Dafi Kühne Proves That Letterpress is Not About Looking Back, But About Pushing Forward

In Dafi Kühne’s hands, graphic design becomes a physical act — one where ink, pressure, and paper define the outcome as much as typography itself. The Swiss graphic designer and letterpress printmaker has built a practice that bridges digital design and analogue production, bringing a distinctly contemporary approach to one of the oldest printing techniques.

Based in the Swiss Alps, Kühne runs his studio babyinktwice, founded in 2009, where he designs and produces posters, books, and printed matter for clients across music, art, architecture, theatre, and film. At the core of his philosophy is a clear principle: no purely digital outcomes. No PDF leaves the studio as a finished product. Instead, every piece is physically printed, making production inseparable from design. He is not only shaping the visual result, but also the process, the tools, and ultimately the tactile experience of each work.

While rooted in traditional letterpress, Kühne’s design approach is far from nostalgic

Kühne’s posters combine contemporary graphic design with analogue printing technologies, creating a bold and experimental visual language. Working with presses from the 1960s, alongside metal and wood type, linoleum, laser-cut forms, and custom-built tools, he continually expands the possibilities of the craft. In his workshop, which is filled to the ceiling with tonnes of printing equipment, paper becomes an active element, carefully selected for how it receives ink, pressure, and impression.

Kühne’s process balances precision with experimentation. Digital tools are used to design, but the outcome is shaped through manual production, where control meets unpredictability. Clean compositions collide with texture, misregistration, and depth. Embracing imperfections as part of the expression rather than flaws to eliminate. As he notes, “I’m interested in having full control over the whole process.”

At the centre of his practice are posters. Bold typographic works that exist as physical objects rather than flat images. For paper enthusiasts, this is where his work resonates most. Each piece is defined by its material qualities: embossed surfaces, layered colours, and the visible trace of pressure. Paper is not just a carrier, but a collaborator, holding the memory of every impression.

Alongside his studio work, Kühne is an active educator, teaching workshops and university courses internationally, and running the Typographic Printing Program, an intensive course dedicated to poster design and letterpress. Through teaching, he shares his belief that understanding materials and processes is essential to meaningful design. In the past two years, two books have been published by Lars Müller Publishers on the poster work of Dafi Kühne, with “True Print” documenting his poster work from 2009-2016, and a follow-up book titled “Poster Cult!” documenting the processes and work from 2016-2024.

Dafi Kühne’s work ultimately challenges the role of print in a digital world. By insisting on the physical, he repositions paper as something active, expressive, and full of possibility — proving that letterpress is not about looking back, but about pushing forward.