Petrescu Press has been co-opted by German type designer Erik Spiekermann, to take part in the FF Real Wood Type Project, our task was the conversion of the digital representations to physical wood type for letterpress printing.

The FF Real font is the work of Erik Spiekermann and Ralph du Carrois, and was released as an extended family consisting of text and headline versions in 13 weights each, by FontShop.

Erik Spiekermann is a German printer, designer, teacher and writer, leading p98a letterpress workshop in Berlin. He wrote the book “Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works”. In 1989, together with his wife, created Font Shop, the first digital font distributor. Erik Spiekermann is famous for the complex corporate design systems made for clients such as: Berlin Transit, Düsseldorf Airport, Audi, Volkswagen, Heidelberg Printing, The Economist. In 2006 received the Gold Medal at the German Federal Design Prize event for the typeface family commissioned by German Railways. In 2007 he became the first designer selected in the European Design Awards – Hall of Fame.

Our work was the manufacture of 512 characters at the size of 16 cicero (72,21mm/2.84 inch) from single piece, end-grain, beech wood, french polished, and brought to the German type height 23,56mm (±0,07mm).

In our method we try to stay true to the original process and create a product that is as close as possible to it’s historical predecessors. We used in the manufacturing process a CNC system for the milling process, and the wood preparation and finish was made using traditional methods.

From a production point of view, our goal is ensuring the continuity of a product, held at great value for several centuries, by developing a process of manufacture that is flexible and scaled to current demand, and efficient enough to generate products that are affordable to the average printer.

The main challenge of this project was the given deadline and the size of the wood type; the order resulted in approx. 28 kg (61lbs) of new wood type.

After overcoming initial cutting issues, by readjusting the end-mill feed rate to the new depth of cut, that was required by the large 16 cicero type, we managed to complete the order.

We believe in the reemergence and potential of letterpress printing, and consider wood type essentially it’s language, new  content will have to be added; old shapes need to remain available, our work and research in this field, will constitute the foundations of this growing form of expression.