From Bozeman to Berlin: International Letterpress Collaboration
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This presentation will discuss the letterpress course offered at Montana State University in the fall of 2019 and the unique diversity and international collaboration component introduced in the class. The class included projects whose scope crossed cultural boundaries and required students to interact with peers of equal standing at the University of Applied Sciences Europe, Berlin Campus in Germany. Students from MSU were exposed to cultural differences between the US and Germany and this helped foster a relationship that evolved through co-curricular practices. The practices of setting type and letterpress printing are similar at their core no matter the country, however, the content that students’ collaborated on allowed for diversity, intrigue, and understanding of a culture that is different than their own. At the end of the semester, the main goal was to push students’ understanding of their own unique identity in relation to those in Germany through common practice. The final project in GDSN 375: Letterpress was called From Bozeman to Berlin and it required students to co-collaborate on a cultural reflection artist book with a German peer. In this presentation, the collaboration, student undertakings, and results will be discussed with visual references.
As an interdisciplinary designer having a background in architecture and graphic design Fuchs’ work strives to merge the best qualities of each discipline to create work that speaks about our current urban condition and an individual’s relationship to place. Her intentions are to find a way to merge the spatial qualities of architecture design with the obtainable design scale that graphic design offers. As an educator, Fuchs focuses on digital fabrication and interdisciplinary mediums across the design discipline to help expand the scope of design for students.
