Artist Book Workshop: Meet Moveable Type Studio

We sat down and talked with Moveable Type Studio about the sold out series of Artist Book Workshops they delivered in collaboration with the Edge over February and March.

The Create Your Own Artist Book workshop series brought together traditional letterpress printmaking and contemporary digital fabrication at The Edge. Delivered by Moveable Type Studio, the workshops explored how historical printing techniques can work alongside modern technologies such as laser engraving.

Across two Saturday sessions, participants were introduced to the foundations of letterpress printmaking and typography while also learning how to create their own laser-engraved printing plates. The workshops focused on hands‑on learning. Participants inked and printed from relief plates and wood type, experimenting with how pressure and materials behave, while also working directly with items from the State Library of Queensland's collections.

The program ultimately allowed participants to produce their own small editions of artist books and zines, combining traditional craft techniques with contemporary digital tools.

Through the course of the workshops each participant produced a small edition of their own hand-printed zine or artist book. Each publication was unique, reflecting the individual creative ideas of the participants. 

Can you tell us about participants learned in the workshops? 

The workshop ran over two Saturdays from 1 pm to 5 pm, with a week between sessions to allow time for participants to plan and design their zines. One advantage of this format was that participants could attend The Edge’s Open Lab on Thursday evenings to meet with us and the SLQ staff and revisit what we had covered and continue developing their ideas.

Session One focused on the foundations of traditional letterpress printing. Participants were introduced to the tools of the trade, worked with traditional wood type, and gained an understanding of how the printed word has been produced for more than 500+ years. By the end of the session, each participant had produced a hand‑printed typographic poster demonstrating how ink and pressure interact on press.

These posters became the starting point for their artist books. Participants copied words and typographic elements from their prints and developed typographic collages that would form the basis of their zines.

In Session Two, participants returned with their collages. These were reproduced and fed back through the presses to be overprinted with both laser‑engraved imagery drawn from the SLQ collection and additional typographic elements. By the end of the workshop, each participant had produced a small edition of their own artist book or zine.

The Edge is a place for ideas, experimentation and new technologies. Can you tell us about how you combined new technology with traditional printing processes?

Moveable Type Studio has been interfacing with The Edge for a number of years. Our relationship first developed when Clint Harvey was working with local design students and bringing them into the space to utilise the facilities.

Through those visits we were introduced to the laser engraving technology available at The Edge. Over the past two to three years we have been experimenting with how digital fabrication methods can be combined with traditional letterpress printing. The workshop series was an opportunity to share that knowledge with a broader audience and demonstrate how contemporary technologies like laser engraving can sit comfortably alongside printing processes that are hundreds of years old. Participants worked with traditional wooden and metal stereo printing blocks that represent a printing process used for hundreds of years. These materials allowed them to experience the tactile qualities of letterpress printing through ink, pressure, and composition.

Alongside this, participants used the Trotec laser cutters at The Edge to create their own relief printing plates. We demonstrated how artwork could be prepared digitally and how the laser interprets imagery through processes such as vector cutting and surface etching.

By combining these two approaches, participants could produce modern relief plates digitally and then print them using traditional letterpress presses.

The John Oxley Library Collection played a central role in the workshop. Can you tell us about how the collection was used in the workshop?

The State Library’s collection played a central role in the workshop. Participants were first introduced to the library’s online catalogue and shown how to search and filter materials through the One Search system. We also explored the State Library’s Flickr archive, which provides an accessible and visual way of browsing digitised material.

During the second session the State Library also provided a selection of artist books and zines from the Artist Book collection. Participants were able to handle these works and discuss how they were produced, whether through hand lettering, typesetting, or letterpress printing.

The collection also informed the practical printing component of the workshop. We sourced imagery from historical issues of The Queenslander magazine and demonstrated how these images could be extracted and converted into relief printing plates using laser engraving. Participants then used these plates to print imagery drawn directly from the State Library’s archive within their own artist books.

If you are interested in finding out more about creative learning and workshops at the Edge, check out our upcoming offerings on the State Library of Queensland What's On pages. You can also sign up for our monthly e-newsletter to be first to hear about our upcoming workshops, inductions and more.