If you have any interest in the history of printing, the Platen Press Museum is a must see place in Zion, Illinois (about an hour north of Chicago). It's run by Paul Aken, who is very much a mentor and booster of all things Starshaped. My relationship with Paul goes back many years to when I routinely went to the museum to help identify type and learn as much as possible about printing. Every Spring Paul hosts a type sale at the museum to clean out many of the duplicate typefaces, as well as other bits and pieces necessary to the craft. For the last two years, the sale has also include complete tabletop and sign presses, all set up and ready to print. If you're just getting started, or looking for a few missing things that would make your print practice that much better, this is a not-to-be-missed event. Today I went up to Zion to help identify, label and price some of the type that will be available. I'm thrilled to say there are some real gems set to go for the sale!

Here are the details:

Saturday, May 4th, 2013 · 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Cases, Type, Tools, Supplies, Toy Presses, Books, Bits and Bobs

Table Top Presses (Pilots, Sigwalts, Kelseys) with new rollers and a starter kit

3051 Sheridan Rd. · Zion, IL 60099

847-746-8170 * 847-731-1945 * platenpress@sbcglobal.net

One Day Sale - No Shipping

Here's a tease of just a few of the typefaces that are fonted up for sale. Type is also sold by the pound in cases, and there are blank cases as well. You really can't beat the prices (type ranges from $10-$100), not to mention the company of fellow printers that will be shopping. Hope to see you there!

Stephanie and I met at IndieWed back in January, and she was instantly smitten with our Wanted! Wedding Collection. She loved the idea of the 3-panel, accordion fold style, so that their names could be large and the details could be on the second panel. We looked at a number of color options, but greens seemed to stick, so we went with a dark chartreuse and warm gray on textured off white card stock. Gotta love the 'messiness' in this wood type!

These little fan-like ornaments used throughout are new to the studio. They were a recent purchase from Skyline Type Foundry and have already put in appearances on a number of projects.

More little ornaments from the same Skyline collection. The more type the merrier... and check out the shading on 'DINNER'. Can't get that detail in magnesium or polymer plates.

And it's finished out with a mad libs-style perforated reply postcard.

While working on the invites, we also put together some fun flat cards to be used as thank you notes and anything else the couple might need them for. And because Keith goes by both Conley and, ahem, Keith, we put their first and middle names on the cards. These use some of our tiniest wood type, which is just shy of an inch.

We had such a good time with the invites and note cards, Keith wanted to do a run of rehearsal dinner invitations as well. These could be more playful and definitely push the Wild West theme (unfortunately we didn't have any small gun ornaments as requested, but did have some pretty awesome manicules, or little hands).

There's a lot of heavy forced justification in this layout, which is a great way to tie together disparate typefaces. And the diamond shaped linotype slugs were found at the always great Platen Press Museum type sale back in May. The pointers next to 'given by' are over 100 years old, and were made right here in Chicago.

To stand out from the invite, we printed on kraft stock and worked in brick colored envelopes. What's really WANTED! in this picture? The chance to work with Stephanie & Keith again!