New Year, New Type

Starting a new year with a printed homage to great type is always a good idea. Starshaped scored a great deal of new metal and wood type this year and it's time it pulled some weight. So this year's New Year card features type from a few different metal type foundries alongside the snowflakes from our collaboration with Moore Wood Type. The idea was to take a standard rectangular form and make it appear as if the snowflakes were swooping in to break it apart. Below is a reversed image (so it's easy to read) of the main sections of the type form before separating them.

How about a typographic rundown? 'Wishing' is a new cast of Ray Shade by Hill & Dale Type Foundry in West Virginia. 'You A' and 'ew ear' are Latin Ornate and Tuscan Graille, both from Skyline Type Foundry. 'Starshaped Press Chicago' is 6pt Camelot and the N and Y initial caps have yet to be identified. 'Happy' is a mortised initial cap with Dakota. The three main borders are from Bixler Letterfoundry, courtesy of Punky Press, coupled with tiny bits and pieces from our collection.

After a quick carbon paper proof of the forms, I scanned them so that I could figure out the best angles and build the rest of the piece digitally. This is the cheat sheet printed out with the placement of the sections and snowflakes. It is marked up to determine the measurements of the angled furniture I needed to cut to square up the sections.

Here you can see the angled furniture that holds the sections in place and keeps them flush with the rest of the form.

I first pulled a few proofs on the actual paper with the entire form to set up placement and look for any wacky spacing issues. After that was established, I took out all of the second color, leaving just the sections to be printed in burgundy. I marked the spacing with a sharpie so I would remember what I added in place of the type that was there.

The burgundy read well on Wrought Iron, dark gray stock from Neenah's Environment line. It matched the Paver Red envelopes from French Paper. Printing dark inks on dark papers can always be a bit of a crap shoot but this worked well. Silver is a no-brainer. The registration is pretty tight, and given the angles in play here, that's impressive.

Next up were the snowflakes. I trimmed most of mine to be as close to the edge of the design as possible so that they could almost sit on top of each other.

Figuring out what ink they'd be printed in was more challenging. My first thought was opaque white so I could test how this would perform on the gray paper. But the white competed with the silver and the type receded, which was definitely not desirable. So I tried transparent white as well as variations on this with differing degrees of silver and black mixed in. The final was a combination of all of these.

While the snowflakes were set up on press, I used them to print the front of the envelopes as well, where they appear a little darker on burgundy stock. The silver on these is particularly striking. More great initial caps.

I was very pleased with how the cards turned out, as they hit all of my bases for typography as well as great paper and ink combinations. The challenges of setting this form were also very pleasing and it's great to see both old and new type functioning on a heightened level. One of the plans for the studio this year is to really highlight some of the gems of the Starshaped collection and use them in similar ways to how they would have been used 100 years ago, but with (hopefully) a modern breath of fresh air.

Two Cities That Never Sleep - NSS 2014

It's been a while since the last post, but the studio has been caught up in attending the National Stationery Show for the first time, which was a stellar success. On top of our normal work load of custom projects, I designed our 10x10' booth, painted it, printed countless new products (more on those soon), created our first ever print catalog and brought to life numerous promotional pieces in advance of the show. As we expand our reach outside of custom work, NSS is a great opportunity to get work in front of wholesale buyers. The first piece we created specifically for the show was a contribution to the annual Legion Paper scavenger hunt. A number of small shops participate, and this year the theme was alphabet flash cards. Luckily, I got letter M, which was perfect for this theme:

Legion supplied the paper, and I chose Stonehenge Fawn, which is a soft, American made cotton paper. The card is printed in two colors and of course uses all metal type, including the fabulous two-color Alphablox.

The card was, I'm happy to say, popular, and will be the basis for a series of letter cards in the near future. The form is really wonderful; we can create modular letterforms out of very ornate pieces.

The type for the colophon on the back of the card:

While we printed by day, we painted by night. Mr. Starshaped graciously built all of our hard booth walls, as well as the crate in which they shipped to NY. Some truly talented friends came over in the evening over the course of a week to help lay down the highly detailed ornamental cityscape that was the theme. It was entirely painted by hand, including the booth number. I didn't want to let our sign painter friends down by using vinyl!

I also printed up new cards, note pads and stationery to have on hand, also matching our booth and studio. This was a great excuse to work with the Virkotype initial set that's been screaming to be used. Three colors!

While busily printing away, I was pleased to find that our cityscape note card sets were accepted as a finalist for Best New Product at the show, which required putting together this board. We now offer 5 other options besides Chicago, including New York, Seattle, Philly, San Francisco and a Small Town version if city living isn't your thing.

The swan song of printing for the show was the pre-show mailer. This went out to a selection of stores that I wanted to meet in New York as well as other printers I was anxious to meet face to face. It was printed in an edition of about 100, and included an outer wrapper and accordion fold insert featuring many of the popular sections of our cityscape collection. And how about that sexy typographic curve?

I pulled in bits of Carl Sandburg's 'Chicago' poem because he sums it up so well. Even the envelopes have little 6-pointed Chicago stars.

At last! The Bulldog Lock Co. Building we have enjoyed residing in for the last ten years made an appearance on this piece.

One of the final touches for the booth was piecing together the sign. I'm particularly excited about this, as I had commissioned the laser cut right-reading type from Moore Wood Type last summer and it now has a proper place in a large 14x20" chase with real furniture and quoins. I wanted it to be as close to the real deal as possible, given that all of our work is created with metal and wood type.

To round out our 'bringing a piece of Chicago' to New York theme, the give away piece in our booth was a small card printed to resemble the Chicago flag, with a little history of it on the back side. Glued to each is a real piece of type, acquired from Skyline Type Foundry. This proved to be a very popular item at the show!

After breathing a sigh of relief that our crate made it safely, Lindsey of Gingerly Press, my assistant for the week, and I went about squishing it into our space. Here she is holding onto the walls while our neighbors behind us banged on their booth while setting up lights. It was the only really scary moment of our set up!

Once we were done, though, I couldn't have been happier with the look. You can see the detail of the hand painted ornaments and the sign really popped. I built the table out of a type case, a sheet of plexiglass and two legs from Ikea. All of the prints and cards fit neatly within the building structures, which made it easy to get them all in place.

One of the days, we had the pleasure of having Frances come and help us out, alongside her mom (not pictured here). It's so wonderful to have supportive and talented friends lend a hand!

Given that set up went well, we had a day to walk around New York, which always means a trip to Bowne & Co. down in the South Street Seaport area. It's a worthwhile trip for disciples of metal type and 19th century processes. Lucky for us, Bowne swung into the show on the last day, and we received this beautiful little hand cut card!

The biggest pleasure of being at the show was sharing it with old friends and finding new ones. Amber of A. Favorite Design has been a friend and neighbor for many years and was extremely helpful in show prep. She and Tom take the cake for cutest couple!

It was also a pleasure to (finally) meet Kathryn of Blackbird Letterpress, who makes beautiful, quirky cards, including one of her dog. You can see his large cut out in this picture.

I am also a huge admirer of Katharine Watson, who keeps it old school in a different way, creating all of her beautiful pieces with hand carved linoleum blocks.

And of course the shop I have always admired, Hammerpress. Their style and attention to detail in typography is a real standout at the show, not to mention inspiration.

There was definitely fun, albeit the expensive variety, to be had while there. We attended Paper Party one night with our longtime friend and neighbor Emily of Orange Beautiful, and new friends from Cincinnati, Steam Whistle Letterpress.

And then it was time to pack up and go. Our booth was reduced to a pile of flats ready to be packed away until early next Spring when we bring them out for repainting and repurposing. I've already got ideas for next years adventure! Overall, the experience made the trip worthwhile, not to mention the number of orders we received, especially from new stores, as well as feedback on a number of our projects.

But it's always good to be back in the studio, designing and printing the day away.

The Society of Typographic Arts

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!