01/20/10 – UPDATE TO POST:
Thanks for your support with our calendar fund raiser over the weekend. Because of your support we are sending over $700 to UNICEF.
THANK YOU!
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Dear Design and Printing Friends,
As a father of three young children I can not imagine the reality that is Haiti right now. Our studio would like to help. We are donating 100% of our 2010 letterpress calendar sales starting today to the UNICEF fund for Haiti.
You can buy a calendar on our studio site for $30. We’ll direct all accumulated funds, less your shipping cost to Unicef early next week.
Or you can support UNICEF directly at their site.
Thanks for your consideration,
Ben Levitz
Principal, Studio On Fire
Published on
January 15, 2010 in
Letterpress, News and Studio On Fire Products.
Tags: benefit, calendar, earthquake, effort, haiti, Letterpress, product, relief, unicef.
The Studio On Fire 2010 Calendar is now available on our new web site. This calendar is a decade marker for us. Established the end of 1999, Studio On Fire began letterpress printing in a cold Minnesota basement. Our first press occupied a spot between the boiler and the litter box, and oh, how the studio has since grown. Now seven presses strong with a fully equipped studio space, we celebrate ten years as a bustling design and print studio.
This Tenfold Edition calendar is letterpress printed with four colors on a cotton-blend stock, each month beautifully illustrated by selected designers the world over.
Contributors:
Jan/Jul_ Studio On Fire
Feb/Aug_Cecilie Ellefsen
Mar/Sept_ Brian Gunderson
Apr/Oct_ The Little Friends of Printmaking
May/Nov_ ghostpatrol
Jun/Dec_ Rilla Alexander (Rinzen)
Published on
January 7, 2010 in
Design, Letterpress, News and Studio On Fire Products.
Tags: 2010, Brian Gunderson, brown, calendar, day-glo, Design, easel stand, edition, florescent, ghostpatrol, green, illustration, Letterpress, little friends of printmaking, months, pink, poptone, printing, rinzen, studio on fire, tenfold.
This is our letterpress poster for the Toys In The Attic show opening at the Soo Visual Arts Center on Dec 4th from 6 to 9PM. The show features both custom toys and toy inspired posters. Proceeds benefit Toys For Tots. Hey, that’s tomorrow night! We hope to see you there.
These beasts are in fact our toys. The graphic beasts are constructed from various press parts and form into a crest that commemorates ten years of printing here at Studio On Fire. The dog latin phrase reads “Iron Beasts Make Great Beauty”. It is printed in fluorescent and dark silver inks on Crane Lettra Flo White 220lbC at 13 x 13 size.
It was ten years ago this month back in 1999 that the first C&P was lowered into the then basement studio. More to come on our own ten year anniversary party soon.
Published on
December 3, 2009 in
Design, Letterpress, News and Posters.
Tags: 220lb, beast, crane, crest, Design, edition, fluorescent, ink, iron, Letterpress, lettra, minneapolis, poster, press parts, print, printer, silver, soo, soo visual arts center, soovac, studio on fire, ten years, toys for tots, toys in the attic, unique.
AIGA Minnesota put together a short video about our studio on their emerging designers web site. Check it out:
emergingdesigners.minnesota.aiga.org
Published on
October 28, 2009 in
Design, Letterpress and News.
Tags: AIGA, american insititute of graphic arts, Design, designer, letter press, Letterpress, minneapolis, minnesota, MN, modern, News, printer, printing, Sevnthsin, studio on fire, twin cities.
Bon à Tirer // Taken from the French, “bon à tirer” is a technical term used by printmakers to indicate the final proof of a print, the standard against which all others in the edition are judged.
We got some shirts printed up by the Hot Snot Print Shop for the AIGA event last week. We’ve also got a bunch left- so we’ll be putting them up on our web-store next week along with the “Birds of Sadness” poster Ben did for the Sweet Hair show a few weeks back. We’ll be sure to let all you fine folks know once they’re ready to be purchased.
The shirt was designed with our good old tabletop manual proofing press, strong wood type and a steady hand.
Published on
August 7, 2009 in
Design, Letterpress, News and Studio On Fire Products.
Tags: AIGA, birds of sadness, bon a tirer, hot snot, Letterpress, manual press, poster, product, screenprinting, shirt, sweet hair, t shirt, tee shirt, Wood Type.
Last night we had a rockin’ time showing off our studio space and letterpress shop to Minnesota AIGA members. A big thanks to Minnesota’s AIGA chapter for giving us the opportunity.
We talked about the relationship of letterpress and design, did some Q&A, drank some Pabst Blue Ribbon and wrapped up the event with a little coaster project on press. Take a look at the coaster sheet – it’s 60pt Ahlstrom blotter paper. We pre printed a couple colors before people arrived. Then, we had a different color set up on both of our Vandercook presses. Everyone got to pull a couple prints, then we die cut the sheet into the set of four coasters. Lots of paper touching and good times had by all. Thanks Kayd Mustonen for taking some pics to share.
Published on
July 31, 2009 in
Design, Letterpress and News.
Tags: 60pt, ahlstrom, AIGA, blotter, board, coaster, coasters, demo, Design, impression, Letterpress, minnesota, MN, pressroom, printer, printing, Studio, studio on fire, thick, tour, type, typography, vandercook, workshop.
We just got these suckers back from Ideal Printers over in St. Paul- designed by SOF and offset printed (feasibility and cost issues made it much more reasonable for offset) for The College of Visual Arts- in St. Paul as well.
In order to make the colors on this guy pop as hard as possible we swapped out the standard CMY inks with their florescent equivalent. The actual design process was one of the funnest yet- we took various wood type and ran scrap paper through a little tabletop proofing press and immediately sprayed with our press wash-up solvent and then isopropyl alcohol to make interesting splatters / streaks / clouds / etc. The solvent and the alcohol has the same effect when mixed as gas and water.
Published on
July 24, 2009 in
Design and News.
Tags: 2009, College of Visual Arts, CVA, day-glo, Design, flourescent, halftone, Letterpress, offset, overprinting, poster, st paul, typography, Visual, Wood Type.
Here’s a sweet little run we just finished up for Mauseth Design out of Hoboken, New Jersey. They came up with this set of faux business cards with fake names and numbers for those certain instances where you just- well, where you just could use one of these little guys (e.g. Clubs, Bars, Lounges, Coffee Shops, Class Reunions, Chinese Restaurants and Traffic Stops).
Published on
July 21, 2009 in
Client Focus, Letterpress and News.
Tags: 130lb Manadanack astrolite PC 100, Business Cards, funny, illustration, Letterpress, perf, perforated, post consumer, recycled, three color.
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:
Published on
July 7, 2009 in
Completely Unrelated, Design, Letterpress and News.
Tags: AIGA, competition, day-glo, design camp, flourescent, four color, identity, Letterpress, lettra, show, system.
The Sound Set event is an amazing line up of hip hop happening this Sunday in the Twin Cities, put on by Rhymsayers Entertainment. We just killed this letterpress poster job, 1000 qty 3 color posters in just over a day. This is some fresh geometric pattern and color designed by Adam Garcia – work you should certainly check out further over at The Pressure. And be sure to get a poster if you go to the event.
This poster is on 100lb Poptone cover stock from French Paper. It is a 15.5 x 23 size with some big solids going down. With this much ink we have to run the powder spray pretty heavy so the ink doesn’t transfer to the backs of each other. That makes the inside of the press look like a powdered doughnut. The powder spray is actually just a corn starch and works well to avoid offsetting ink transfer. Sucks to clean the press afterward though.
We love doing posters, but be aware that the polymer plating for large sizes can be expensive for small runs. Just the plate cost alone will run about $200 per color. That kills the price for a run of 50 posters with polymer. But 500 to 1000 quantity- now we’re talking. That spreads the plating cost out over more pieces and makes it more reasonable get on press. Not that we aren’t happy to do small runs, but plate cost is what it is regardless of quantity.
Published on
May 22, 2009 in
News.
Tags: 100lbC, 2009, adam garcia, cost, cylinder, font, geometric, Heidelberg, Letterpress, pattern, photo polymer, plate, poptone, poster, powder, rhymesayers, sound set, soundset, spray, the pressure, typography.
So we got a call from Forbes last month. We did an interview about the resurgence of letterpress and talked about how modern photopolymer plating makes letterpress available to a more contemporary design aesthetic. But a lot of people are stuck with a mental image of letterpress as it came into mainstream design popularity several years back – distressed wood type, over inked artwork and a makeshift quality to the design that comes from using whatever typefaces and elements that happen to be on hand. Don’t get me wrong, I love Hatch Show Print and have been through the Nashville shop several times. But letterpress has a range far beyond that limited aesthetic. Pushing the medium is what our shop focuses on intently. To us, the resurgence of letterpress is this: making letterpress a viable commercial production method for contemporary design.
A few of the details in the article are a little fuzzy as they published my comments and I think she got a bit of a rise out of me. (yes, I realize if you have the patience and an extra hour or two, you can set some type on a curve with metal type, but that is certainly not commercially viable for our shop) The point was that I personally take issue with anyone that would say printing with polymer isn’t real letterpress. Yeah, we use polymer. It’s a means to an end. Different tools make different marks. Maybe we should call our work “civil union printing” rather than “letterpress” so all the ludites can feel better about their craft. :) The bottom line is that photopolymer represents a new range of possibilities for designers and for letterpress. We embrace that wholeheartedly, but still have a deep appreciation for all of those willing to toil over a case of lead type.
Check out the Forbes article here.
Here are some pics of a photopolymer job being set up to print.
Published on
May 21, 2009 in
Letterpress, News and Printing Tips and Tricks.
Tags: Benjamin Levitz, contemporary, Design, designer, forbes, hatch show print, Letterpress, minneapolis, photopolymer, plates, printing, studio on fire, typography.
We’ve been asked several time now, “So how come Studio On Fire was not at the National Stationery Show?”
Simply because the lion share of our work as a studio continues to be custom letterpress printing for other designers around the country. We love printing custom work for other designers. We’re good at it and proud of the results. That is what we are focused on and the NSS is not the right venue to promote our services. While we do continue to have a product line, we are promoting it independently, selling to a small number of boutique retailers and museum shops. If you are a retailer and wish to set up a wholesale account, email us and we’ll be happy to send along our catalog.
Here is a sampling of our product from our Designer Series Deskline. We wanted the elements in our product line to feel sort of like a test print or sheet of make ready. Those always have such a wonderful randomness that is enormously difficult to capture intentionally in a layout. This design is Polkaville Party, designed in conjunction with two fine designers here in Minneapolis – Kelly & Kindra, both are currently teaching design over at MCAD.
There is monarch sized stationery with two letterhead designs included, a pinhole perforated dry gum label sheet, folding self mailers, stitched mini journals and a punch out tag and calling card set. All is printed with three color letterpress on cotton and recycled papers. The overprinting creates some sweet purple and greens throughout the prints. Product is for sale on our web site. We are currently offering free shipping within the United States.
Published on
May 20, 2009 in
Letterpress, News and Studio On Fire Products.
Tags: business card, calling card, dry gum, journal, label, letterhead, Letterpress, National Stationery Show, nss, party, perforated, pinhole, polkaville, product, self mailer, stationery, stitched.
