Printmaking Research

The Chinese invention of Woodblock printing, at some point before the first dated book in 868 (the Diamond Sutra), produced the world's first print culture. "It was the Chinese who really discovered the means of communication that was to dominate until our age." Woodblock printing was better suited to Chinese characters than movable type, which the Chinese also invented, but which did not replace woodblock printing. Western printing presses, although introduced in the 16th century, were not widely used in China until the 19th century. China, along with Korea, was one of the last countries to adopt them.

Wooden movable type printing – china

Although China developed at the first wooden movable type around 1040 AD, it was abandoned in favour of clay movable types. However, by the 1300s, a Chinese county office made 100,000 wooden movable types and printed 43 volume books. The world's earliest printer printed fragments to survive are also from China and are silk printed with flowers in three colours from the Han Dynasty (before AD 220). 

Techniques 

Traditionally, there have been two main printing techniques in Asia: woodblock printing and moveable type printing. In the woodblock techniques, ink is applied to letters carved upon a wooden board, which is then pressed onto paper. With moveable type, the board is assembled using different types, according to the page being printed. 

Digital Printing


Digital printing is relatively modern, it was founded in the 1970's. The first digital printing presses came onto the market in the early 1990's.

Digital printing assembles each image from a complex set of numbers and mathematical formulas. These images are captured from a matrix of dots, called pixels, and this process is called digitising. The digitised images are then used to control the deposition of ink, toner or exposure to electromagnetic energy to reproduce the data.
Digital printing uses a colour management system, which keeps images looking the same despite where they are printed.

In 1993 the world's first digital colour printing press was launched called Indigo. Overnight it triggered a transformation in the printing world - customers were able to choose short-run, personalised, high quality print straight from desktop.

Chinese Digital Printing

In modern times the Chinese printing culture uses machines instead of hand processes, these can be seen around the city on Billboards and advertising posters. 

In other city's across the world digitally printed advertisements can also be seen, for example London's West End presents many theatre posters. London has its own history of printmaking. Between the late 1960's and 1970's numerous alternative print shops were set up across the UK, with the founding objective of producing, providing or facilitating the cheap and safe printing of radical materials. Here, printmaking and promotion was used to give people a political voice not a commercial one.

The London-based Poster Workshop (1968-1971), which recently uploaded its archive to the web, provides a snapshot of some radical concerns of the time e.g the political situations.