Dafi Kühne

Poster Cult

Dafi Kühne is one of Switzerland’s foremost poster designers whose diverse, bold work embraces both traditional production tools and modern design processes. Although his posters are printed on presses from the 1960s, they do not look like typical letterpress prints. Instead, they connect with the history of letterpress production while pushing the boundaries of long-established graphic and typographic techniques. Using analog printing presses, computer software applications, laser cutters, and freshly cast hot-metal-type, he creates wildly creative, large-format posters. Working from his vast letterpress studio in the Swiss Alps, Dafi Kühne simultaneously drives poster culture and upholds the cult of the poster.

Kühne’s first monograph with Lars Müller Publishers, True Print, served as an introduction to Dafi’s work from the years 2009 to 2016. “Poster Cult” focuses on the processes, background and context that inform his more recent poster work.

Dafi Kühne is one of Switzerland’s foremost poster designers whose diverse, bold work embraces both traditional production tools and modern design processes. Although his posters are printed on presses from the 1960s, they do not look like typical letterpress prints. Instead, they connect with the history of letterpress production while pushing the boundaries of long-established graphic and typographic techniques. Using analog printing presses, computer software applications, laser cutters, and freshly cast hot-metal-type, he creates wildly creative, large-format posters. Working from his vast letterpress studio in the Swiss Alps, Dafi Kühne simultaneously drives poster culture and upholds the cult of the poster.

Kühne’s first monograph with Lars Müller Publishers, True Print, served as an introduction to Dafi’s work from the years 2009 to 2016. “Poster Cult” focuses on the processes, background and context that inform his more recent poster work.

Author(s): Dafi Kühne

With photographs by Peter Hauser

With a contribution by Angelina Lippert, Christian Brändle

24 × 30 cm, 9 ½ × 11 ¾ in

163 pages, 80 illustrations

2024, 978-3-03778-777-9, English
CHF 50.00
New

Dafi Kühne

Dafi Kühne, born in 1982, is a graphic designer. He studied Visual Communication at Zurich University of the Arts and owns a design and letterpress printing studio named babyinktwice in a remote Swiss mountain valley. In his studio, he designs and prints typographic posters for music, art, architecture, theatre and film projects, but also for products. All his posters go through the process of letterpress printing on a traditional press. No PDF ever leaves his studio as a finished product. For the reproduction of his posters, Dafi uses a variety of tools from a Computer, to traditional set type, pantograph cut new type, laser engraved pear wood blocks, hand cast plastic resin… Just with one goal, to push the quality and the boundaries of his designs.