Archive for the 'Studio On Fire Products' Category

Letterpress Open House // Black Arts Warm Hearts

 

Buzzed & Fuzzed Print Set

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.

New SOF website with expanded shop!

You may have noticed on your way to purchase a 2012 Studio On Fire Letterpress Calendar that studioonfire.com has a completely overhauled look! We’re pretty proud of the new site and have plans to add more features in the coming weeks.

Being the paper-oriented people that we are, our friends over at westwerk design handled the creation of the site for us. Not only were they were great to work with, but their studio is conveniently located just upstairs from our basement workspace.

Along with the new site is additional merchandise for the store! All of our classic items are still available, as well as the 2012 calendar and several new posters.

Above: Artisan Activist Poster, Crane Lettra Flo White 110C, 13″ x 19″, 2 Color Split Fountain on 2 Separate Plates + 1 Tonal Varnish

 

Above: Sunshine Poster, Crane Lettra Flo White 110c, 12″ x 16″, 3 Color Split Fountain

 

Above: Matter Into Spirit Poster, Crane Lettra Flo White 110c, 13″ x 20″, 2 Color Split Fountain + Blind Impression

 

 

2011 Letterpress Calendar

The Studio On Fire Letterpress Calendar is a favorite project in our shop for nearly ten years. It’s been worked on by many contributors from all over the world. Each year Studio On Fire puts together a loose theme, color palette and paper choices, then we invite 5 other designers / illustrators to participate. We design 2 months, and each contributor designs 2 months. Its always nice to have a large cross section of stylistic approaches within a little package that sits on your desktop. And this year is no exception. 2011 participants include Studio On Fire Adam Garcia, Brian Gunderson, Jessica Hische, We Make It So, and Aesthetic Apparatus.

This years calendar is a departure from the usual graphic illustration in our previous versions. Our theme this year was “Letter Form Genus”, with many contributors incorporating type and lettering. We’ve not had a distinctly type related theme before, so this was extra fun. Some favorite details you’ll find are: a moustache wearing a monocle, a spider wearing a thong, a monkey skull on a snake skeleton, a hidden giraffe, and bacterial letter forms spelling “grow kindness.”

The calendar is printed all together on a large 26 x 20 size press sheet. It is trimmed down into 12 months on 3.25 x 5 inch cards. This year, the paper for the months and the outer wrap was a light brown Wausau Winter Wheat 100lb Cover. We design the tri fold outer wrap using bits and pieces of each months design, all mashed together and printed in a long strip.

The stand was a custom duplexed paper made from dark grey Fibermark Eviva Stone 100lbC and copper Stardream 111lbC paper stocks. Our easel stand design has a clever fold-out angled leg that reveals the inner metallic paper color. The grey stock is letterpress printed in one color metallic silver.

These are now available on our studio site.

We’ve been doing this calendar for almost ten years now and have been fortunate to have some really great people involved. See a couple previous years here: 2010 Calendar, 2009 Calendar, 2008 Calendar.

Help Haiti – Calendar for Unicef

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

2010 Studio On Fire Letterpress Calendar

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)

Pull it.

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.

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NSS? Where Was Studio On Fire?

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.

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Sweetheart Seamstress Stationery

Check out a feature from our own product line…

The Studio On Fire Deskline contains uniquely formatted and detailed paper goods. Sweetheart Seamstress stationery elements include stitched journals, letter writing sets, punch-out calling card and tag sets, self mailing notes with pinhole perforated labels and mini folders.

Look for these details: custom scalloped edge envelopes, fill-in-your-name calling cards, mini book marks, perforated label sheets with dry gum backing.

Our vision for a product line was to create finished pieces that captures some of the random qualities that happen in test prints and makeready. We worked with Kelly English and Kindra Murphy on three different product themes. On this theme, Kelly used vintage sewing pattern inspired elements to create layers of texture and pattern. The detail is almost to cute to stand. And of course all of it is letterpress printed. They can be purchased on our website.

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