Gemma's Baby Announcement

As a gift to a friend, I designed and letterpress printed her daughter's baby announcement. I used one of my photographs as my inspiration. My good friend and incredibly talented Cynthia Warren worked with me printing this on her 100 year old press. We learned a lot with this project about color and registration. It was a four color print job. Registration is one tricky beast and the more colors, the more  rascally the process!

Letterpress New Years Card, circa 2007

I seemed to be pulling out the oldies but goodies in my posts. I had great fun with this personal New Years card. It was really my first foray into playing with typography. I found little bits of this and that for the frame and put it all together. It was also the first time I used old typefaces from an encyclopedia instead typing out a digital font. I then letterpress printed the card at Heironymus Press under the tutelage of master printer, Richard Seibert. Quite a lucky gal to have worked with such masters of their craft.

Letterpress Birthday Broadside

This is a project that is standing the test of time. I still love it after years of looking at it. 

I was asked to design and letterpress a birthday invitation for civil rights attorney, Howard Moore Jr. Because it was going to be a big celebration for a BIG personality I suggested we create a poster/broadside instead. It could be handed out to all of the guests as a gift and serve as a memento of the occasion.

In my research for the design, I found a speaking engagement of Mr. Moore's. The title of that day's talks was "Are you going to lie down, or stand up?" This call to action seemed like a perfect symbol of the attorney's career, so I decided to use this as the building block for my layout. I then found a powerful old photo of three men in the middle of a snowy railroad yard from the 70's in the emblematic pose, one fist in the air.  Howard was well known for throwing up a Power-to-the-People fist himself, so the silhouettes of the men became the other component of my broadside. 

From thereon in I played with the idea of dimension. Up and down of the type, the forward and receding of colors, and three-dimension of the figures with their shadows. These dimensional qualities were all underscored by the tactile quality of the letterpress printing. 

Howard was very pleased. (No easy task, let me tell you.)