National Stationery Show Alphabet Cards

As some of you already know, Legion Paper and Flywheel Press have, for the past four years, created an exclusive National Stationery Show promotional piece in collaboration with a collection of printers/boutique greeting card manufacturers. 

I've been fortunate enough to be included in each year's masterpiece and wanted to share a link to Paper Specs' video highlighting this year's creation.

Many thanks to Amber and Marc and those who tirelessly pull these elaborate projects together to create a cohesive masterpiece!

Atlanta Gift Show 2014

I went to Atlanta last week to check out The Atlanta International Gift & Home Furnishings Market - the South East's bi-annual gift show. Now that Maginating's headquartered in St. Louis, we're quite a bit closer to this part of the country and I thought now was a good time to see for myself if this show might be a good fit for us in the near future.

First off, this show is MASSIVE! I've never been to NY Now, but this was overwhelming at first. The Buyer's Guide is phone-book-thick and covers a collection of permanent and temporary spaces within three immense buildings.

This is part of Building Three - 40K+ square feet per floor!

Unlike the NSS, the Atlanta Gift Show is broken up into a multitude of product-specific, themed areas, including some juried sections as well. This isn't anything unusual to those of you who are familiar with NY Now, but it was an eye-opener for me. Over the course of two days, my goal was to try to figure out where a Maginating booth would be best located within the profusion of categories.

"Write On!" is the area set aside for all things paper and you'd think that would be the place for us. But after walking the section, which is somewhat small, I found the majority of companies didn't fit very well, thematically, with Maginating. The section trended towards the feminine, with a healthy collection of flowers and calligraphic typefaces. But don't get me wrong, I love those styles as much as the next designer... it's just not Maginating's overarching theme.

After considering the Toy, Museum, Hand-made, Gifts, On-Trend Gifts, Paper, and High Design sections over those two days, I believe the best-suited locale for Maginating is On-Trend Gifts. It's juried, so we'd have to apply for consideration, but if this section was a store, Maginating would fit in quite naturally.

The next show is January 2015, so I guess we'll see. Overall, it feels like an appropriate next step. It's pricey, about the same costs as the NSS, though it's a little closer geographically, but filled with great potential!

Bill Watterson Returns to Comics!

My hero, Bill Watterson, briefly returned to the comic page last week to partially pen three days worth of Steven Pastis' critically acclaimed Pearls Before Swine.

It's great stuff - so sorry he's no longer sharing his amazing talent. Grateful to see a little bit of something after so long... sure do miss his work.

Read about it here.

My Palette Is Packed...

...I'm ready to go! Just a few little details left. Man, I haven't left it this close to the last minute in a long time. Really looking forward to the show this year. Lots of fun things to share!

Goodness, I'm leaving on a jet plane in just seven days!!

New Business Cards!

Just picked up my fancy new business cards from The Done Dept. and they look smashing! If any of you remember my previous card, the three color, tri-fold letterpress card with little blue envelope, you might say I've stepped down a notch but I'd have to disagree - I'm simply stepping back into reality. Those cards took a massive amount of time! It's amazing what you can do with quad-ply lamination and a digital printer these days...

Happy Easter Cards (more)

Happy Easter!

Here are three more cards from my lil' collection of sometimes unattractive cards from long, looooong ago.

Just like the other card I shared with you recently, what's really interesting with a lot of these cards is the manufacturing process. Sometimes you can see just how cyclical design can be, other times you cringe at the ideas and the process by which they chose to bring a product to fruition.

Not sure when this American Greetings card was manufactured but I think it was in the early 90's. Not much to say, really - I just thought it was worth sharing... so much foil!

This beauty is from Hallmark. Time has not been kind to this card, no siree! It's like looking at an old photo album and cringing at the clothing styles - you just can't believe this stuff was considered good design. 

What's interesting though is the process by which they created the cover image. As you can see, they've printed the photo onto a piece of acetate which is then wrapped over and around a piece of white card stock. I should have taken a photo of the inside as well. It's very similar to the Norcross card I shared with you the other day. It's a 4/0 print job with a lot of careful folding. The interior is yellow with some VERY ROMANTIC text and then there's this white cover.  But because of the folding choices they've made and the acetate binding together the front and back of this quad-fold card, it looks a lot cleaner than other examples. Interesting choices...

I really like this card Norcross for several reasons. Firstly, the illustration is, to me, perfect for this era. It's just so darned loose, fun, and happy. Almost a little Mad Magazine in style.

Secondly, and more importantly, I love the added fold-out element on the inside. I don't know what this is called but it looks fabulous in person. I've never seen this specific type of embellishment on other cards, however, if you look back at my Victorian-era Valentine's Day cards posting(s), you'll see something very similar. I really do feel a lot of design styles travel in circles, especially when an idea is a good one. You want to see it in more than one generation!

"Vintage" Easter Card

Happy (almost) Easter everybody!

I have a few Easter cards from the 70's & 80's and wanted to share one with you, today. Not only because of the design but also because of the manufacturing methods used at that time. It's very different than what we would consider "acceptable" today - especially those of us who are printing with painstakingly slow (and expensive) letterpresses. 

This particular card was created by the Norcross greeting card company. They are attributed with creating the first commercial Valentine's Day cards. The company was founded in the mid-1920's by Arthur Norcross, his wife June and their daughter. Sadly it went out of business once Arthur passed on in 1969 and was sold several times thereafter.

It's an unusual size for today - 8" x 4"

I'm guessing, but it feels like they used a 70lb. text weight stock.

Nothing to note about the yellow or text on the inside - it just looks like your typical 4/4 (or 4/2 if that yellow was a spot color) card, right? 

But here's the interesting part, not only is the stock pretty thin, but it folds open into one piece - 16" x 8" so when it's folded together (no tape or glue holding the pieces together) it feels thicker AND it's only printed 4/0... pretty clever, but also pretty cheap. I don't know the cost of this card at the time - maybe it was really inexpensive, but I notice this manufacturing style on a lot of cards from this era. Interesting to see how things have changed. And who knows, maybe we'll all be utilizing this cost-effective method in the future, recycling the idea with a twist to make it sound innovative or environmentally-minded? I can't imagine using it myself, but never say never, right?!