Lost Type... and Found

Working in a studio alone most days means that it's important to make time for collaboration. Luckily, this happens pretty regularly and these posters for Lost Type are a great example. Working with Dan Gneiding, the designer of Dude Hank along with friend Scott Moore of Moore Wood Type, the poster showcases a set of fabulous new catchphrases designed as digital fonts but cut as wood type, too, as they were traditionally produced. The following images are courtesy of Scott, as he documented his process of converting the files for each catchphrase into actual wood type, starting with the wood planed to type high (just shy of an inch).

Stencils are created for the pantograph, which traces these while the connecting arm carves the actual wood type block.

Here's a great shot of the original stencil alongside the finished piece of type.

The smallest areas and details are trimmed by hand. Love the laboriousness of this process!

The poster I printed was the combination of a laser cut Lost Type logo, the pantograph cut catchphrases and magnesium plates of the names of the designers underneath.

I printed the posters at Jim Pollock's studio, as he owns a Vandercook 320G press, which is substantially larger than our Vandercook SP-15, and capable of printing 18x24" posters.

I particularly enjoy this ampersand.

See that little POOP in there? That one was designed by new friend Frances MacLeod, which I didn't realize until well after this printing!

The posters had their own dedicated drying rack after printing, which was handy given that there were about 300.

The digital catchphrases are now available, so grab 'em and update your look. You can contact Lost Type about acquiring a poster, and Scott Moore about the possibility of getting the real deal in wood.

Words + Music

Two inspiring music projects involving violins came our way this Spring. The first was a poster for Eric Swanson's workshop in the Fine Arts Building, downtown Chicago. The historic building has beautiful brass display frames for just the sort of poster as this: The poster measures 18x24", which is substantially larger than what our press can handle, which meant spending a little time with our building mate, Jim Pollock. His Vandercook 320G is the perfect size for large prints of this nature. As you can see, even the form was impressive in size.

Eric wanted a large print with a vintage feel, including blocky gothic type. We've got that! The corner brackets were created with three ornaments pieced together. All were produced by Moore Wood Type. Mixing old and new elements gives work produced in the studio a fresher, cleaner feel than similar projects produced 100 years ago.

Not a fabulous shot, but this is the poster in its proper place:

Moving from one of our largest pieces to our smallest, we were asked to create tiny labels (about 2.5x1") to go inside hand built violins. What a treat! They are printed on Stonehenge cotton paper (a very soft khaki), using a unique typeface called Stern. It was the first typeface to be simultaneously released in both digital and metal form. Right up my alley! Obviously Mathew adds the full year to each label before pasting it inside his creations.

I love the juxtaposition of these two projects destined to be seen by the same style of musicians. Creating such disparate projects is what makes work at the studio so interesting!

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.

Small but Mighty

There are many great experiences that come hand in hand with participating in an awesome craft show like Show of Hands or the Renegade Craft Fair. One of my favorites is the opportunity to talk directly with shoppers and get instant feedback on the work created in the studio. One of the most common requests we get is for smaller sizes of our most popular large posters (and occasionally large versions of our small prints). This is for myriad reasons that include limited wall space and a cheaper price point. There were a few prints that I wanted to shrink, while focusing on our more socially relevant pieces, starting with the popular Give Bread print. The original is 14x18", and the new one is 8x10" and easy to frame. This series is printed on a 100% recycled white card stock for consistency between the prints.

The second print is a tinier take on our It Takes A Village print. You can read about the original one here. I've discovered that this is a very popular print for teacher gifts, but we are always asked for a smaller, more convenient size.

I love the various techniques in this print. It's set up to look like a chalkboard, with wood type and linoleum blocks to create the frame. The green is a linoleum block that's very heavily printed so that the opaque white type shows up similarly to chalk on top of it.

The trickiest of the three prints is a recreation of Enjoy Your Farmers Market, which was originally printed in 7 colors and is sold out (another reason to tackle this one!). This time, it's reduced to 4 colors and an abridged collection of typographic 'fruits'.

After pulling out the type that seemed appropriate, I did a quick carbon proof on press to see how all of the pieces would work together, and to figure out which type would be which color. Not pretty, but enough to go on!

This is how it broke down to mustard, red, blue and green. There's a bit of overprinting as well to create new colors.

And while we're on the subject of reducing prints, last year I created both mini prints and cards of our best selling posters. I didn't want to print them with another means such as digital, offset or screenprinting, so that they'd be exact replicas of their larger siblings. Instead, I sought the challenge of building them entirely with our tiniest type and ornaments. The first set of prints and cards measure 3.5x5".

Our Urban Gardening poster has been one of the biggest sellers for the studio for years, and was first choice to be shrunk down to this (note that tiny 4 point type at the bottom!):

Skylines are a familiar subject matter in the studio and this one is no exception. It is created from the back sides of wood type and two little 'l's.

The greenery is mostly created with lino slugs, or ornamental rules cast on a linotype. The little orange 'flowers' need to be spaced accordingly to line up with the green print.

Another popular print in the studio is Jubilee, which pulls song lyrics from the charming old timey song. This mini print presented a lot of challenges in maintaining the same typographic feel as the poster, given that wood and metal type styles have historically been a bit far apart. But I found a few in our collection that fit the bill!

We scored a hit with In The City, pulled from the song by The Jam. For this one I had to find some tiny triangles and little lines.

I'm thrilled with how all of these prints turned out! Nothing beats a good challenge, and taking an existing design and manipulating it into a different format while working within the parameters of metal and wood type (and occasional linoleum blocks) is just that. All of these prints are available in our etsy shop.

Master Class

By popular demand, this is happening! This will be the inaugural class, and I hope to have more throughout the year. Email for more info!