Greetings from Kedash Design / Red Oak Press

After 20 years of handing our design work off to various conventional printers, we decided that we should be a part of preserving a timeless printing process which has gained mainstream popularity of late. Of course, when we bought our press, we hadn't the foggiest idea of how to use it so we read a lot of books, picked the brains of some fine, dedicated and talented printers and attacked the vertical learning curve. The result of our effort is Red Oak Press. We do letterpress. Letterpress printing is based on the original 1439 Gutenberg process where moveable type is inked and then pressed against a waiting piece of paper.

We print on a 1970’s vintage Original Heidelberg Tiegel (windmill) press, invented and first manufactured in Germany in 1912. The design of that press was so exquisite that Heidelberg manufactured them until the late 1970's with remarkably few alterations to the original incarnation. Initially intended to just kiss the paper as in "modern" web printing, the press is also excellent at making deep impressions on the the right paper stock.

A number of manufacturers are designing and producing paper specifically for impressed type and images, often made of cotton or other natural fibers. The result of their work enables a printed piece which has a sumptuous feel, texture and depth.

The Letterpress Process

The process we follow is a natural progression of our background in graphic design, defined by what works best for letterpress. The invention of photopolymer plates freed designers from the constraints of hand set type and made letterpress design a clean slate on which to create. Any font, any graphic, any flourish is at our disposal and that freedom is sublime.

Letterpress works just as the name suggests, by pressing type (or a plate) into paper. On a platen press, the raised type/plate is inked by the press, then pressed together with the paper. The resulting product can vary from printing flush on the page, (kiss impression) held by some old fuddie duddies as the only "proper" way to print on this press, to compressing the paper with the type or image, giving it an elegant dimensional look and feel. New papers being created specifically for letterpress enable us to hold a crisper impression and produce more brilliant colors and better coverage.

Red Oak Press pays the utmost attention to detail in this delicate artisan process. All pieces are obsessed over from the intial design process, through printing, trimming and delivery.