unconventional printing for a greener future.

In the summer of 2021, I was conflicted about my future as a designer. I had taken an internship at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in the small town of Two Rivers. I needed to stay somewhere free, so I wound up in an old, vacant farmhouse with four interns for the local nature preserve. I grumbled plenty– about the smelly well water, or the bugs, or the 25 minute drive to the nearest free Wi-Fi– but I’ve never experienced the same quiet I did when I lived there. 

A semi blocked our gravel drive on my first day of work, so I drove through a patch of invasive blackberries. The forestry interns would spend weeks sawing and chopping at those thick, scratchy bushes which had choked out the native prairie flowers. It was an enormous feat when they cleared it, but we didn’t celebrate. They had cleared the field for this season’s wildlife, but a new crop of interns would return to cut down the blackberries once they grew back next year. Who would address the root?

For this project, I used eco-friendly letterpress & linocut printing practices in order to make a series of posters promoting sustainable design. I was inspired by the way letterpress printers refuse to let antique machinery go obsolete, rescuing countless tools from the landfill. The printing press has always been an agent of change. It prevented the loss of radical writings during book burnings, aided in the global spread of culture, and democratized mass communication– but even our oldest practices can adapt to the needs of today. By putting a modern spin on this ancient trade, I hope to show that environmentalism doesn’t have to look one way. If you work to protect the things you love, anyone can make a change.