Agency's printing table gives new meaning to 'desktop publishing'

While modern-day digital tools offer myriad exciting opportunities to designers, something can get lost along the way. It's always good to get back to making physical things, and so it's heartening to hear of projects like 'Desktop Publishing' by multidisciplinary design studio Popular - an analogue take on the meaning of the popular term.

The end result of the project is shown in action here: a fully functioning printing table containing a manual printing press that's capable of printing up to four colours at a time. The printing plates are interchangeable, allowing you to print any number of designs, and its first use by the studio was the printing of a CMYK poster.

"The term 'Desktop Publishing' was often used when I took my first steps into the design industry in the early nineties," explains Peter Chadwick, creative director of Popular. "The phrase itself conjures up images of poorly designed, mass produced print literature. The table is an antidote to this, delivering well crafted, bespoke hand printed posters."

You can learn more about the Desktop Publishing project here.

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