ICK GRIFFITH OPENS A DRAWER and gently traces over hundreds of wooden and lead slivers, each with a single raised letter. These are movable type, the heart of the nearly 1,000-year-old craft of letterpress. “You’ll notice,” he says in a warm, measured voice to an enthusiast visiting from Detroit, “I don’t have any font names on these drawers. In the beginning, I didn’t have the money or access to buy whole typefaces, so I created sets from remnants, because who would want those, right?” Covering the walls around the studio, Griffith’s radiant typographic designs show what the cast-off letters in his collection can become, given space. Thick and thin letters of various sizes, printed in a dazzling chorus of hues, state everything from “GOOD DESIGN SHOULD HAVE NO VICTIMS” to “NOT YOUR MAGICAL NEGRO.” One simply lists important letterpress measurements. Griffith himself is in a jumpsuit emblazoned with the NASA logo, a Guyanase flag, and a letterpressed reminder to VOTE TO PROTECT DEMOCRACY. A British-WestIndian born in London who immigrated to Washington D.C., Griffith found his way to design through the 1980s Black punk scene. For the past 26 years, he’s been channeling this energy through MATTER. MATTER is a design consultancy founded with print presses, a Black and woman-owned bookstore, a printshop, and a space for “designers, revolutionaries and other thinking persons,” as their website puts it. Print Truth to Power On Thursday nights, from 5-8 p.m., it becomes a workshop to “print truth to power.” Anyone who wants to learn a bit about letterpress and design as a tool for change and a way to question culture can attend — they just have to be ready to work collaboratively. Letterpress is a craft with many parts and large machines, but the basic concept is using raised surfaces that are covered in ink and pressed to paper to make prints. This was, for hundreds of years, the way almost everything was printed. Participants don’t all arrive at the same time, but each is welcomed, or welcomed back by Griffith. They weave their way through a room filled with four printing presses and lined in old wooden letterpress cabinets. Off to the side, a massive high-powered laser adds a touch of the modern, but most of this work is using old tech to say new things. Despite his status as an internationally-renowned master printer, Griffith models collaboration and enthusiasm for the people who show up to print truth to power. “Nobody is in charge all of the time,” Griffith reminds the group as they choose a statement and spacing for the plate of text they’re putting together, unique letter by letter. This doesn’t mean, however, that he won’t poke at an idea that seems half-thought-through. “If it won’t work, I’ll let you know,” he promises with a smile. Making Space between the Lines Making space, Griffith said, is at the heart of nurturing community. Instead of gathering and setting the type with passive onlookers, he encourages members to make decisions. “If you have enough tools, getting out of the way so other people can use them, that’s what community is all about,” he said. “In this place, I have a lot of material and tools, so I’m ensuring other people have access to what I have. In other places, I might be the person who gets access; it’s really a fractal kind of idea.” Aaron Middleton, a photographer and designer, wanders in to say hello and help as the plate is taking shape. He’s been coming to MATTER twice a week or more for the past seven years. Standing in the hallway between the front and back of the studio, Middleton reflects on what Griffith has shown him. David Grajeda Gonzalez, artist and MATTER employee, holds up a linocut he carved based on the hand of professor Rafael Fajardo, who first introduced him to MATTER. DENVER VOICE 5 “As a Black man, here’s another Black man doing a creative thing and figuring it out in Denver, and through helping out here, I’ve met so many other creative communities of people of color from around the world,” he said. Complementary Elements As the night flows on, Debra Johnson, Griffith’s “partnerin-everything,” stops by to see if Griffith has any S-hooks, or “shooks” as they call them, for the bookshop next to the studio. The duo is planning for the soft launch of their newest project, a used bookstore. Johnson is also a designer, and together, the pair makes decisions about all elements of MATTER as a small business as well as a design project. Asked what MATTER means to her, Johnson said their purpose, “is to help people realize their purpose and power and participate in community so that they don’t feel alone. There is a direct relationship between how people communicate and making a difference.” Johnson’s perspective mirrors that of Mary Katherine Keller, a community member who stopped by to help the used book store take shape. Keller said she could sum up MATTER as a combination of warmth and electricity. “MATTER is the best classroom you could ever imagine. isolation and numbing There’s such a drive towards ourselves, but at MATTER, you’re learning how to be in community with people. I’ve never been in that space and felt out of place,” Keller said. Proof of Community At the front of the studio, David Grajeda Gonzalez is organizing the efforts to get all the books for the used bookstore shelved. Grajeda Gonzalez works for the MATTER bookstore and is also an artist. One of his many mediums is carving images into blocks of linoleum that are then used in the letterpress machines, a technique called lino-cut. Sometimes, he’ll make one for the workshop to use, encouraging people to feel its carved surface and choose their own colors to print with, becoming part of the creative process. “There’s so much respect for everyone here as a human, and it really enforces my self-worth,” he said. Grajeda Gonzalez came to MATTER through one of his art professors at the University of Denver, Rafael Fajardo. Fajardo is one of Griffith’s close friends and a frequent facilitator of print truth to power. “MATTER is proof that I can find community,” Grajeda Gonzalez said, “and I’m playing an intentional role in sustaining it, and that’s a skill everyone can have.” A Broader Message Griffith and Johnson continually invest time, space, and shop inventory on the perspectives of people pushed to the margins of society by caste, gender, economics, and race. One week, the shop might host an author talk on “Desecrated Poppies,” a poetry collection written by Mx. Yaffa — a disabled, autistic, trans queer Muslim, and Indigenous Palestinian activist. Another week might bring a seminar on the attention economy as part of a multi-year series on philosophy and critical theory. MATTER’s events are wide-ranging but tied together, in Griffith and Johnson’s words, by love as an act of resistance. This year AIGA, the professional association for design, presented Griffith with the Medal of AIGA, the most distinguished honor in the profession of communication design, for his thirty-year legacy of using design as a tool to shape and question culture. Griffith said the medal was validating. While observing truth to power’ participants using his lesson the ‘print on typographic math to size their letters, he muses on the organization’s choice, “AIGA is a national organization and most of my work is on a small scale,” he said. “Rather than graphic design always being about massive brands, they gave this medal to someone working locally, communally. It validates that design works at many scales.” Letterpress has a long history. Movable type like that in MATTER’s studio has been rearranged in printing presses to write everything from runaway slave bulletins to justifications of eugenics. Griffith now tends to and preserves the letters that were once kept from him. Some have been nicked and scratched, and going forward, those marks will always be a part of the way that they print, but the magic is in recombination. The workshop tonight has finished their plate. Ready and inked, it spells out, backwards and in bright orange, YOUR RACIST STAPLER CAN’T PENETRATE OUR DREAMS.
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