A New Trend In Letterpress Printing

I received this in the mail the other day - the new book, "A New Trend In Letterpress Printing," by Miki Usui, published by PIE Books. It features a collection of letterpress printers in London and Tokyo, but particularly those of us in the good ol' USA. It is a lovely book of great quality, filled with tons of great photos. It is written in Japanese but still well worth a looky-loo as it is interesting to see a compilation of what's going on, stylistically speaking, with the revival of letterpress printing in our Twenty-first century.

What an honor to be included... surrounded by the letterpress giants of our day.

Humble Beginnings

I was recently asked when/how did I fist begin to express myself creatively. It took some digging, but I found this piece of artwork amongst my collection of personal memories. It is, quite literally, the first example I have of my being creative. I'd cut this little clown image out of a birthday card I’d recently received at the time. Apparently I'd used “grown-up scissors,” those big gnarly silver scissors of the 1970’s (my sister still has them). My parents helped me attach it to a piece of cardboard and I colored in a background, drawing a little tight rope across the bottom. While I don’t remember, I’m told I did this when I was two years old.

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...