Dafi Kühne (*1982) is a graphic designer and letterpress printmaker. He studied Visual Communication at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and and he holds a Research-Masters Degree in Typeface Design from the University of Reading, UK. In his studio babyinktwice.ch in a remonte Swiss mountain valley, Kühne uses a mix of analog and digital tools to create posters for music, art, architecture, theater and film projects, as well as for consumer products. He is guided by one central restriction: “No digital PDF ever leaves the studio as a final product.” Dafi Kühne prints all his posters using analog letterpress printing presses.
Dafi Kühne’s first monograph, True Print was published in 2016, the follow-up Poster Cult in 2024. He teaches on a project basis at various universities in Switzerland, Europe and the USA and runs his own international Summer intense: The Typographic Printing Program. Since 2018, he has been publishing a series of entertaining web videos entitled “The Dafi Kühne Printing Show™,” which in 2021 received both a Swiss Design Award and, in Japan, a Tokyo TDC prize. Kühne’s original posters can be found in public collections and archives in Switzerland, Germany and the USA, and his work has won international awards and been shown in exhibitions around the world.
