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Erik Spiekermann makes a deep impression by marrying new to old
A print run of 2,500 books employs cutting-edge methods to bring new life to a medium he’s long loved.
For Erik Spiekermann, it came down to the color of black and a kiss of type. He had already finished designing a book for Louis Rossetto, one of the founders of Wired magazine and a long-time friend. During that time, he’d also been perfecting a new method of modern letterpress printing with a small team of colleagues and experts in Berlin.
When he told Rossetto about this work in 2016, Rossetto asked Spiekermann if his novel, Change Is Good, could use the new printing method. After more testing and a run of books for the publisher Suhrkamp Verlag, Spiekermann said yes. They launched a Kickstarter in August 2017 to fund a limited-edition version of the book, which was a rousing success. In November, Spiekermann and colleagues printed 2,500 copies.
Letterpress isn’t an easy choice in 2017, and Spiekermann didn’t underestimate the effort to print a short run of a 448-page book, even on a classic, well-maintained Heidelberg sheet-fed cylinder letterpress. There’s something missing in offset printing, he says. Even when letterpress printing doesn’t bite heavily into the paper — he generally prefers the traditional “kiss,”…
