All things printing with Nathan from The Distillery

We chatted with Nathan, the Founder and Managing Director of The Distillery, based in Darlinghurst. His production studio is known as the gold standard for printing, a sentiment shared by design agencies across Sydney.

M: What inspired the creation of The Distillery?

N: In 2010, a few colleagues and I wanted to explore more exciting areas of tangible design.

The purpose of printing has always been functional; however, as designers, we wanted to focus on what was more creatively exciting: idea-led, tangible, engaging, and different. This is something that established commercial printers didn’t ‘get’ or care about and something that graphic designers traditionally steered clear of. As young designers, we figured that if no one else in Sydney was going to explore and open up this avenue, we may as well give it a crack! So we rolled up our sleeves and figured it out together.

M: What was your vision for the studio that you felt was missing in the industry?

N: A studio of designers who can roll up our sleeves to print, craft, and build with our hands. It matters, because if the person making it understands and cares about all those little creative nuances, chances are that it will turn out better.

In 2024, ‘graphic design’ is vastly more motion and swipe-oriented. However, it’s still flat and very much delivered behind a screen. Is that the best way? Yeah, probably more than most things, but as creative people, we have a responsibility to widen the boundaries of what’s possible and what’s sensible. Even if it’s more difficult and expensive to do, it may be more holistic and meaningful. And surely as humans, shouldn’t we strive for better?

M: What’s a standard day like in the studio?

N: We’re proudly 90%+ work from the studio—as we craft projects with our hands, and it’s more engaging and connected!

Studio flow is probably quite universal: Turn up on time, morning stand-up meeting, smaller team meetings, morning stretch of productivity, lunch, afternoon stretch of productivity, mid-afternoon coffee, wrap up, and go home on time.

We have two main teams: Production—who are on their feet and very much hands-on crafting. Consulting—who project manage and design. In 2024 there’s no job description for ‘designer’—practically speaking, all must be creative professionals who can deliver both commercial and creative value.

M: Could you guide us through the process of printing a typical invitation or poster?

N: Everyone is different, but ideally, we should work backwards. We start with design thinking to understand why we even need to print this. Can we just send a PNG? How do we want people to feel when they see this, and what do we want them to do?

Next, we consider what materials and ingredients are suitable to achieve this ideal impact.

For the production steps, we begin by gathering resources such as paper, printing plates, ink tubs, and foil rolls. After that, we prepare for printing by pre-cutting paper stocks and mixing inks. Then, we set up the printing press and print, followed by cutting down and finishing the piece. During this process, it’s important to check that the outcome achieves what we set out to achieve and to adjust if helpful.

M: What is your favourite piece of printing equipment, and why?

N: This is a good question, and I’ll give you two answers:

The real answer is the drinking cup, which holds the ‘good’ pens and Sharpies :) When printing, one always needs a good pen to write something down. Prior to the cup, good pens and Sharpies were never around!

The interesting and sentimental answer is our first press, named ‘Wolfgang’. He’s a 1959 Heidelberg T Platen manufactured by Heidelberg in Germany. He was shipped over to Sydney in the early 1960s and was part of an old printer, Chippendale Printing, until they shut down in 2010. I had Wolfgang in my mum’s garage for several months, and she understandably got really annoyed as she couldn’t park her car anymore. This made it really easy to start The Distillery commercially.

M: How do you incorporate sustainability into your letterpress process, and why is it important to you?

N: The big picture is sustainable sourcing of materials, recycling, and energy use.

All of our paper stocks are ‘FSC certified’ and sourced from paper plantations—human-made artificial forests of trees which suck carbon out of the air. Inks are low VOC—with low volatility, meaning the environment isn’t damaged. Foil rolls can also be recycled within the paper. All our waste paper is reused or recycled, and all energy is 100% green powered. We purposefully switch off and turn off air conditioning when possible. All the little things count.

As someone who calls it straight: What we do is thankfully quite normal for many organisations similar to us. In 2024, it’s thankfully quite strange if you don’t!

For many years, Australia hasn’t been able to recycle PET bottles and other marketed “recyclable materials” (as overseas countries stop accepting them, and we lack the onshore facilities). So my gripe (not that you asked!), is to be careful of greenwashing. Most ‘yellow bin’ items end up in landfill, and paper isn’t the devil. It would be really good for those in the recycling sector to figure out a way to restart recycling outside of just paper, glass, and aluminium.

M: What do you think the future holds for letterpress printing?

N: Honest and brutal answer: Printing is dead. It died a while ago, and it’s like radio and free-to-air television and newspapers. Yes, there’s going to be little revival moments akin to vinyl and Polaroids, but it’s not strong creatively (society dictates this), nor commercially, and it’s going to reduce further.

There is an optimistic answer too, in that letterpress printing forms part of tangibility. I believe the future is 99% society wired (directly) into the grid. There’s many interests pushing this.

I’d also like to think that there’s a part of culture, creativity, and humanity that every now and then wants to have its moments of escaping the phone and screen. Moments where curiosity, delight, and tangible discovery become more important. The better way, where just for that special difference; someone decides to do something more holistically that offers that little zing, something that looksand feels ‘tasty’, and brings a genuine delight to someone else.

The short-term challenge for creatives is to not ‘forget’ the other ways and successfully convince our clients that the fast, cheaper digital way isn’t the only way. And if you don’t want the algorithm, or don’t want to pay the algorithm for ‘success,’ then maybe the other tangible ways are worth exploring.

Thank you to Nathan, Evie and the team.