A museum of print, signed entirely on its own presses.

A museum of print should not buy its signs from a catalogue. Every one is printed in the building, by the people who run the presses.

The brief

Casa da Estampa opened in February 2019 in a former printing works in Bonfim, Porto, which printed labels for the port lodges for ninety years. The collection runs to eleven working presses, some forty thousand pieces of wood and metal type and a poster archive that goes back to the 1890s.

The building is three floors of connected workshops with two staircases and no obvious route. The foundation needed an identity, wayfinding that would work in two languages for school groups and tourists, and a film for the entrance hall, all ready for opening day.

The idea

Everything that carries the name is printed in the building. The signs are letterpress posters in magenta and black, set from the museum’s own wood type, pulled on its presses and pasted up by its printers. When an exhibition changes, the signs are reprinted to match.

The wordmark is a heavy slab redrawn from a case of wood type in the collection, and it is always printed in two colours slightly out of register, the way a real two-colour job comes off the press. The four-minute entrance film is shot entirely at the speed of the machines.

What we made

Identity and wordmark
Wayfinding: 41 letterpress signs in two languages
Sign templates and a paste-up guide for the printers
Four-minute entrance film
Tickets, visitor guide and shop prints

A magenta-inked roller crossing a forme of black wood type in low raking light — From the entrance film: forty seconds of a single roller, shot at the speed of the press.

A printer in an ink-stained apron inking a forme of large wood type on an old press

Printed by the people who run the presses

The museum’s two printers pull every sign by hand. A full set of 41 takes them three days, and they print it during public demonstrations, so visitors watch the wayfinding being made.

How the mark moves

The two colours of the wordmark drift apart and settle back into register, as if the sheet had just been pulled. In the film the same drift runs under every title.

Letterpress signs in magenta and black with large arrows pasted on a stairwell wall, beside a ticket and a folded guide — Stairwell B: magenta for the way up, black for the way down. Every arrow is printed from a wood-type arrow in the collection.

A freshly printed sheet reading Casa da Estampa in heavy slab letters, magenta and black slightly out of register — Two colours, deliberately a hair out of register.

What changed

visitors in the first twelve months
Against a forecast of 60,000 in the foundation’s funding plan.
signs, every one printed on the museum’s presses
Reprinted with each exhibition, about three times a year.
from selling retired signs in the shop
Numbered and signed by the printers when they come down. Figure for the first two years.

Who made it

Orvel

Tomás FerreiraDesign direction and wayfindingLisbon
Kayode AdebayoEntrance filmLondon
Anjali RaoCreative directionLondon

With

Client team: Graça Monteiro, Paulo Azevedo
Printers: Rui Castro, Filipa Neves
Film: Kayode Adebayo (director), Duarte Lima (camera)
Sound: Leonor Sá
Translation: Clara Bastos

Next project Renters insurance, 2018kestleContents insurance for people who rent, priced from a walk round the room instead of a 38-question form.