Making the right kind of impression

Visitors to the Beck Isle museum in Pickering in two weeks will be invited to Make Your Mark in a series of hands-on family activities to showcase traditional crafts and historic printing skills based around its Columbian hand operated letterpress machine. It is the sort of demonstration that makes grandparents hark back to their childhood, parents recall a simpler time and feeds a child’s imagination. There is excitement in seeing their own name printed in front of their very eyes. To a youngster, this is magic. And while it is not going to have them telling their parents “I want to be a printer when I grow up”, it’s a brush with print that may leave a lasting impression.

But why stop at demonstrations of museum pieces, machines that are run by enthusiasts for their own satisfaction and not for profit? What if, say, a child could be shown a more modern machine in operation, a process that begins on a computer screen to apply their photo and name to a fictitious Wanted poster perhaps, which is then printed on a digital press and trimmed or laminated before their very eyes? Or if they are shown a Heidelberg running in all its glory, with a plate to unit system at one end or a Cylinder for embossing at the other? What might this do to that youngster? If they see The Flying Scotsman and want to be a train driver, might not a Koenig & Bauer Rapida tap into the same instincts?

It is often, too often, said that print does not know how to market itself. Creating their own Make Your Mark open days as some kind of visitor attraction might help. West Ferry Printers used to do these sort of guided tours, so what is there to stop sheetfed printers from doing something similar and showing what the modern printing industry is like? Otherwise the marketing of the industry is left to the enthusiasts conveying the message that print belongs in a museum.