Why do we assume precision as a default condition in graphic design, and what becomes visible when that assumption is removed?
I began this project by reproducing an existing linocut print in order to understand relief printing through fidelity rather than invention. The method appears prettz straightforward: transfer, carve, ink, press. But in practice it reveals where “control” is only an assumption. Straight lines and angular shapes were relatively manageable, circles were not. A circle is unforgiving: even a small deviation becomes immediately legible, especially at small scale. That resistance made the circle the most useful test form, because it forced the medium to show its limits clearly.
Once I hit that weak point, I did something slightly irrational but completely instructive, I stayed there. I kept returning to circles, not because I wanted a “circle project,” but because I realised that if you want to understand a method, you don’t pick the thing it does well. You pick the thing it does badly and insist on it. The circle became a way to strip the work down to process: no illustration to hide behind, no style to distract from the mechanics.
I iterated the problem with intention. I reduced scale until the method started to crack, tested positive and negative versions (outline versus filled forms), and watched how relief printing amplifies what the hand tries to hide: uneven pressure, ink pooling, and micro-slips in placement. I also tried the obvious “proper” tools. A compass cutter can draw a perfect circle as a line, but that perfection is often useless here: the cut can be too thin or too shallow to hold ink. That was a turning point. It taught me that precision in relief printing isn’t a drawing problem. It’s a physical edge problem: a form has to exist as a raised boundary that survives pressure, ink, and repetition.
That’s why I moved from carving to embossing. Instead of describing circles through cuts, I began pressing them directly into linoleum using improvised cylindrical tools, most successfully, a spent shell casing. Embossing felt like switching from handwriting to stamping: less expressive, more mechanical. But it didn’t “solve” precision. It exposed the cost of it. Each press altered the matrix. The surface remembered. The second circle never happened on a neutral surface, and the hundredth certainly didn’t.
My final work is where this became impossible to ignore. I drew a 1cm × 1cm grid on a rectangular piece of linoleum and embossed 300 circles, one per cell, attempting to centre each circle by hand. The number matters. A single imperfect circle is just a mistake; hundreds become a pattern. At this scale, the work stops being “an image” and becomes a stress test: how long can geometric precision be sustained before fatigue, pressure shifts, and material memory begin to write their own version of the grid?
Jencks and Silver’s concept of adhocism frames this as an enquiry rather than a workaround. Adhocism argues for using available systems in unexpected combinations to generate new outcomes and knowledge (Jencks and Silver, 2013). The casing is “ready-made geometry,” but it does not erase error, it makes it measurable. What the grid finally reveals is not that humans are imperfect (that’s obvious), but that “default precision” is not a natural state at all. It is a condition we are used to receiving for free. Remove it, and the body reappears slowly, visibly, and all over the surface.
References
Jencks, C. and Silver, N. (2013) Adhocism: The Case for Improvisation. Expanded and updated edn. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.