Dafi Kühne is a graphic designer and letterpress print maker from Zürich+Glarus, Switzerland. Since 2009 his studio «babyinktwice» has been designing and printing posters, invitation cards and brochures for music, art, architecture, theatre and film projects and also for products. Since 2011 Dafi Kühne has also been teaching everything from short workshops to full semesters in various universities in Europe and the United States.

Dafi combines contemporary graphic design with old printing technology. For him, this is a profession and a dedication , not just a side project. No digital-only design—and no PDF leaves his studio as a finished product. Along along with his computer he uses old letterpress printing presses from the 60s, traditional metal and wood type, new lasercut and pantograph cut wood blocks, hand cast Ludlow hot metal slugs, polymer plates, handcut linoleum or chipboard and many other things. Over the past 12 years, Dafi has been collecting roughly 30+ tons of commercially redundant printing equipment.

It’s not all about letterpress – Dafi is not a luddite or a romantic retro fanatic. It’s just about finding the right tool for producing good typographic designs. Dafi designs and thinks with the printing process in mind. He pushes the boundaries of design. Never afraid of getting his hands dirty in his creative workshop, Dafi embraces the labor involved in the entire process of creating a poster, from initial idea to finished product. Fusing modern means with the century-old tradition of letterpress, he forms a new vocabulary for how to communicate through type and form in a truly contemporary way. Never retro, his work is a clever response to the search for new possibilities of graphic expression.

Dafi’s posters can be found in different collections in Switzerland and the USA, have been awarded multiple times with Society of Typographic Arts in Chicago and 100 Beste Plakate, and have been shown in many international publications on graphic design and letterpress printing.

Articles:
www.peopleofprint.com/video/the-dafi-kuhne-printing-show-christmas-specialwww.peopleofprint.com/workshop/typographic-summer-program-2021/
www.peopleofprint.com/exhibition/dafi-kuhne-the-absurdity-of-the-moment/
www.peopleofprint.com/workshop/typographic-printing-program-in-switzerland/