Back in March, I attended the first official meeting for the Seattle Freelance Designer Co-Op. Being new to Seattle, it was the perfect opportunity to meet local creatives and take the temperature of the current design/freelance market in the Pacific Northwest. Several creative events had been held by the Co-Op since that first meeting, but today’s studio tour was one meet up I didn’t want to pass up. Today, I had the pleasure of meeting Becki Mullins of West Seattle’s Myrtle Alley Press. She opened up her letterpress studio to Co-Op members and we were given a tour of her space. This is where her magic happens.

Her studio walls were covered with a growing collection of letterpress prints including some original Hatch prints. It was awesome to hear her story and goals for her shop. She did a quick demo on her 8×12 C&P NS named “Jack,” and her Vandercook 219 OS “Ray,” (formerly owned by the late Chris Stern of Stern & Faye, Printers). Co-Op members were welcome to crank out a type poster to take home. With my days in Seattle coming to a close, it was great to have the opportunity to visit another local letterpress studio. Long live letterpress!

For my last session, I was joined by one of my old college instructors, Wendy Emery, who also happens to be a permanent fixture at the Print Museum. I was actually late to my last session because Wendy and I went to check out my next acquisition… a Challenge Advance 19″ guilloine table-top antique paper cutter! Woohoo! I’ll share more about that later… perhaps when I return from my trip.

I thought I’d share (part of) a class project. Disclaimer: It’s been years since I last carved into linoleum AND my prints weren’t coming out as solid as I would’ve liked. Maybe it’s an old piece of warped linoleum? Eh, better luck next time.

*And for those of you paying attention, yes, the “T” in that first shot would totally have shifted. I snapped the photo before the lock up was ready to go!

VINTAGE PRINT BLOCK

The other day, I purchased a vintage print block with a really awesome deer graphic. I couldn’t wait to see how it printed. Though it looked worn down in the photos, I thought I’d try it out and see what happens. It really did look like it had been around for quite a while, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. You just never know with these things. Maybe it’s got a little more mileage left in it, maybe not. I took the chance, not wanting to pass up a really great piece, and besides, I thought it would go perfect with some thank you cards I had in mind.

CENTURY GOTHIC

Puns are silly fun, and some can even be quite clever. I enjoy them, or anything that has to do with a play on words. When I saw this deer, I immediately knew I wanted to create a “Thank You, Deer” card. For my type, I used Century Gothic for its clean and modern characteristics. Setting this short sentence in my composing stick took less than 5 minutes. It was playing around with the tracking and kerning that took forever.

LOCKED UP DEER

Here he is, all inked up and ready to be cleaned. As you can see, I didn’t really set up my composing stick properly. To correctly center my type, I should have put equal amounts of spacing on both ends of the line.

THANK YOU DEER

To correct this, when locking up my deer, the reglets needed to be adjusted to place him centered just above my uncentered type. So really, this is a lesson on what NOT to do. What I should have done was take that extra minute to set my type up properly.

Here is the final product. I’m not thrilled with how it came out, but for a second project, again, it’s not terrible. I’ll have to do another run of these cards when I have the time.