At Typographic Printing Program, we focus on new typographic approaches while working with old processes. While fully embracing the quality of analog design and production processes, the program never neglects digital processes and tools. Our post-digital approach means that our practice is never «analog vs. digital»—but always «analog and digital».

Letterpress printing itself is not a design concept. Therefore, bad design concepts and typography don’t improve just because they are printed with labor-intensive manual techniques. This is why we focus intensely on the concepts and details of typography and design before undertaking any physical production. Our goal is to give participants a visual repertoire to help create ideas and work out profiled typographic solutions.

Only those who know the rules can understand when they are breaking them—and how to break them. We actively study the rules of typography and «good» printing, visual hierarchies, grids, proportions, printed forms, and white space—then we can reinterpret and break these rules. Typography can be meticulous and precise in some details, yet simultaneously wild and chaotic in other aspects; we welcome it all.

Typographic Printing Program critically reflects the history of traditional letterpress-printed typography while eschewing the romanticism often evoked by artists using conventional tools. Letterpress printing has shaped our typographic system for more than 500 years; we want to activate that history, modernize it, and make it accessible and attractive to contemporary-thinking designers. Only by experimenting and combining it with modern tools, processes, and progressive conceptualization can we fully bring this old technology to the 21st century and preserve it for the future.

The semantic connections between typographic forms and content are essential to good typography. We don’t think in boxes called style, but in typographic colors, smells, sounds, rhythms, volume, tastes, thoughts, and their links to the content. Rather than applying and reapplying given styles and repeating visual ideas, we want to develop sensual connections between content and form and push the quality of printed communication.

The program is a typographic research lab. We focus on experimental typography and poster design concepts. Only by pushing boundaries in a safe institutional environment (with fictional tasks) can we re-set the future limits of commercial design projects. New interpretations of old printing technology happen by exploring legibility and expressive typography while creating a playful connection between content and forms. In this way, we can actively examine the future of typographic poster design and letterpress printing.

Poster design is the ultimate discipline of visual reduction. One loud message visualizing one concept must be enough to capture the attention of viewers. Within the broad field of poster design itself, we choose to work with typography, limiting the use of type and type-related forms to communicate a message. Within these restrictions, we see the challenge to explore the essence of graphic communication, applicable to any visual design field.

Typographic Printing Program offers a diverse, equitable, and inclusive learning environment that involves participants from different countries and backgrounds from all around the globe.

Our Switzerland sessions from 2016–2021 had participants from twenty countries and five continents, with professional backgrounds ranging from young graphic design students at the start of their career, to very experienced university-level instructors. For each session, we select a diverse group from letters of motivation and CV—never portfolios. Participants at any level are welcome as long as they are motivated to work intensely and open to new approaches.

Typographic Printing Program is committed to respecting all gender identities, ages, ethnicities, and nationalities. All exercises and theory materials suit every level of experience. We support each other and finish workdays together. While we critically analyze and discuss the output of our work sessions and encourage everyone to engage in rich group discussions, we do not accept any disrespectful behavior; we are committed to providing an environment free of judgment.