A New Look for The Studiolo!

First off, let me apologize for missing a post this week. We have been busy with storing our stuff, returning our moving truck, house hunting, getting new drivers licenses and handling logistical car stuff, and updating our portfolios to make the best impression possible for potential employers/clients, all while continuing work on some projects in New York. The weather has vacillated between 50 and and a balmy 75 degrees since we got here (a little colder at night), and we have eaten lunch outside for the last two days. In the sun. Without coats. We even slept with the window OPEN on Wednesday night! WA-HOO!

Onto the explanation of my brand-spanking new header and business cards! Before we left New York, we designed and printed up some new business cards for me (back to that whole making-a-good-impression thing) for when I do some networking in Austin. We started thinking about an identity for The Studiolo and sketching ideas months ago. I've had a bit of an obsession with the whole sunburst theme lately, and I was hoping to find a way to incorporate it into a logo. Initial ideas from my sketchbook:


After looking at those, Oliver hit the ground running with his own ideas:


You can see some Frisson explorations, as well as some unrealized custom lettering for Mara's calling cards.

And then he hit the jackpot with this sketch:


He tweaked parts of it in illustrator, but retained the hand-drawn feel with the final result. Once the plates were ordered, he marched off to The Arm in Brooklyn to letterpress them (his first time doing a two-sided card).


Oliver also designed the other side of the card to reflect some new information about Frisson (note the new Austin phone number)!


The Studiolo side was printed with Rhodamine Red and the Frisson side was printed using Delft Blue, both Pantone colors. We didn't have a chance to photograph the cards before we left New York, but Oliver's parents have a yard filled with spectacular trees, stumps, pine needles, pine cones and all sorts of other whimsical specimens to use for styling. I love how the natural elements contrast with the precise craftsmanship of the cards.

I promise to share some photos of our travels soon. In the meantime, here's a sneak peek of us the morning we left town:

Project: The Process of Designing & Letterpressing

We recently finished designing and letterpressing business cards for our friend Suzanne and thought it might be fun to do a quick walk-through of the process (design development through production), since some of you may not know too much about how it all works.

Suzanne is a multi-talented woman. She is a phenomenal cabaret singer, as well as a music teacher. She also moonlights has an herbalist, concocting all kinds of home remedies, lotions, potions and elixirs to heal us harrowed souls (she made cough drops this winter and they were delish!). She may, at some point, want some business cards for her holistic health counseling work, but for this set she wanted to focus on her vocal personality. While Suzanne can put on a show that's out of this world, she is not your typical show-girl; she is quiet, earnest, honest and extremely humble. She did not want her card to sport cabaret or Broadway imagery, with stage lights and a stylized portrait of herself (that's the vision I had). She wanted to tap into her nature-loving side with imagery that also speaks to her herbal business. Intitial layout sketches:



Early on we were inspired by several pattern books, including The Grammar of Ornament (Owen Jones), Full-Color Picture Sourcebook of Historic Ornament (Auguste Racinet), and Plants and their Application to Ornament (Eugene Grasset). Suzanne was drawn to Italian floral imagery (coincidently, she's Italian!), so we narrowed down the options and she picked out a few favorites:

Images from The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones

Once we had a better idea of what she liked, we sketched out some new patterns that were loosely based on the historical specimens:

At our next meeting, Suzanne liked a combination of what we'd come up with, so we integrated two of the patterns with Adobe Illustrator:

For Suzanne’s cards, we chose the font Garamond Premier Pro, a digital typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in 2006. In typography nerd jargon, this font is referred to as a “revival”, i.e. a contemporary typeface design based upon an antique metal (or wood) typeface. A certain Mr. Claude Garamond created the original version of this typeface sometime in the 16th century and it has remained a very popular typeface, with many revivals and iterations. Any letterpress studio with metal type on the premises is almost certain to have at least one well-worn set of 12-point Garamond.

Garamond page from one of Oliver's type books

With the design phase complete, we were finally ready for the letterpress phase. “Traditional” letterpress consists of picking out and arranging (by hand) each individual letter (usually made of metal or wood).

Left: Metal type, via Yee Haw Industries; Right: Wood type, photo via Nick Sherman

Hand typesetting allows a skilled craftsperson immense control over the typographic refinement of their designs, but one is limited by whatever specific fonts you have physical access to and, as you can imagine, it is a very time consuming process.

Image courtesy of Yee Haw Industries

Unfortunately, handset metal type wasn’t going to work for this particular project since we also wanted to incorporate the custom pattern into our design. Luckily, contemporary letterpress artists have the option to send a digital file to a place like Boxcar Press, a letterpress studio in Syracuse, New York, which will magically turn your digital file into a photopolymer plate (you can read all about it right here).

After repeating our single card eight times to create an 8.5” x 11” letterpress template with crop marks, we had our final plate layout, ready to be sent off to Boxcar Press:

Once Suzanne chose the paper (110# Savoy from Reich Paper) and ink color (Pantone Violet), and the photopolymer plate and paper arrived in the mail, we headed over to The Arm in Brooklyn to make our cards!

General shots of the studio and Oliver manning the press



Oliver aligning the photopolymer plate on the press, a Vandercook Universal III



Inking the roller



Align paper, press lever, which which activates an electric motor that rolls the paper across the inked plate. (Note: letterpresses typically have a manual crank, like the Vandercook Universal I or the Chandler & Price platen press).



Printed sheets, ready to be cut to size


FINAL PRODUCT!

Project: Letterpressed Calling Cards

We recently letterpressed some calling cards for our good friend Mara.

This was my first foray into the world of letterpressery and it was a ton of fun. Partly because it's a very straightforward process (that honestly anyone could do, with access to the proper equipment and materials), but also because I simply get a lot of satisfaction out of making things.

We'll be printing out another project in a couple of weeks; this time I'll be sure to get some pictures of the printing process itself for your perusal.

Feature: Springtime Studio

The talented Jordan Awan of Springtime Studio gave our little company a plug today with a post about a recent business card collaboration with Oliver. Outrageously funny, Morgan and Jordan create incredible illustrations for tons of high profile clients. You can see their work in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Fishs Eddy, to name a few. We hope to work with them again – thanks Jordan!