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 official launch in Jakarta, we wanted to show the attendees the possibilities of letterpress printing with Colorplan. Letterpress printmaking is a tactile trade that celebrates the senses; the colour of the inks, the feel of the impression, the sound of the presses and the smell of a fresh sheet of paper. When creating these new pieces, these senses came to mind. We thought of the idea of Synaesthesia, where different senses get mixed up. A common form of Synaesthesia is an association of sound and colours.

Being huge music fans at the studio, we wanted to expand on this idea 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.