Tag Archive for 'studio on fire'
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.
Published on December 14, 2011 in Design, Letterpress, Posters and Studio On Fire Products. 0 Comments
You are invited to a party! We are loving our machines with plenty of oil and our guests with plenty of other social lubrications. Join us as we celebrate our new office and press room with an open house on Friday, February 11th begining at 4pm. Come and see some letterpress action and talk shop. We’ll have a limited edition project on press as free gift to party guests. Hope to see you here soon.
Lots of printmakers are sauntering about Minneapolis / St Paul this week for the Mid America Print Council conference. We welcome these attendees to visit our studio during the conference on Friday this week from 5-8 PM. Studio On Fire is one of the largest and most vibrant commercial letterpress shops in the Midwest. We produce custom letterpress work from designers around the world. Join us during these hours to talk shop, see the presses and ask questions. Sorry, our production schedule will not permit other visiting hours.
Our Address:
Studio On Fire, 1621 East Hennepin Avenue Suite B10, Minneapolis MN 55414
phone 612 379 3000
Note: make sure you map us for EAST Hennepin Ave. – We are on the edge of Northeast, at 16th Ave SE and E. Hennepin. It’s about a 10 minute ride from downtown Minneapolis.
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.
Studio On Fire is preparing for a massive move. We are moving to a much larger space in the basement of the same building in Northeast Minneapolis. We are adding several new beasts to our new space, just 20 feet down from our current second floor studio. Our 12 x 18 Gietz platen will finally be installed along with a Heidelberg 21 x 28 cylinder press with inking and a larger Polar paper cutter. These machines will enhance our current production space adding new large format letterpress capability.
Production work will continue during the move, but our office life will be turned on it’s ear. Our access to email and our ability to respond to estimate requests during the week of July 6-12th will be limited. We will begin responding to custom printing requests July 13th. If you need an estimate turned more quickly than this please let us know the timing need in your request. If you can get in touch with us this week – even better.
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.
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)
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.
AIGA Minnesota put together a short video about our studio on their emerging designers web site. Check it out:
emergingdesigners.minnesota.aiga.org
“Studio On Fire is a design workspace and letterpress printer in Minneapolis, MN backed by in-house modern letterpress printing capabilities…”
Thanks AIGA Minnesota. And a massive thanks to SevnthSin for putting this together. (You made my rambling sound coherrent!)
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.
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.
