Beauty in the Making is a small but engaging exhibit occupying Victoria House Basement in London’s Southampton Row. Staged by GF Smith and featuring a three-point trail involving paper, type and print – more specifically GF Smith’s own Colorplan papers, Monotype Gill Sans and letterpress imaging from Downey & Co.

Palettes of paper topped with a die-cut (or laser-cut?) sheet form the signs that direct you around the activities and installations. There’s plenty of hands-on opportunity for the visitor. Learn (a bit) about the paper-making process, wood pulp and waste materials. Select coloured card to feed into ready-set-up letterpress machines; pull the impression yourself and produce a memento of the occasion in coloured ink (none of this would have been out of place in a school visit to the Science Museum).

The highlight for me was a couple of cabinets showing development drawings by Eric Gill of his Gill Sans family of typefaces, featuring pencilled critical notes and overdrawing in his own hand. A display of Monotype Gill specimen sheets rendered up thoughts of the type room at art school.

The most disturbing thing on display was a papier mâché modelling of Eric’s head, apparently derived from his self-portrait detailed in an earlier blog here.

My visit was a flying one so I just got a brief sniff of the show: there are talks, presentations, discussions and demonstrations going on till Friday 27 April. For me, there was a moment of inspiration from the letterpress installation that clicked off some ideas relating precisely to an earlier conversation with a client.

It’s a modest show rolling through a long space; an event designed to remind you that while the digital space may be the continually ascending focus for so much communication, that craft, material and sensation have a continuing place in the design vernacular. Used thoughtfully, ink on paper is occupying an increasingly distinct position: more exclusive, more targeted, more purposeful. And much more valuable.