I was nervous for the interview but Kuhne showed an interest in my practice and asked me a few questions about my experience with letterpress. This helped to break the ice and I felt a lot more confident to initiate the interview. As hoped for, the interview was more of a conversation, however this meant I didn't get to ask all of my questions because our conversation naturally moved away on a tangent. I gained some really really influential quotes from Kuhne who demonstrates his awareness and expertise of working with manual processes in the digital age. Kuhne certainly didn't make the job sound easy but you could definitely see his passion for print media.
Thinking back to my experience at P98a Berlin, I discovered that the studio was spotless and the print technicians said that they didn't have many briefs. Kuhne: 'There’s tonnes of these people that just buy them and create a very nice workshop, they build up all this stuff, they arrange all the reglets and sort them out but then they’re sitting in the workshop and all they do is print an alphabet.' Perhaps this suggests that Spiekermann's P98a Studio could be utilised more by the public, not just by the studio, in order to get more people involved and skilled with the process. I was surprised by Kuhne's comment that printing the alphabet means you don't know what they're doing which suggests the studio could just be used to showcase the tools and equipment.
Kuhne encouraged me to use the print facilities that are available around the country, rather than buying my own expensive equipment. 'For me it makes much more sense to use the infrastructure that is around us.' Reflecting on this, more should be done to encourage designers to open/use print houses which is something I will need to consider moving into third year. My research into Nomad Lettpress studio show that they are looking to train a new generation of letterpress printers. Reflecting on Kuhne's point of using the facilities that are available, rather than buying your own equipment, this would be a great opportunity to support print studios whilst building my technical and practical knowledge on the process.
A really valuable part of the interview was when Kuhne spoke about turning his passion into a job. To summarise, Kuhne believes that if you don't charge a decent amount of money from the start it will be impossible for you to make a career out of it. 'I could have charged anybody just 200 bucks for something and it would have been fine but I knew that in five years I couldn’t make a living out of it. That’s the problem.' I could tell that this was from Kuhne's personal experience and he even gave me an example of his friend that doesn't charge a lot for his work, which was interesting to see the two opposing approaches.
One of Kuhne's most influential quotes for me, 'You need to make people aware that there’s something else other than a Facebook invitation.' In a digitally dominant age, there is a clear resurgence for tangibility and Kuhne highlights this as something that can establish the process. Printing an invitation or poster reaches that person and they will be more likely to remember it and keep the invitation. This will not only encourage them to attend but also fulfil the desire to have something physical and tangible.
Kuhne emphasised the importance of talking with the client about the content in order to get the best out of the content available, 'Five years later no one will ask you if the client was stupid, the content was crap or the time schedule was shitty, you are stuck with this piece of work.' - Dont blame the client if your work is shit.
I asked Kuhne whether working with letterpress is sustainable and if he considers it within his practice. This is a topic of interest because I often find the printing process to be quite wasteful which could be a potential topic for my dissertation. Kuhne was unsure as to how environmentally friendly the processes were however he liked the idea of giving unwanted/old tools and objects a new purpose, 'You can use type from 50 years ago that used to print newspaper headlines every week and now I’m using it for a completely different purpose.'
Kuhne definitely proved his status of being one of the worlds most innovative letterpress designers as he demonstrates a clear awareness and understanding of all the questions and offered me a load of killer advice. The experience didn't put me off pursuing a career in traditional letterpress, however Kuhne highlighted the realities and problems with the industry which shows how dedicated and hardworking you have to be in order to generate an income. I think there are many areas of traditional printing methods that have been left unexplored due to the sudden digital boom and mass communication. This can lead into a dissertation topic about the role of print within the digital age, whether print can be sustainable, and experimental printing techniques.
This experience has been one of the most beneficial modules of the course so far and I am really pleased that I put myself out there to get an interview with a well established professional.
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