Studio On Fire // Design & Letterpress Blog
This print is the result of a collaboration between illustrator/painter/art maker Oliver Jeffers and swissmiss’ Tina Roth Eisenberg. Quirky and fun, this three color poster measures out at 11″ x 14,” printed in our Minneapolis studio on Crane Lettra Flo White 110lb cover stock. Does anybody else think popcorn sounds really good right now?
Available for purchase over on Swiss Miss.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of exploring Jessica Hische’s work, you should really go check it out. Her remarkable talent and wit permeates everything she does, a prime example being this poster she designed last year asking the age old question “should i work for free?” Every designer has asked themselves this at some point and Jessica has taken the time to break it down for you in this FIVE color poster she had us letterpress. Printed on Crane Lettra Flo White 110c (one of our house stocks), each 15″ x 25″ print is signed and editioned. Available for purchase in Jessica’s store.
Another side project Jessica produced is inkerlinker, a site dedicated to finding an awesome printer to fit your needs. We’re pretty pumped about the love people have shown us on the site and always enjoy reading the comments people leave. Go ahead and “like” us… you know you want to.
Still working on your holiday shopping? No worries, we’re here for you. Just this morning we added yet another new item to our shop, the Buzzed & Fuzzed Print Set. Give them as a pair or break them apart to give to your boozy best friend and highly caffeinated little sister.
Printed with three inks (brown, yellow and a tonal warm gray) on Wausau Royal Compliments Natural White 100c, each print measures 12.625″ x 9.625.”
Just want one? Too bad, they only come as a set. Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter for an exclusive discount promo code.
This poster was designed and letterpress printed here at Studio On Fire for the 2011 Artcrank, a poster show for bike people. The construction of this poster is an assemblage of prints we created with actual bicycle parts. Used bike parts were inked up with a brayer and printed by hand. We printed all kinds of parts: cranks, chains, cables, wheels, handlebars and even a seat. It was well worth the trip to One On One Bike to scavenge suitable parts from their basement bike bone yard. After inking each part individually we had a whole table full of prints to chose and build from. It was amazing how much type and texture come out of each part. These prints were then digitally arranged on top of a pencil sketched layout. The word “Godspeed” seems especially appropriate for cyclists, as a wish for someones safe and prosperous journey. It was plated in photo polymer and printed as a large format 20 x 26 letterpress print in 2 color on 100% cotton Crane Lettra. It can be trimmed and framed at 18 x 24 size.
The prints are available on our site for $30.
Ready to pump up your type vocab and sound smart next time you bump into Matthew Carter? Well then, this beauty of a poster designed by Drew Binkley at 38pages is just for you. They have a nifty site called typographydeconstructed.com with great typographic anatomy content. This poster is for sale there too – ready to release the inner type freak in all of us. Get yours with promo code SOF2011 good for $10 off.
We letterpress printed this poster on our Heidelberg 21 x 28 cylinder. You can see in the photo details, the polymer plate is positioned in the press on a custom made full size 21 x 28 inch Boxcar Base. The poster is printed with extra tight register (no trapping) on 100% cotton Crane Lettra Fluorescent White 110lbC and trimmed to a final size of 16 x 24 inches.
Adam Hoganson designed this subtle and beautiful poster for the Minnesota Rollergirls. We letterpress printed these for the bout that took place this last weekend. The poster is an 18 x 24 three color edition on Wausau Royal Complements Natural 100lbC. A big congrats to our press operator and MN Rollergirl “Lizzy the Axe”. She was a brutally wonderful jammer during the bout. (And she printed the poster on our Heidelberg S cylinder 21 x 28)
A word about letterpress poster image size… We get a lot of designers that are surprised by the cost to print at this size. This is not silk screen printing and comparatively, the costs are nowhere near similar. Printing poster size things with letterpress can be an expensive adventure. One way to keep the cost down is to limit the image area since plating is charged by the square inch. (For example, a single plate at 18 x 24 will run about $250, just in plating costs for EACH color) On this poster even though the paper trim size is 18 x 24 the image area is only 11.5 x 16 making plating costs a bit more reasonable.
See a previous poster we printed for the Rollergirls here.
Heads of State designed this F. Scott Fitzgerald inspired poster, capable of bringing tears of joy to English teachers and designers everywhere. It is an epic layout project containing 32 calling cards of fictitious Great Gatsby characters. Each card is its own nugget of typographic excellence modeled after 1920′s social stationery.
This was an ambitious letterpress printing. (did we mention 32 card designs up on a sheet) With its large size, four ink colors, full dry back between each color, tiny type plus full solid areas, tight register and heavy stock this took some patience on press. We printed on French Poptone Sweet Tooth 140lb C – a massive 20 x 26 press sheet trimming down to the final 18 x 24 inch poster.
The poster is for sale at the Heads of State store
You can also check out our post on previously printed business cards for Heads of State.
This is a new letterpress print from Rilla Alexander. She’s been a part of our annual calendar project for several years, so we were super excited to be part of her Sozi character launch this month. This beauty as well as other well crafted Sozi items are available in her shop and also at Collette through the end of December.
We letterpress printed an edition of 100 in red ink on Pearl White Crane Lettra 110lb C. Actual size is 40cm x 30cm. Get one while they last.
This poster is a father and son collaboration. All elements are hand drawn by Koen (age 6) with a Sharpie marker at the dining room table, then arranged digitally. The type is the “Golden Rule” as penned in the honest hand of a child. Maybe what we learned in kindergarten is most important.
It is 14 x 20 in size, letterpress printed in yellow and gold inks on Legion White Eco Rag, 600gsm. Available for sale on our site.
Gestalten TV was in our studio and put together a great video.
You can get the podcast on itunes here.
For their visit, we had a little project on press called “The Pressroom Creed” – printing on 220lb Lettra and will be available soon for sale on our site. It is an adaptation of the better known Rifleman’s Creed, but for letterpress printers. Seriously, everyone in our pressroom must memorize this and we say it together each morning.
This post is a recap of the fun we had this last weekend leading a press free, hand style letterpress workshop at AIGA Minnesota Design Camp. We were located in the wine cellar at Grandview Lodge in Nisswa, Minnesota. Over 300 designers attend this event annually. We did three sessions of this 1.5 hour long workshop with over 120 total attendees.
The process was about putting down lots of ink quickly, creating textures, layers and happenstance in the layout and printing. No press required, no two prints alike.
Studio On Fire brought in lots of good stuff:
10 large cases of our woodtype collection (about 400lbs of type, mostly Hamilton faces)
Tape and cardboard (served as the bed of the press, tape held type in rough position)
A wadded up paper towel was the “printing press” (used with hands to burnish the back of the sheets)
Several dozen CSA images supplied on photopolymer plates (permission of CSA archives)
Wood grain background textures (blasted with a powerwasher, then relief carved)
Lots of good ol’ French Paper to print on (poptone sweet tooth and many many remnants)
Ink and brayers (oil based inks and soft rubber rollers)
It was a fluid process and a good chance for everyone to step away from the computer. A huge thanks AIGA Minnesota for having us and to the AIGA volunteers that supplied a steady stream of nature wash solvent to clean up and redistribute the wood type and images. And thanks to Phong Tran for his photo contributions.
If you would like Studio On Fire to do a workshop with your group, let’s talk. Please do contact us for more information.
These two posters came to us from agency friends at Bailey Lauerman, illustrated by the ever fabulous Rilla Alexander of Rinzen. This TUNE project was sponsored via federal grant by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. Bailey Lauerman launched TUNE which uses music to inspire young women to make better choices and live healthier lives. There are 8 selected artists out of 150 entries, and their music was written and recorded specific for this project. Songs are free to download from the TUNE website.
We printed the posters with a split ink fountain using florescent pink and blue inks which blended to a nice purple in the middle. We kept the lateral ink distribution setting at maximum spread for a good blend in the poster. It was printed on French Paper Poptone Whip Cream 140lbC.
This is an iphone video of the job on press. Lo res, but you’ll get the idea of how the fountain looks.
