Alex Heslop

My dissertation examines how the printing industry changed in East London between 1980–1992. It not only directly challenges the dominance of existing narratives of newspaper production, but also sheds light on the mechanics of slow and complex industrial transformation. I argue that print production de-industrialised and emerged as a ‘service’, as the result of social networks within the industry deconstructing and reorganising.  

Underpinned by statistical analyses, oral histories, as well as design historical object-based and archival document research, I articulate a more realistic image of the industry network. By doing so, I offer a set of clearly-articulated methods to better understand the complexities of print production and its relationship with wider technological, political and economic contexts. Moreover, my dissertation contributes to our knowledge of how design work was understood at the time of a major shift in British post-war history and offers an alternative methodological approach to histories of print, geographies of production and to histories of industrial transformation.