Course Director

Kelvyn Smith

Mr Smith is a craftsman, designer, typographer, printmaker, wordsmith & maker — he is of strong temperament & is chiefly concerned with good design, attention to detail, thorough practice & quality workmanship — he creates exquisitely crafted contemporary typographic printed matter using wood letter & metal type in his Letterpress workshop.

‘Smith’s Rules’ is the philosophy applied to the work undertaken – less of a dogma – more of a guide: a series of starting points & procedures implemented by the workshop materials themselves. It is also the imprint under which Mr Smith publishes work.

Smith’s Rules takes numerous forms & sets out to explore visual ideas in response to graphic language, problem solving, story telling, typographic prescription & the letterpress process. They are always ‘designed, hand-set & printed’ by Mr Smith in his Kennington workshop.

Emeritus Professor

Alan Kitching

Alan Kitching RDI AGI Hon FRCA, born 1940 Darlington, Co. Durham. Apprentice compositor (1956–61). Met Anthony Froshaug and co-established the experimental printing workshop at Watford College of Technology, School of Art (1964). Worked with Froshaug until 1967 and later collaborated on student projects at the Central School of Art & Design. Established own design practice London (1973). Partner with Derek Birdsall at Omnific (1977), started letterpress printing there (1985).

Established The Typography Workshop in Clerkenwell EC1 (1989). Teaching through letterpress at the Royal College of Art (1991–2006). Partnership with designer/writer Celia Stothard from 1994. ‘Alan Kitching’s A–Z of Letterpress – Founts from The Typography Workshop’, published by Laurence King (2015).  ‘Alan Kitching: A Life in Letterpress’, monograph by John L Walters, published by Laurence King (2016), with accompanying Exhibition at Somerset House in London.

Workshop Assistants

Freddy Williams
Joana Paranhos

Visiting Design Consultants

Andy Altmann / Phil Baines
Rupert Bassett / Anthony Burrill
Daniel Chehade / Alan Dye
Simon Esterson / Fernando Gutiérrez
Tim Hutchinson / Henrik Kubel
Hansjörg Mayer / Hamish Muir
Paul Neale / Lucienne Roberts
Astrid Stavro / Jim Sutherland

School Consultants

Lucy Clayton / Karoline Newman