Moveable Type Studio

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Moveable Type Studio

Movable Type Studio: Bringing letterpress printmaking to regional and remote Australia.

A fully equipped mobile letterpress printmaking studio that can come to your community.

23/05/2026

Queensland Brand Designs isn’t just about livestock branding irons, it’s a typographic system developed around the 1872 brands Act of Australia. Each brand mark is its own unique combination of characters.

On the 13th June, we’re bringing that typographic system to life at .

Using traditional letterpress, you’ll design and print your own brand mark, which then becomes a part of a collectively bound “brand register”.

Two sessions available on Saturday 13th June:
9am–12pm or 1pm–4pm

Spaces are limited. Link in bio.

20/05/2026

For those who don’t know, is a not-for-profit with no external funding, just a tiny team, volunteers, and the support of members keeping stuff happening. They publish IMPRINT, the only dedicated printmaking journal in Australia, run the annual Print Commission (going since 1967), and champion printmakers across the country.

Last year our good friend and advisor .heather wrote this cover story about Moveable Type Studio for IMPRINT. We’re sharing a few pages from it here because it’s a good read, but also because it reminds us how much the PCA matters to what we do and to the wider print community.

Please consider joining your membership directly keeps IMPRINT in print.

PCA Membership link in bio

19/05/2026

We are so fortunate to be featured in Issue 13 of . 8 glossy colour pages on Moveable Type Studio, and we still can’t quite believe it. Jimmy Hornet is one of Australia’s most distinctive independent magazines: print only, ad-free, and built entirely on the vision of its founder Anthea Palmer. We took a copy along to our Handset workshop at last weekend. It moved between participants hands and sat between the type cases and the brayers all day. Thank you Anthea for the generous feature and for building something that proves independent print is alive and worth continuing to fight for. If you’ve never picked up a copy of Jimmy Hornet, do yourself a favour. A validating, and inspiring publication, highly recommended reading for creatives at every stage of obsession. Head to to grab Issue 13, we’ve also put a link in our bio too and if you want to get your own hands inky, our next workshops will be on our link tree soon!

17/05/2026

Day two of our Handset workshop at the with the and the slang poster came together. What a session!

Today was all about turning individual Australian slang words into a cohesive design. The group worked with two chases of type, layering both transparent and opaque colours, and talked through how the spacing between letterforms gives each word its weight. Kerning became a real conversation, how the space between letters can make a word feel loud or quiet.

Design by committee has never been more balanced. Everyone had a say, and the poster that came off the press is pure collective energy.

Huge thanks to the Toowoomba Art Society and the Saturday Print Makers for such a beautifully maintained and welcoming space, what a weekend.

16/05/2026

Day one of our Handset letterpress workshop at the and what a ripper start! We set up alongside Rosemary Williamson’s stunning oil paintings of trees, landscapes and the Australian sun. The contrast between her work and our wood type collection made for a dynamic shared space.

Participants got up close and personal with traditional wood type today, hand-setting Australian slang letter by letter. There’s something special about watching people slow down, pick up each piece of type and figure out how it all fits together.

Another highlight was seeing kids and families wander through, drawn in by the type cases and the press. The curiosity was genuine and infectious. It’s got us thinking about a dedicated family day where young ones and their grown-ups can get creative with letterpress together. Watch this space.

Big thanks to Barnaby for his energy and enthusiasm, and to the Toowoomba Art Society for having us.

Day two tomorrow. Come say g’day.

12/05/2026

Juggling multiple balls in the air is part of the process! Love it

11/05/2026

We made this handprinted letterpress poster across two impressions. The first from a chase of historic woodtype, set by hand. The second from a laser-engraved plate. Re-inked between each pass, every sheet finding the balance between too much pressure and too little. 
BOOM CHICKA BOOM. The sound Johnny Cash’s backing band made. That rolling, train-track rhythm underneath everything. He named his 76th album after it in 1990. 
The word “chicka” started as a scan of a letterpress print of smaller woodtype, reworked digitally and composed alongside a halftone of Cash, then engraved into a single plate. Old type feeding new type.

Run your fingers across the woodtype letters and you’ll feel where the borers have been. Tiny tracks eaten through the endgrain, decades before the woodtype ever met our ink. Next to that, the laser plate sits clean and precise. Both surfaces carrying the image. 
DIPLOMACY BY THE BARREL.
Four words about fuel, power, and foreign policy. The kind of commentary you can make on a poster that tends to get rinsed out in the digital landscape. Nobody can throttle it, flag it, or bury it. It just says what it says  
Once you understand relief printing, the tools are everywhere. A laser engraver, a lino block, a carved piece of timber. The wood and lead type goes back in the container with us. The principle stays with you. 
We’re at this weekend 16th & 17th May with Handset, a two-day typographic workshop. Saturday and Sunday, 10am to 3pm. You’ll set type, lock up a forme, ink, register, and print your own edition from our Pop-Up Press. Three spots left out of eight. Link in bio or find Clint Harvey @ MTS on Eventbrite.

26/04/2026

Moveable Type Studio is heading to Toowoomba in May, and we’re spending time in the Garden City with a pair of events at the

On Friday 15 May, we’re kicking off with Ink & Drink, a relaxed evening session introducing the fundamentals of letterpress. With a glass of wine in hand, come and work with real wood type and printing cuts (stereotypes), learn how these materials were used in commercial and community print shops for over a century. No experience needed, just curiosity and a willingness to get inky.

Then on Saturday and Sunday, 16 and 17 May (10am to 3pm), we’re running Handset: a typographic workshop. Two days, two traditional presses, and more letterpress equipment than is probably sensible. This one goes deeper into the traditions of hand composition. We’ll work with wood and metal type, learn how traditional forms are assembled through the lockup process, and spend enough time at the press to produce a proper hand-printed keepsake. Fair warning: you will develop opinions about letter spacing. It’s a chance to get close to a craft that’s becoming genuinely hard to find. The equipment is scarce, the people who know how to work with it are fewer, and this is not something you pick up from a YouTube tutorial.

Letterpress sits apart from other forms of printmaking. It’s not lino, it’s not etching. It’s the art of arranging individual letters and ornaments, locking them up, and printing directly from the surface in a press that runs ‘type high’. It’s how every book, newspaper and broadsheet was produced for 500 years. And yes, everything is backwards and upside down. You’ll get used to it… possibly ;)  
Spots are limited for both sessions, and once they’re full, they’re full. Book via the links in our bio.

Address

The Paint Factory/115 Hyde Road Yeronga
Brisbane, QLD
4104

Website

http://moveabletypestudio.com/, https://linktr.ee/moveabletypestudio

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