Lancaster Print Crawl Strengthens Community Through Print
This year's poster was designed by Xani Dean, a Lancaster-based illustrator.
On Friday, Sept. 5, downtown Lancaster City was abuzz as its annual Print Crawl returned to the streets to create an immersive print experience for the community. Located in Central Pennsylvania, the small city is not only known for its rich history and notable horse-and-buggy sightings – it’s also home to a thriving arts culture, myriad small businesses, and, of course, print.
Now in its ninth year, the Print Crawl is a self-guided tour through Lancaster’s local print shops and creative spaces where participants create a printed, take-home poster. The crawl features a pay-what-you-can model where visitors receive a blank poster and set out on a one-mile loop. Each stop showcases a different style of printmaking – screen printing, letterpress, laser cut, 3D printing, and more – that adds a unique element to the poster. By the end of the crawl, the once-blank posters have transformed into a finished, collaborative piece of art.
“Lancaster has always been a printing hub, both locally and even internationally,” Megan Zettlemoyer, owner of Lancaster-based Typothecary Letterpress, and the driving force behind the Crawl, notes. “We also have a great design community locally, between our colleges and universities, and design agencies that call Lancaster home. In a world where ‘print is dead’ has become a pretty common phrase, I felt we needed to let our community know that it is very much alive and well here at home.”
While participants lined up at the printing stations, Lancaster’s shops stayed open late, adding to the First Friday fun.
And the community showed up in full force to prove it. With lines trailing around the block at each station, spreading the word about the Print Crawl to approximately 2,000 people is an undertaking.
“We have a variety of sponsors who support the event in the way of volunteering time or services, donating supplies, or even sharing venue space the night of the crawl,” Zettlemoyer notes. From local small shops and breweries to the big names in the printing industry – such as Domtar, which sponsored the paper used for the posters and programs – the resounding support helps lower the out-of-pocket costs and create a more accessible event.
While sponsors and local businesses play a critical role in the Crawl, the many college students that were manning press stations serve as another cornerstone of the event.
“Students help me with last minute preparation the first few weeks of school as well as volunteering during the event or participating in the event itself,” says Zettlemoyer, who is also a professor at Thaddeus Stevens College. “When the event started in 2017, we had students or recent graduates design the posters.”
Shop owners and students assisted participants with hands-on printmaking.
Though the poster design has since shifted to local artists in recent years, supporting Lancaster’s graphic communications students remains central to the Crawl’s purpose. In fact, a raffle is set up to raise money for the Graphic Communications Printing Technology program at Thaddeus Stevens College, as well as a Graphic Design student at Pennsylvania College of Art & Design.
At its core, the Print Crawl is more than an evening on the town – it’s a celebration of Lancaster’s creative spirit.
“As a small business owner, I aim to help bring visibility to my fellow small businesses while also educating the community about the printing process and give them a fun takeaway at the end,” Zettlemoyer says when asked what she hopes participants take away from the event. “Any time we can create community-building events that get people out from behind their screens for a few hours and interact with each other, it feels like a win!”
Together with local businesses, sponsors, students, and neighbors, the Print Crawl embodies the enduring impact that print still has in connecting people and strengthening communities – and that surely is a win.
Jessie Farrigan is the production editor for the Printing & Packaging Group at NAPCO Media.
