I think it never did occured to me how much effort it took to design and create typefaces. Having grown up in a time when computers were becoming a commonplace household item, when letterpresses had already long been phased out and made obsolete, I was brought up not really aware of the challenges that typographers and graphic designers from the past had to go through. Also, the man mentioned in the beginning, “Practically everybody looks at printing, everyday, yet I don’t think there is one person in the thousand that ever stopped to think where we’d all be if printing type never existed.” and the woman’s response was “Most people are willing to go along taking it for granted.”. Sadly, this is the reality of things. However, it is good that such a video is preserved and digitalise so that the future generations can come back and refer to it and understand the intricacies required for the process. 

Having gone through the letterpress workshop in school, I already had some idea of how much effort was needed and how time-consuming the process was when it came to printing books in the past. However, I forgot to take into consideration the amount of work that goes into designing the typeface, creating the mould for each letter (and numbers and special characters as well) before finally using the mould to create each metal block. And having to repeat this process for each font size (yikes), This video helped put things into perspective for me and I’ve never been more glad to have been born in the generation that I am in and to be able to enjoy all the modern technologies that help make the process of designing much easier than it was before. All in all, I now have greater appreciation for the traditional method of printing and am grateful for how much technology has evolved, making printing so much easier and so much accessible to the masses.