portable typewriter

I was frustrated with how current publishing processes force you to spend hours alone on the computer making layouts.

Inspiration by Robert Ochshorn's wonderful desert journalism project I wanted to respond to these frustrations by making printing available in spaces where it currently isn’t and by doing that move away from the extensive and bulky infrastructure which is typically needed to create a printed page.

This was a personal project. To fulfil my vision, I decided to make a portable, battery-operated receipt printer typewriter.

I acquired all the necessary components (Arduino, battery, receipt printer, keyboard) and wrote the Arduino code needed for the different parts to interface with each other. I then went out to test the functioning prototype. It quickly became clear that the small portable typewriter and access to immediate printing enables a lot of activities which traditional publishing does.

Doing this project resulted in deeper appreciation of printing as a medium - in many ways it became a {pointers} towards a new media which could spring fourth from further exploring printing and portability.