Happy Holidays 2010

Happy Holidays, inspired by 30 Rock.

Letterpress: Inspiration Broadside

Last week marked the close of my letterpress class with Jenny Wilkson at the School of Visual Concepts. I'm hoping I'll be able to find the funds to take a class again soon, but for now I can only dream about it.

Kim Boekbinder: Feather Clip!

I made this a while ago, but wanted to wait until I had a photo of Kim wearing it in action. My wonderfully talented friend Kim Boekbinder commissioned this feather clip from me a few months ago, and I graciously accepted! She's been traveling the world for her music, and wanted something glittery and fun to wear while she performed.

Blast from the Past

"Goctapus" type design concept (I'm so clever...)

I've been putting my portfolio together these past few weeks, in anticipation of my internship at Cognition Studio coming to a close on December 17th. One of the projects I'm including is my Encyclopedia Umbrellica, and Kristine suggested I go through the process of making the book to show people how I work. Since I did the project in my Experimental Typography class with Martin Venezky, there were lots of drawings to scan. I hadn't looked at these for years, but they're pretty interesting.

snOMG!

It snowed in Seattle! The first time it's ever snowed in a place I've lived.

Re-photographing Hatch Show Print Posters

I'm beginning to get my portfolio together for job applications, which can be a stressful process when photographing work is involved.

Letterpress: Home Postcard Series

Sadly, my letterpress class at SVC is almost over! But I managed to print these two postcards in my "Home" postcard series on the Pearl. I'm hoping I can finish the other three sometime in the near future...

15 Minutes of Fame!

This weekend I was (surprisingly) featured on Boing Boing!

I was helping out with a printing demo at SVC, printing a take-away poster that Kate Fernandez designed for the Type Americana conference. Glenn Fisherman, who wrote the article, started asking me questions about letterpress and what I do, and only until afterwards when he asked to take my picture did he mention that he was a writer for Boing boing! But I had no idea the article would be so much about me.

I'm really flattered, and I hope that more people come to take classes at SVC because of it!

See the entire article here.

Cognition Studio: SCMS Winter Family Concert

One of the clients I've been working with at Cognition Studio is the Seattle Chamber Music Society, and this winter their family concert is Babar themed!

Letterpress: 21st Birthday

My brother just turned 21 on October 20th, so I printed him this one-off card on the proofing press at SVC. I was lucky enough to get to surprise him by flying down the weekend after, but I mailed the card ahead of time so he wouldn't know I was coming. This plan semi-failed, because he didn't get the card until last week! Oh well, it's still adorable.

In other news, I was invited to visit Myrtle Alley Press in West Seattle today, and was blown away by Becky's amazing shop, and her and Sara's openness for community and collaboration. I'll be going there once a week (at least) to help out around the shop, and help them with jobs. And eventually, maybe I can even print my own stuff!

I was also invited to visit the new Pike Street Press, located downtown under Pike Place Market. They're still under construction, but they have a gorgeous (and intimidating) Heidelberg. The location, huge space, and their vision for the shop (a combination print shop/paper goods boutique/gallery) seems promising, and I hope I can be involved on the design side in some way. We'll see what they have in store for us in the future!

THE COOKBOOK IS COMING!

Oh my gawd you guys! This freelance project I've been working on is in final printing stage, and I just received the Blurb proof in the mail today. HOLY CRAP! I made a book, and it's going to be published, for realzies!

Olive-Route: Kathryn and Jeff

Exciting news today! A wedding suite I helped design when I worked at Olive Route was just featured on the Martha Stewart Weddings website! How exciting! I am so proud of Via :) Make sure to check out her blog post about it too.

Process: Sufjan Stevens Poster

Into the Woods seems to have motivated me into hi-speed productivity, because this week has flown by! I was just talking to one of the people I met at the conference about how I wanted to design music posters (and I was also inspired by the Screenprinting workshop I took with Jon Smith), so imagine my delight when I came across a weekly challenge to design a music poster (posted on the Imprint blog). The only criteria was to use torn paper, which is right up my alley!

Into the Woods {and out of the woods...}

This weekend, I had the privilege of attending AIGA's Into the Woods design conference in Leavenworth, Washington (thanks Kristine!). And it was not only fun, but amazingly inspirational.

For the love of Letterpress

I've been having trouble adjusting to non-school life, and adjusting to not being able to do anything lettepress related! So I was super excited to start my new Letterpress class with Jenny Wilkson at the School of Visual Concepts. Pictured above is the first project we completed, which was to typeset our name and print it to label our galley.

Work in Progress: Home

Quote from Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

I've been wanting to make something for myself lately, so I decided to start making things about home. This might turn into a book, or printed cards, who knows. I probably need to get off the computer.

Handmade Book: Strangers

Here's another of the books I made in Lisa Kokin's class last semester. This one is entitled "Strangers" and started with an old accordian billows I was gifted by Kim Boekbinder.

Work in Progress: Obsolete Technology

Things have been busy here in Seattle. With a full-time job and a big freelance gig, its amazing I still think I need more to do! Like anyone who loves all things letterpress, I have been itching to start a new print project in my spare time. Though I don't have any way to print it (yet!), I thought it would be fun to start sketching out what I might want to print.

Letterpress: Pig Party Potluck

John and I graduated in May, and last semester we decided to celebrate this momentous occasion by throwing a pig roast (inspired by Christine [and Jeremy] from Idora Design, who hosted a pig roast we attended at their house in March). Since I was working for Via at Olive-Route Press at the time, I thought it was fitting to make letterpressed invitations for the event!

Handmade Book: Parpaglione

When I'm not designing or printing things, I make handmade books! (And sometimes the three find themselves in the same project together). I finally found some spare time to photograph the awesome books I made in Lisa Kokin's class last semester, and I wanted to share a few here.

Letterpress: Sarah & Ezra

Last semester, while I was working for Olive-Route, I did my first freelance wedding job for John's high school friends who just got married on August 1st. And luckily for me, I was able to letterpress it with Via's help!

Shakespeare Got to Get Paid, Son.

Some good things come of Facebook, even awesome letterpress printing opportunities! I'm a fan of the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle, and they posted a link to the South Lake Union Block Party which happened last night, to which they brought two table-top Vandies and five cases of woodtype! They were letting people print, and I did not want to miss out.

First Thursday: August

So it's official: Seattle's First Thursday kicks Oakland Art Murmur's ass. Perhaps we jumped in at a really good one, but every gallery we went to had breathtakingly amazing and inspiring art. A very nice welcome to a new city!

Unbound: Book Art Show at the Bedford Gallery

I haven't had much time to post inspiration on this blog, but I'd like to start sharing things I see that I find really awesome. This blog is supposed to mostly be about my own work, but every once in a while I see something that makes me want to produce art, and I think it should be documented.

Before we moved up to Seattle, I had the chance to go to a Book Art show in Walnut Creek called Unbound, which features a number of amazing book artists (including two of my favorites, Lisa Kokin and Julie Chen. There were a lot of artists I recognized, and many more that I was happy to discover!

We've Moved!

Well, we did it! It only took a week, but we've finally moved to Seattle.

I don't think it's hit either of us yet, but we're definitely glad to be done driving. And now that all of our stuff is put away, we've realized that this new place is a lot larger than our old one. (Score!)

Saturn Table

My friend Jess worked at Saturn Cafe in Santa Cruz when she was going to school down there, and now she's helping them get ready to open a new location in Berkeley! One of the coolest things about Saturn (besides the food!) is that the tables have things in them! Jess worked on an adorable picnic-themed table (complete with ants!), and she asked for help with completing a second table, so of course I was overjoyed to do it. I have so many tiny knick-knacks that making an art piece out of them seems like the perfect purging solution.

I decided our table (John helped) would be Circus-themed, since I have lots of awesome circus paraphernalia that I probably don't need to hold on to for much longer.

The full table (will be covered in Plexi-glass when the restaurant opens)

It's official!

We are moving to Seattle! This weekend, John and I flew up so we could find an apartment, and we saw six different places yesterday (exhausting!). Luckily, they were all mostly in the same neighborhood. But the second place we saw (pictured above, courtesy of Google Maps) we fell in love with, so we filled out the application right then, and gave him checks. He called us this morning and said we were approved, and we jumped for joy!

Home Sweet Home

Well, being in Nashville was definitely an interesting experience, and interning at Hatch was amazing! But being home is such a relief, I had no idea how much I had missed it!

Now we have one month to pack, clean, and hang out with friends before we move to Seattle in August. I'll be interning at Cognition Studio, and John will hopefully find a job in the video game industry.

For now, the only thing on my to-do list is to get rid of all this junk:

Luckily, I also have work to do for Sarah & Ezra's day-of wedding collateral, so at least I have something creative to do! (More posts about this once it's all designed and printed!)

Happy Trails!

I cannot believe that it's already been six weeks!
My internship at Hatch has really flown by.

I printed some awesome posters:

Ate some amazing southern food:

And met some fantastic people:

Though, I think I may miss the cats the most :)

My Appologies

Hi Everyone,

Unfortunately, I didn't realize that people other than my personal friends were reading my Blog. I really shouldn't have posted the Adam Lambert poster, and I have deleted the post about it. Maybe I can put it up again later, after the show is over and done with. This has caused a lot of trouble with Hatch and with the Ryman, because the posters are solely meant to be sold at the show and there is a limited number. I didn't mean for my post to seem as if I were advertising the poster, and I am really sorry for the trouble I have caused. I probably won't be posting any more finished work on here until the release of the work to the general public is long past.

Again, I appologize for my naivete.

Process: Silhouette Cards!

I found these amazing copper plates (Hatchdoesn't get these made anymore, but they're from the shop's earlier days) while I was searching for things to use on a recent job, and though they weren't appropriate for a poster I thought they went together so well that Brad said I could print a card!

Process: BlobFest

I finished another poster this week! It's amazing how much work we've been able to get done at Hatch, and immensely satisfying! This one is for 'BlobFest,' a movie festival that happens in Pennsylvania every year, in the town that the movie The Blob was actually filmed in. They even host it in the actual theater one part of the movie takes place in, and do a re-enactment of the scene.

Process: Jenny & Ty

Though Hatch is trying to weed out wedding invites (they're now limited to one a month), Brad let a few of us design some since we said it was something we were interested in. The one I was assigned was pretty open to anything, and their one suggestion was ampersands! Perfect.

Process: Santana!

I never thought that interning at Hatch I would be able to do posters for famous musicians, but here we are! Brad let me work on a poster for a Santana concert, which I was really excited about! After researching some of the imagery associated with Santana, I realized that the majority of it is a hybrid of Mexican Mural Art and 1960's Psychedelic posters. Not wanting to go either of those routes, I wanted to make something more contemporary (and more simple), but keep with the same 'Santana' feeling.

Famous People

Though you would think living in California I would see a lot of famous people, I really have never been than close to anyone famous (well, except for that time I ate dinner next to E-40). Nashville being dubbed "Music City" seems to cause people to want to visit, and this week being CMA Fest amps up the famous factor. On Tuesday John and I biked to Grimey's Music to see the in-store performance of Reverend Payton's Big Damn Band, whom I met when I toured with Vermillion Lies, and who are famous in certain circles. Famous People Count: 1!

Process: Joe Nichols

This is the first project I designed at Hatch, we started it a few weeks ago and I just finished printing the type this week! Annie and I designed this poster for the Joe Nichols' fan club show, which is taking place this week as part of CMA Fest.

Weekend Update: Tourist Attractions

Though we're still not used to the heat, we seem to have found entertaining things to do in Nashville. This weekend was slightly touristy, though it started out with a bike-gang rendesvous at the local independent theater to see the opening night of Exit Through the Gift Shop. (Can you say hipster?) Look at all those bikes!

Three Weeks Already?

I can't believe my internship is halfway over, I'm beginning to feel at home in the Hatch shop! It's so fun to be around so much creativity all day long. Earlier this week, we were visited by Kevin (from Graphiti Associates, whom I interviewed with when we visited in March) and Aaron from Seattle, who were in Tennessee to go to the AIGA Leadership Conference in Chattanooga. I gave them a tour of the shop, and it was great to see a semi-familiar face!

At Hatch, we get ready to print a job by using Make-readies, which are posters that get stored by the press, to be printed on over and over again (either for registration or impression checking purposes). After a while, there are some pretty amazing (and gorgeous) image and color combinations, and we pull the 'cool' ones out to cut down into postcards. My job on Thursday was to design and print the back side of the postcards.

Process: Andrew Combs

I finally finished my first poster at Hatch! I was given a 'Local Band Special,' (for an artist named Andrew Combs) something Hatch does to keep posters affordable for local bands. They don't have to pay as much because they basically have no say in the design of the poster, though we do still talk to them about what they want, and I was allowed to call the band's manager and describe the poster to him before I printed it, just to make sure I wasn't completely off the mark.

Weekend Update: Memorial Day

Weekends always start out better with the prospect of an extra day, and us lucky interns got Memorial Day off! Friday has seemed to become 'Hatch shirt' day, and John wore his too.

Lovely People

From left to right: Annie (intern), Brad (Intern Sensai), Laura (intern-on press)

The best part about working at Hatch thus far (aside from the amazing historical significance and all of the awesome old stuff) is the awesome people. Everyone is super friendly and fun to be around, and I've had a blast working with them every day.

Two weeks in, four weeks out

There's nothing that makes you homesick for Oakland quite like seeing a suburban on blocks in the parking lot on Monday morning. Who knew people loved rims in Nashville as much as they did in Oakland?

In other news, we've started to design our own posters! It's really awesome that we get to create things so soon, and I'm loving working in the shop. Brad is a great design mentor, and I'm learning a lot about design on top of learning a lot about letterpress.

I've been revolving around these colors for the jobs I'm working on (I'll post them when they're totally finished so you can see the process from beginning to end). Pastel primaries and browns, maybe it's spring fever?

Every Tuesday night this restaurant/bar in East Nashville called the Family Wash has Pint and Pie night for $10! We got delicious Shepard's Pies, covered in melted cheddar cheese. YUM!

Also, I can't believe its almost the end of my second week! These next few weeks will fly by, I'm sure. I need to find something to do in the evenings other than spend money. So far John and I have been watching too much TV, and browsing the internet tubes. I think I need some kind of art project to keep me busy, something that I can do with very limited supplies. Any suggestions?

Weekend Update: Fairs and Fleas

This weekend was pretty awesome, as weekends go. Our intern leader (Brad) invited everyone to his house on Friday night for a Taco party, and we got to drool over his amazing studio setup and adorably decorated house. This is his tiny treadle press, JEALOUS!

Recap: Week One

I can't believe my first week at Hatch is already over! I thought six weeks would be a long time, but now that there's only five left it feels like it's going to fly by.

Brad took us up to the 'archives' this week, which is actually just a bunch of boxes stacked on the floor. Someone needs to buy these people some shelves!