The Letterpress iPad App

Wait...what?! The letterpress iPad app? Sounds crazy enough to work.

From an article in the Faster Times...

Graphic designer and wood type enthusiast John Bonadies has created a “virtual letterpress environment” to be released for the iPad. He calls it LetterMpress, and you can use it to mix colors, set type as you would on a real press—meaning that the letters appear backwards in the press bed—and store your designs in digital galley trays. And yeah, you can even export these “prints” directly to your LaserJet to be copied effortlessly while you sit around admiring your perfectly manicured, ink free, fingernails. Damn you look good!

Bonadies plans to include 12 typefaces and 50 art “cuts” for the first version of LetterMpress. The way the software reproduces that good old fashioned aesthetic—uneven ink distribution, funky textures, and idiosyncratic detailing—is by manipulating scans of real wood type impressions. At a later stage, LetterMpress users will be able to get actual letterpress prints custom made from their designs by typesetters working with the growing collection at Living Letter Press, a co-op Bonadies has founded in Champaign, Illinois, which will serve as a resource for designers, artists, and students.