Dafi Kühne

True Print

Lars Müller Publishers

2016

Dafi Kühne is a Swiss designer who works with analogue and digital techniques to produce fresh and unique letterpress-printed posters. Using very different kinds of tools — from a computer to a pantograph — for his compositions, he pushes the boundaries of design. Never afraid of getting his hands dirty in his creative workshop, Dafi Kühne embraces the labor involved in the entire process of creating a poster, from initial idea to finished product. Fusing modern means with the century-old tradition of letterpress, he forms a new vocabulary for how to communicate through type and form in a truly contemporary way. Never retro, his work is a clever response to the search for new possibilities of graphic expression: true print.

The book explores Dafis visual work and shows a huge array of his print and poster projects

Dafi also has a great Vimeo account which goes in depth into his technical processes and experiments and includes Dafi Kuhne Printing Show. in which he answers technical questions about his prints from fans.

-Dafis work is a great inspiration for his use of pushing the traditional boundaries of letterpress. In my work, looking at technique I would also like to push the boundaries of a technique and see what can be acheived

In the interview below with Print Mag Dafi talks about his education in typography, his internship with Hatch Show Print in Nashville. and also explains his working processes and techniques.

The print below was developed by Dafi as a personal manifesto, sharing what he thought design is and ideas of how he works in his studio. The type in the print was plastic resin cast as Dafi struggled to find a type big enough as he needed around 490 letters in 36pt. He now uses this technique, developed for this print to cast other large groups of type.