). I draw inspiration from the gridded city landscape around me (I love to tell little neighborhood stories!) and from my more-rural upbringing --- when I close my eyes I see chickens and a half-acre of vegetables in rich brown dirt; when I open them again, the ground is made of sand and the roar of the surf mixes with the N-Judah streetcar rattling by. And each time I touch a letterpress, I am thrown back to the days when a broadside would arrive in the mail on childhood Christmases, each with a different poem cracking the world right open.