Dafi Kühne, Switzerland (2025)
Dafi Kühne is a Swiss graphic designer and letterpress printmaker. He studied Visual Communication at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and holds a Research-Masters Degree in Typeface Design...
Read full biographyDafi Kühne is a Swiss graphic designer and letterpress printmaker. He studied Visual Communication at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and holds a Research-Masters Degree in Typeface Design from University of Reading, UK. Since 2009, he has been working full-time in his studio babyinktwice.ch in the Swiss Alps using a mix of analog and digital tools to create large scale letterpress printed posters. He is guided by one central restriction: «No digital PDF ever leaves the studio as a final product.» He produces all his posters autonomously on old analog printing presses.
His first monograph, «True Print», was published in 2016, the follow up «Poster Cult!» was published in 2024, both with Lars Müller Publishers. He teaches on a project basis at various universities in Switzerland, Europe, and the USA. Dafi runs the Typographic–Summer–Program.com in Switzerland—an international two-week program with participants from all over the world. Since 2018, he has been publishing a series of web videos entitled «The Dafi Kühne Printing Show™,» which in 2021 received both a Swiss Design Award and a Tokyo TDC prize.
Publications
True Print
(2016)
- Reto Caduff
Lars Müller Publishers
Dafi Kühne is a Swiss designer who merges analogue and digital techniques to create bold, unique letterpress posters. Using tools from computers to pantographs, he pushes design’s boundaries and works hands-on through every step, from idea to print. Blending modern methods with letterpress tradition, he forms a fresh, contemporary language of type and form that expands today’s graphic expression: true print.
Poster Cult!
(2024)
Lars Müller Publishers
Dafi Kühne, one of Switzerland's foremost poster designers, creates bold, large-format works that embrace both traditional production tools and modern design processes. He prints on 1960s letterpresses, but his results look anything but typical, pushing boundaries using analog presses, software, and laser cutters. Working from his vast Swiss Alps studio, he simultaneously drives poster culture and upholds the "cult of the poster."
Exhibitions
Baby Ink Twice!
2022
Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography, Pasadena, CA
The Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography [HMCT] at ArtCenter College of Design presents Baby Ink Twice: Letterpress Posters by Dafi Kühne, January 4 through March 15, 2022 at the HMCT South Campus Gallery.
Buchdruckplakate?
2023
Museum für Druckkunst, Leipzig
Dafi Kühne: Letterpress posters? The exhibition displays unique (typographic) posters by Swiss designer and letterpress printer Dafi Kühne. From computers to pantographs, he uses a wide variety of tools for his designs and prints on presses from the 1960s. But do letterpress-printed posters still make sense in the digital age? The Swiss designer's 100 letterpress posters provide some answers to this question.
Werkstattschau mit Dafi Kühne
2024
Gewerbemuseum, Winterthur
The award-winning Swiss poster designer and letterpress printer Dafi Kühne combines contemporary graphic design with traditional printing techniques in an unconventional way. In addition to digital design and production tools, he uses traditional methods to produce his work. The “Workshop Exhibition” provides an insight into his diverse work and focuses on processes, experiments, and tools.
Awards
2025
2021
2021
2014