We recently finished a broadside project for the Society of Typographic Arts, located right here in Chicago. Obviously, typographic was the way to go! The broadside is intended as a welcome gift to new members and for promotional purposes, so it's scaled to 8x10" to fit in a mailer. It's printed simply in just one color on each side.

I created a circular shape without actually putting any of the type on a curve. There are about 9 different typefaces of historical importance, combined with 19th century ornaments forced into a more modern configuration. Here's a little close up:

The backside of the print has a small and subtle colophon that's directly behind where the front circle of type is.

For this piece, the form images are just as beautiful as the actual print:

It's always great to work with folks that love type as much as we do!

Every once in a while, the stars align and we can sneak jobs on press during our busiest times. I was recently contacted by Sarah McGuire, a local jewelry artist, about her upcoming 10th anniversary open house, with the hope that we could come up with a great invitation in a short period of time. Yes! Here's what we did, photographed with one of Sarah's lovely necklaces.

Sarah wanted a broadside-styled card with blocky, simple typefaces in various sizes, and definitely printed in silver.

This is the form, showing the combination of metal type, wood type and rules (used for printing lines).

Here's the form in the press, inked and ready to go.

After the basic setup, I've found that large wood type often doesn't print as well combined with small type on a platen press. I took out the larger wood elements and filled them with spacing (called furniture) in order to run the small type first. After that, I put the wood back in and replaced the metal type with furniture. Two runs for one color seems like a pain, but the result is that much better and two runs on the platen are still faster than one on the Vandercook, where everything could be printed at the same time.

Here's the studio address, in our own lovely Ravenswood neighborhood! We will be celebrating with Sarah in her lovely new space on April 26th, and hope to see you there, too.