Elsi Vassdal Ellis (Eve Press)
Selected Discourses Regarding War and Peace: Home Front.
Letterpress, 1993.

Emily McVarish
Felicity.
Letterpress, 1993. 14 1/2" x 21 1/2". Edition of 50.

Contemporary artists use all printing processes for their work. During the 1970's there was a resurgence of interest in letterpress printing, and at the same time artists produced editions in greater quantities with offset printing, often experimenting with the processes of color separation and platemaking. Syl Lebrot's Pleaure Beach is an example of a book in which the artist created the images in the act of making the separations by hand.

Today,with computer imaging systems, it is much easier for artists to create compound images, and to either generate color separations directly from the computer, print the book on a color printer, or publish the work directly from the computer onto the World Wide Web.

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Look at Futurist artists' typography which influenced these artists

See how letterforms were used as illustration in an Arabic illuminated manuscript

Look at a Hebrew illuminated manuscript

Look at Fluxus work which was also influenced by the Futurist aesthetic

Look at other forms of writer and artist collaborations in the twentieth century