So let me introduce myself and begin again.
My name is Simon. I run a company called Ink on Paper.
The question I get asked the most is, what do you actually do?
I used to say I was a graphic designer; and people would nod, with understanding. It was a common denominator. A phrase I would use, and they would understand and not question, but for me, it never felt right. Every time the words left my lips, they would cause me to wince, it was like wearing a pair of shoes that look great, but rub, and rub until your red raw, and you have to admit, that you can’t wear them anymore.
Spending my days hitting a keyboard, while sitting in front of a computer screen, manipulating images in photoshop was, and is not, my idea of design; don’t get me wrong, some people love it, and their great at it; they can do things that I can’t, and that’s their thing, but for me it is, and was frustrating, because it doesn’t feel connected. Pushing pixels around a screen, paper that never touches human hand, computers that decide the colour everything is going to be. It just doesn’t seem right to me.
So what do I actually do?
My girlfriend tells me, I would be right at home in the 1930’s. I don’t tell her, but I think she’s right. See I love setting metal type, by hand. I love cutting lino, to create images that I can print. I love the smell of the ink, the clunk and thud of my 1930’s platen.
If people ask me what I do these days, I say I’m a printer, which I am. Not because I don’t care about design, because I do, but because for me, there has to be a physical end product. You see Gutenburg, was a printer. William Blake was a printer. The Grosvenor School of art, they were all printers. Almost every person, we hold dear today for their graphic design achievements, were printers to some degree or other. They had to be, because they had to understand the process. They had to get their hands dirty. And that’s what, I like to think I do, in my own small way.
So here it is, here’s what I do.
I create print, and I do it with love, patience, time and skill. I use traditional techniques, that have been used for hundreds of years. Yes, I can use a computer to design it, but I can also use a pencil and a piece of paper. I can cut a piece of lino, or a piece of wood, and I use metal type, and I use it all to create print.
Yes, I’m a printer, and I create print with character, substance and beauty.
