Humans of TU Delft: Sinan Aydin

“There’s basically one copy shop in the city of Delft and they have a shop inside the faculty. The first time I printed there I thought it was ridiculously expensive.

First, I came up with the idea to start a petition to lower the prices, but I couldn’t get enough students to back it up. Then the idea came to me to consider starting something up together with the people who did back me up. A print shop is a really old idea, you know, nobody opens a print shop anymore. But I wanted to try and see if it would work.

‘It turns out we are the cheapest print shop in the Netherlands’

At the time, I was thinking of renting a place where I could just do my work as a designer and two of my friends were interested in joining me with this project. We always work from home, but I proposed that we rent a small office space to work on our projects. They thought it was a good idea but they said maybe there should be something in addition to that. A space where we could work, but maybe also provide some kind of service. So then, we came back to the idea of a print shop.

We found this place that was an old shoe repair shop that was here for three generations. I told the owner I had an idea and wanted to rent for a couple of years and then we would see what happens. He wanted to sell the place, but when he heard we were students who wanted to do something for other students he wanted to try it. Part of our agreement was that we would renovate the space ourselves, which was good for the owner.

We opened around January so it’s been about 10 months now. We started getting calls while we were doing the renovation. I couldn’t figure out how they knew we were making a print shop because we didn’t do any advertising. One thing led to another and now the students of TU Delft know, but also people started showing up from really far away. Without realising it, it turns out we are the cheapest print shop in the Netherlands. We’re basically non-profit so most of what we make goes to the rent. The three of us rotate working here and sometimes other students come and help us out.”

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Heather Montague / Freelance writer