True Print Cover
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Reto Caduff (ed.)

Dafi Kühne
True Print

Dafi Kühne is a Swiss designer who works with analogue and digital techniques to produce fresh and unique letterpress-printed posters. Using very different kinds of tools — from a computer to a pantograph — for his compositions, he pushes the boundaries of design. Never afraid of getting his hands dirty in his creative workshop, Dafi Kühne embraces the labor involved in the entire process of creating a poster, from initial idea to finished product. Fusing modern means with the century-old tradition of letterpress, he forms a new vocabulary for how to communicate through type and form in a truly contemporary way. Never retro, his work is a clever response to the search for new possibilities of graphic expression: true print.

Dafi Kühne is a Swiss designer who works with analogue and digital techniques to produce fresh and unique letterpress-printed posters. Using very different kinds of tools — from a computer to a pantograph — for his compositions, he pushes the boundaries of design. Never afraid of getting his hands dirty in his creative workshop, Dafi Kühne embraces the labor involved in the entire process of creating a poster, from initial idea to finished product. Fusing modern means with the century-old tradition of letterpress, he forms a new vocabulary for how to communicate through type and form in a truly contemporary way. Never retro, his work is a clever response to the search for new possibilities of graphic expression: true print.

English edition – also available in German

"Dafi Kühne's book True Print shows how to merge analogue and digital to stunning effect" – Creative Boom

"A fantastic new monograph...showcasing (an) expansive and impressive portfolio" – It's Nice That

Edited by Reto Caduff

With contributions by David Shields and Rudolf Barmettler

Design: Dafi Kühne

24 x 30 cm, 9 ½ x 11 ¾ in

152 pages, 182 illustrations

hardback

2017, 978-3-03778-509-6, English
Swiss Graphic Design
CHF 45.00

Dafi Kühne

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.

CHF 45.00