Northern Design Festival co-founders Toni and Niamh introduced me to Oli Bentley, a true design powerhouse and a fitting voice for this year’s festival. I am in awe of Oli’s design practice and his community-focused and meaningful letterpress work at The People Powered Press in Bradford.
Find out more about the work of The People Powered Press here in this beautiful film by Michael McCabe.
(P.S - Another incredible design-focused organisation based in Bradford is Design Reviewed, who was featured in the previous edition of All in a Day’s Work)
Alongside running design studio Split and The People Powered Press, Oli is also the author and curator of These Northern Types, a publication rooted in his pride of being a Northerner.
The book, made up of 17 smaller publications, reframes something we often take for granted in our day-to-day design work. As designers, we regularly build and shape identities, especially brand and visual identities, but Oli turns this on its face. In These Northern Types, he investigates what it really means to have a Northern identity and questions the Northern clichés, we can all name a few. A memorable moment of the publication is its exploration of screen printing with gravy and curry sauce, a classic Northern cliché. The finer details in the publication design like the paper stock, type and printing finishes explore what is intrinsic to being Northern. In doing so, the work examines both the identity and the physicality of the book itself. The publication also underpins the balance of pride and exclusion within a Northern identity through music, essays and typography to create a multifaceted portrait of the North.
It feels especially resonant with this year’s Northern Design Festival theme: heritage. So far the festival has explored Heritage through the bespoke typeface ‘Lancer’ designed in partnership with F37. And the recent “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Northerner” billboard campaign in partnership with Open Media UK showcased the typeface publicly across Newcastle, Manchester and Liverpool. After 10 editions of All in a Day's Work, its safe to say I am still thoroughly enjoying reading and reflecting on all the incredible work happening in the North so thank you Oli for getting involved and showing your support.
Image: These Northern Types by Oli Bentley
Name:
Oli Bentley
Role:
Creative Director Split, and the People Powered Press
Summary of your work:
I run the design studio Split, and its slightly mad non-profit offshoot, The People Powered Press.
The studio specialises in design for creative, cultural and community clients — lots of music artwork, work with arts organisations, architects and community non-profits. All the lovely folks. We also publish our own personal/studio work, often with a focus on identity, power and place.
Starting the day |
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Image: You have no idea what these women have been through to achive these three words — A mural created by a group of recent migrants from community group BIASAN, displayed in the centre of Bradford
The working day |
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End of the day |
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Image: Oli's work includes album artwork for a wide range of internation jazz and alternative music stars — work which has increasingly involved letterpress printing
Day after day: |
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Image: Together — a new book from Split and the People Powered Press — documents the Together community mural project to date which won a graphite and wood pencil at the 2025 DandAD Awards
Thank you Oli for the insight into your day’s work. It is clear that impact and connection with people on a human level through design is crucial to the People Powered press and Oli’s design practice. Recently collaborating with one of their patrons, Anthony Burrill the Press has produced large-scale prints at a record-breaking size using their letterpress and bespoke typefaces. The scale of the printing gives these voices a sense of protest, importance, and grandeur, elevating everyday messages into something that demands to be seen and heard. As Oli mentions, power is often held financially, culturally, and politically at the other end of the country (not in the North), highlighting just how important and moving these projects are.
Moreover, as Oli says, he doesn’t believe that The People Powered Press could exist outside of the North in London. And that one of the fortunate aspects of being based up North is having time and space. Interestingly, all the creatives and designers I have interviewed for this series are, in many ways, community-centred and inclusive designers, like Foundation Press in Gateshead and Keir M Barnett in Sheffield. I’s something we’re proud to champion at Northern Design Festival, where community is the foundation of the festival itself. Through this year’s events, commissions, and talks, we continue to explore what it means to be Northern today.
Maybe, with more time and space, Northerners can focus on value - value in what they are creating and making, and value in who they are working with on a social level, bypassing any commercial restraints. Or maybe it is part of our Northern identity.
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed, let me know your thoughts and stay tuned for the next editions of All in a Day's Work by Millie Jobson !
Image: Oli Bentley -rachael-munro-fawcett-91.jpg)
Image: A group from Inclusion North visit the People Powered Press to print letters for a mural (c) Rachael Munro-Fawcett
