The Study Workshop is a place for students to learn typography as an extension of their creative and artistic practice. It is both an experimental field, where students can test out the boundaries of what it possible in typography, and a site of production. The aim is to experiment to find the appropriate tool to develop a successful typographical design with optimal solutions. The combination of the latest technologies with traditional printing techniques allows for students to learn about designing with type and form in a contemporary way. Printing and finishing processing as well as digital applications serve as the central starting point in this.  

Alongside proofing presses (relief printing) the workshop also maintains Office Offset machines, which can certainly be seen as a unique feature among German art schools. The term Office Offset refers to fully equipped miniature offset presses the size of a laser printer. These machines provide a unique opportunity to explore offset printing directly and experimentally, without the limitations that a commercial print shop might entail.

Software may and should be combined in the workshop with analog techniques and exploited to the full. Alongside traditional metal and wood letters, newly milled wood blocks, old polymer plates, hand-cut and laser-cut linoleum, 3D printing, offset plates, and many other materials can be used.

Some machines can be operated independently by the students themselves, others are used in conjunction with the teachers in seminars.

Machines at the Study Workshop

• FAG 405 Proofing Press (max. paper format: 400 × 580 mm)
• GRAFIX GX1N Proofing Press (max. paper format: 380 × 500 mm)
• Manual proofing press (max. paper format: 297 × 420 mm)
• Office Offset Roto/Rotaprint 613 N (max. paper format: 250 × 350 mm)
• Office Offset Roto/Rotaprint 625 (for flexo printing) (max. paper format: 250 × 350 mm)

Equipment

• iMac 27" work stations 
• A3 flatbed scanner 
• Wacom drawing tablets with pens