Archive for the 'Completely Unrelated' Category
It is usually bad form to blog or tweet about your breakfast. But sometimes it’s just too gooood. This morning a few of us from the studio went over to St.Paul for breakfast at the Copper Dome Restaurant. The type is served up hot as the walls in this place are covered with vintage flour milling ephemera. The pancakes were good as well.
(These are some of my first iphone pictures, so forgive the quality.)
Toot toot! Our Design Camp system for last summer’s event (designed and letterpress printed by SOF) has been making the rounds in the local and national design competition circuit- and lucky for us, doing quite well.
So far we got in at the AIGA MN show, the AIGA National show, and Print’s Regional Annual- and we couldn’t have done it without our copywriter on the project, Riley Kane, illustrator extraordinaire Jenna Brouse, Jeff Baker at Shapco and Dave Lundell at Anchor, Aleks Stancevic and for the Minn. AIGA for givin’ us the darn thing in the first place.
It took about 3 months to design this sucker from the ground up and another month (thereabouts) to mash pretty paper with big greasy machines until this came out:
The Wall. Its up- in all its magical glory. So special, so tasty.
There’s a better half of a thousand cans up there and darn near all are (diligently) cracked open from the bottom, preserving the original seal. Also out of all the cans hanging, there’s only a handful of duplicates. We are quite proud of this assemblage of our cultural history and all of us, at one time or daily, have to be reminded to get the hell back to work and stop staring into abyss of an unfortunately long-gone and better era.
Have a good weekend everyone- and for all those in America, “Don’t blow your hands off.”
Gems: (Note late 1970’s “Grain Belt Extreme”)
We designed and letterpress printed this poster for the Sweet Hair poster show featuring 37 Minneapolis artists. All prints are hair-inspired, handmade and created just for this show. A portion of proceeds benefits Locks of Love. It hangs at the Art Minion Gallery in Northeast Minneapolis until mid July. If you love hair, check out the Sweet Hair site.
Our 18 x 26 poster is a single color printed on 220lb Crane Lettra Pearl White. The type intertwines with a .30 point stroke that flows throughout the poster, making a nice deep impression on the cotton stock. The quote is a Chinese proverb that reads “You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from passing over your head, but you can prevent their making a nest in your hair.” If there are any left when the show comes down at Art Minion, we’ll sell them on our site.
Shine Advertising Co. in Madison, WI designed this flashlight box wrapper as a promotional piece for their agency. The look is a pretty sweet 1800’s ephemera inspired style and inside is a mini Maglite flashlight. We letterpress printed in four spot colors on Smart Genisis Husk 110lb C – 100% PCW. There are three tones of blue ink plus red ink.
Chad, the design director, came in and spent the day on press with us. Take a look at a few press room images he created with an iphone camera using an app called HiCon – kinda nice black and white effect.
A note on press checks - We are always happy to have clients come in for press checks. And if you can’t make it, we often do a virtual press check and send along photos as we are on press. We schedule a press time and you can wait by your computer for letterpress goodness. That really gives no excuse not to letterpress with us. :)
Space 150 changes their identity every 150 days. And with an identity process and look all their own, today marks the 23rd version of the Space 150 brand. This is a business card project we’ve managed the letterpress print production on for several versions now. Designed by Ned Wright at Space 150, this simple looking card still combines 4 production processes. Can you spot all four? Here they are:
250gsm Black Stonehenge sheet – FOIL STAMPED with gloss black foil.
22 pt White blotter sheet – LETTERPRESS PRINTED with silver ink.
After printing, these sheets are DUPLEX pasted back to back for zero impression show through.
After trimming the cards to size, they are EDGE COLORED in black for a clean look on the edge.
We print these cards for around 70 people. For a large studio, value comes with quantity. It would be fiscally improbable for an individual to produce a design like this on a small run of cards. (If you have to ask, “How much?”… )
Possibly the greatest channel on the net-web.
Ben’s out with the Rotavirus so entries might get a little weird until he returns, but we all wish him a speedy and smooth recovery. Godspeed sir.
Our public service message for the weekend ahead – disease or childbirth may follow!
This poster came out of our Uncle Pete’s basement. Evidently he would not purchase his current house unless this poster was included. He finally took it down so we could have it in the studio. It was just too good not to share. Thanks Uncle Pete.
By the way, we do letterpress birth announcements.
I went to Des Moines to judge the ADAI design exhibition. It was a good time with many good people. I gave a presentation about Studio On Fire to the organization and then we hit the bar for an evening filled with beer and bacon and some guy drinking by himself that talked a lot about cocaine and Jesus.
After the judging of the show, they gave me a tee shirt gift. I’d like to remember in the future what not to do:
Dear Self,
Next time you go and judge an award show, do NOT come back wearing a tee shirt like this. Your wife does not think it is funny, it is not a good April Fools joke.
Sincerely, Your Self On The Couch
Our rooftop studio overlooks the Minneapolis skyline. Sometimes the sky looks inky.
