Faded Letters | Timeless
Sun Yao Yu, founder of Typesettingsg, reflects on the origins and uniqueness of the Singaporean letterpress, and the importance of preserving this craft. He shares his hopes for a community to embrace typesetting, even as he reluctantly shelves the craft for now.
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Watch more: https://www.asiaone.com/video
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00No one understands how printing came about.
00:02My generation, when I was first born, it was already injected.
00:05It's not like now, you click on the computer, everything is instantly one second.
00:08I often say, understanding letterpress printing is actually understanding the history.
00:13Everything in typography or graphic design came from letterpress.
00:16Hi, my name is Sun Yau Yu.
00:31I'm the founder of TypeSettingSG.
00:33It's a traditional letterpress studio, started in 2014.
00:37This is our 10th year in the business.
00:39Everything begins during my school days in RMIT.
00:44I started as a hipster, so as a visual communication student,
00:48one of the projects was on craftsmanship, so I chose letterpress.
00:55The tactile touch, the finishing of it actually attracted me
00:59and I started to go into understanding the process, the history, the culture
01:04and start to save our own local Singapore printing heritage.
01:09So the main challenge in setting up TypeSettingSG when I first started is
01:14there's basically nothing.
01:16I have zero knowledge in the printing process.
01:19It's just my own interest in it.
01:21Nothing actually has been sort of passed down.
01:23Eventually we start to go into the light industrial area,
01:27locking doors on all the old printers and I'll take notes.
01:31So over the years, when they close down, I'll go in and try and save whatever I can
01:35and slowly build this studio.
01:37So the past 10 years, we have saved printing equipment from over 10 print shops.
01:42So that's how we still have some of the last remaining printing heritage
01:47available in Singapore.
01:52So this is a traditional type cabinet used by the old printers in Singapore.
01:57So these are the drawers of metal types and this would be the type case itself
02:02where you have the lower case on the left side and the upper case on the right side.
02:06The lower case are arranged in the way the most frequent used letters are in the centre,
02:11the seldom used are in the side and the capital letters are in the sequence.
02:16So the printers will use a composing stick and start to pick up letters like this.
02:23When we talk about printing heritage, we are talking about the printing process,
02:27the history, the culture, the printing blocks, the equipments,
02:31how printing was done, as manual as it is, as well as the unique letterpress setup in Singapore
02:36where we have the multilingual languages formed together.
02:40A label could have four languages printed.
02:43That's something not so often seen overseas, like the English, Jawi, Tamil and Chinese.
02:50And they are all using different systems and also the fuse of the culture,
02:54visual communication language.
02:56So that's something that we wanted to preserve and to pass down.
03:00To the younger audience.
03:02So these are name cards typeset locally by the old printers.
03:06So you can see some of the traditional layouts for our name cards.
03:11So our small printing block corner, how is them, talisman, ghost money printing plate,
03:16the script, the sans serif and the serif.
03:19All this has a story, has some culture in it, has a history behind it.
03:23In fact, printing is one of the most important inventions that changed human history
03:28and it has been around in Singapore for almost 201 years.
03:32Letterpress is actually the fundamental for graphic design and typography,
03:36but this was not taught in a school.
03:38The Chinese typeface in our computer is actually designed in Singapore and Malaysia,
03:42but there's not much effort put in preserving the past printing history.
03:48The period of time whereby Asia are throwing everything and scrapping those,
03:52in the West they are saving everything as part of the heritage or converting it into a museum.
03:56So during that period of time is the surviving mode for Asia,
03:59so that's why printing heritage is more like a luxury.
04:03There's not much of a space or dedicated museum
04:07to showcase this form of printing to the younger audience.
04:10So what is remaining is actually the last few old uncles
04:14who still kept on with the old printing press, they will be the last generation.
04:18So if they retire, they close down,
04:21this traditional letterpress will face out in Singapore totally.
04:25So the studio was set up so that we can have this perspective passed down to the younger audience.
04:31So what I do is actually I customise a workshop for students
04:35to go through the whole process of letterpress printing.
04:40This studio is one of the only printing letterpress studio
04:43that is able to conduct workshop in the whole Asia,
04:46so that's why the studio actually attracts a lot of other overseas participants.
04:56How we do the printing is through a set of rollers.
05:00So when I do this action,
05:03the roller goes up, it captures the ink.
05:08And when it goes down, the ink onto the metal type is just nice,
05:12and then you put the paper,
05:14then after that you go to do the printing, all the way.
05:18And then you put the paper,
05:20then after that you go to do the printing, all the way.
05:25So this is how printing is done, one colour at a time, one paper at a time.
05:31Participants actually felt like this is a very therapeutic way
05:36of not spending their weekends, three, four hours,
05:40and at the end of it they get a piece of their own design in metal types.
05:45So when I first started, I actually list a lot of materials,
05:49and I actually list a lot of materials,
05:51and I actually list a lot of materials,
05:53and I actually list a lot of materials,
05:55and I actually list a lot of materials,
05:57So when I first started, I actually list a lot of my workshop contents
06:01on experience hosting websites.
06:04So these are the ones that actually helped me
06:06to push my workshops to the wider audience.
06:10Then I also joined some of the free market to promote the workshop.
06:14We also do exhibitions,
06:16and I also set up my own Instagram page and my Facebook
06:20to promote this form of printing to the younger audience.
06:23Keeping the craft of the printing process prevalent in modern day context,
06:27we are more into selling the story,
06:29the experience that the younger one can experience
06:32as a typographer of the day.
06:34So they themselves are the typographer.
06:36In the olden days, typographer is referred to someone who sets the types.
06:39In the modern day context, it's referred to those type designers
06:43who are already low into typography.
06:46The challenges, of course, is definitely the interest
06:49for this form of printing in Singapore is still very low.
06:52We don't really have much interest,
06:54especially also from the design community,
06:57maybe because this generation of designers have never seen this before.
07:02So it's a little bit hard for us to reach out to the school
07:05because all this actually has been slowly phased out
07:08in the design school as well.
07:10So it's a little bit hard for us to reach out to the school
07:13in the design school as well.
07:14So it's a little bit hard for us to gain support
07:17and to have a sustainable income to maintain the studio.
07:20It's actually one of the struggles in Singapore.
07:26In fact, the main income of this studio
07:28is actually my freelance graphic design work.
07:31What the studio is able to generate,
07:33it's not able to have a sustainable income source
07:36because all this interest for this form of printing
07:39is actually hard to predict.
07:41And in fact, the last few years,
07:43most of the interest is actually from overseas.
07:46So we do have a struggle in keeping the studio afloat.
07:56The favourite part is I got to know all this,
08:01all the printing equipments that I have in the studio.
08:04And if I need anything, I'll know where to get it
08:06and I can compose and do my own design.
08:09And as well as digging into the old industry
08:12to find new stuff or to find new information
08:15on the printing heritage in Singapore.
08:19It's just one person doing this,
08:21so it is still a very niche thing in Singapore.
08:24And if there's a community,
08:26if there are more people who are into this as me,
08:28of course I might push this studio further,
08:32but the interest for this is still not that great
08:35for us to continue as a studio.
08:37And as well as the rental increase,
08:39so unless it's back up,
08:40unless it's a community collective effort,
08:43it will still be the same endings.
08:45In fact, this studio will try to end in 2016.
08:48Same reason, it's just not practical.
08:50But I just found a cheaper rental approach
08:53and that's why we still continue another almost six, seven years.
08:57June will be the last operating month
09:00and the emotion has not impacted me yet.
09:06I have yet to feel any of it
09:08because maybe I'll still be around,
09:10the studio will still be around in the better options
09:14or worse will be at most in the stories.
09:17So it's still hard to predict
09:19because just that I'm not sure
09:21if I'll be able to continue
09:24Maybe I'll miss touching some of the types
09:27or using the machines.
09:30I don't know, but I'll still be around.
09:32The heritage will still be around.
09:53The Heritage
09:56The Heritage
09:59The Heritage
10:02The Heritage
10:05The Heritage
10:08The Heritage