
Eye Magazine’s first Type Tuesday of 2025 will feature Swiss poster designer, letterpress printer and graphic design educator Dafi Kühne. Dafi will be talking about his work and will be showing (and selling) some of his full size posters.
“Working in Näfels, eastern Switzerland, Dafi Kühne is a pioneer in reviving and updating letterpress techniques, combining what he calls ‘true printing’ with digital technology and hand-cut 3D plate elements.” Writes Jan Middendorp in Eye 100 “Like most Swiss designers of his generation, Dafi Kühne started studying with a digital practice in mind. Having enrolled in Interaction Design at the ZHdK (Zurich University of the Arts), he soon realised that being a digital designer was not what he was looking for. He decided his vocation was to control every aspect of production, including typesetting with metal and wood type, instead of preparing files for a streamlined industrial process. He gradually added other techniques, from linocut to lasercutting, and experimental processes such as ‘painting’ a relief letterpress plate using viscous glue – combining its expressive result with sparse lines of text set in metal.
There is probably no other designer who is as energetic and flexible in shifting techniques and styles, planning and executing the entire process from sketches (preferably dozens or even hundreds of them) to hand-printing.”
[Tickets are costed for this event. Please pre-book to attend.]