Letterpress – or relief printing is the oldest of the three major printing processes. It has been used since the middle ages in all areas of printing products, such as newspapers, magazines and books.
All conventional printing methods require a printing form, the plate. The plate carries the image in the form of a relief, which has printing and non-printing areas. The original letterpress printing was done with a cut, an engraving or an etching made from lead. Today due to further developments plates are now made from fotopolymers.
The printing parts of the plate, which form the image on the substrate, are covered with ink by a set of cylinders and then pressed onto the substrate. The desired image is created as a result of this process. The benefits of this method lie between offset and flexo printing.