Design students Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld took an old inkjet printer apart and replaced its ink cartridge with felt pens to create an experimental printer, which they presented at Vienna Design Week.
The project began when the designers, who all study at Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, took part in a creative printing workshop.
"We were experimenting with usual inkjet printers and we modified them so that they printed with normal felt pens instead of an ink cartridge," Hagen told Dezeen at Vienna Design Week. They used wood and glue to attach the felt pens where the cartridge would normally be.
Above image is by Nick Albert/kollektiv fischka
"The tricky part of this project was to kind of pretend to the printer that it had a full cartridge, and also that it didn't try to completely destroy the paper with too much pressure of the felt pen, or with the way the paper is sucked in," explained Hagen.
Above image is by Nick Albert/kollektiv fischka
"The fascinating thing was the mixture between the perfection of a machine and the reference to handwriting," he said. "It was a really uncommon, new aesthetic that we were generating with this technique."
Each printer ended up with an individual rhythm and style, but the pictures were printed in several layers to gain control over the process. "[There was] always this kind of theme between failure and controlling, and not being able to control the technique," Hagen added.
We've previously featured a tiny printer that prints to-do lists and messages on a till roll and a fabric printer that uses bleach instead of ink.
We're publishing a selection of projects from Vienna Design Week, including a movie of designer Martí Guixé decorating a rug with drips of paint – see all our stories from Vienna.
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Images are by PenJet except where stated.
Here's some more information from the designers:
The PenJet project is a collaboration of Rietveld Academie students Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld. The project originated from the workshop “Uncommon Usage” given by Jürg and Urs Lehni. During this workshop they experimented with the movement of printer heads. This resulted in a printer which could play a mini harp and another printer which showed the movement of the print head using an attached pen.
In time they got more control over the movements so they could experiment with type, and an adapted typeface for the PenJet emerged. Also adapted pictures were “printed” in several layers.
In general it commonly applies that the new (im)possibilities of every new technique influence the design process. This was also true for this new alternative use of a printer. Therefore it was decided to continue the project outside this workshop.
Every brand of printer has its own manner of moving and characteristic rhythm. The PenJet shows the handwriting of the machine, some fine and straight, others messy and fluent. Also, the quality settings of the printer (presentation/normal/concept) influence the way the lines are drawn.
The final result has both the imperfections of handwriting and the preciseness of a machine. Every page is unique. However, no matter much control there is, the printed result remains unpredictable. The PenJet prints random connection lines while there’s nothing to print. The represented texts refer all to transition within production processes.
