Project Description

On the 17th and 18th of October, 2013, The Distillery launched its second studio in Jakarta, Indonesia. Alongside our aim to spread the love of letterpress, was also to spread our love of paper--In particular, GF Smith’s range of Colorplan papers.

Colorplan paper comes in 50 colours and holds letterpress impression beautifully. Its versatility and vibrancy makes it one of our favourite stocks for modern letterpress printing. We also love the challenge and creative possibilities with designing and printing with a background that isn’t white. For our launch, we wanted to show the attendees the possibilities of letterpress printing with Colorplan.

Being huge music fans at the studio, we wanted to expand on the idea of Synaesthesia for these pieces—by taking some of our favourite studio sounds, and creating typographic keepsakes based on them. We picked some of our favourite artists—Prince, Nena, Elton John and Elvis, to base these works around. After countless sketches and exploration, our idea was for each piece to have its own personality—and for it to capture the era and feeling of the song via typographic illustration.

To further showcase the colours, we decided each piece would have a different coloured stock on its front and back: Azure Blue & Adriatic, Lavender & Purple, Bright Red & Scarlet and Factory Yellow & Citrus. This effect not only doubles the thickness of the stock, but also gives the piece some striking depth and contrast. The colour combinations are almost endless, and if we had more time available, there would have definitely been a third colour stock too.