Fourth Year Studio

It was such fun to work with two extremely talented local photographers on their business cards.  Jessi of 5 Rings Photography is absolutely a blast and always we love Tara at Dixie Pixel!!  Each logo lent itself well to black ink on thick white cotton stock.  The 220lb paper is perfect for double side printing and the slight graininess of the solid fill adds character while maintaining a modern aesthetic.  We hope you LOVE them and thank you for the beautiful photos!

First off we want to say how very thankful we are for our success and growth in the past year.  A BIG thank you goes out to our great friends, family, clients and community for your support in 2011. Now lets get this new year off to a great start with a fundraiser for a truly remarkable baby boy!

Meg Wohlford is a fellow UT School of Architecute graduate and a good friend. Emily & I followed her blog throughout her pregnancy and were so happy when it was time for her and her husband to welcome their new son into the world.  Baby Tyson was born in August with a congenital heart defect called Shone’s Complex that affects his heart, the valves, chambers and ultimately the way his entire body functions.  His parents have been by his side at Vanderbilt for the past 4 months. It has been rocky but he’s proved to be strong through numerous surgeries and he actually got to go home for the first time at Christmas!!

Baby Tyson will be in and out of the hospital for many procedures to help him develop into a happy and healthy child.  This will be a challenge emotionally and financially for the Wohlford family. We are hoping 2012 will be a great year for Tyson, Meg, & Justin and to offer our support we are kicking off a fundraiser through the sale of our Letterpress Calendars.  When you purchase a letterpress calendar through etsy 50% of the sale will go directly to the Wohlford family!!  

To learn more about Tyson’s story visit his site & follow him on facebook. Find out more about Meg & Justin prior to Tyson’s big debut here.

Emily & I each work at really great architecture firms here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We were very lucky this year to have the opportunity to work on our firms’ Holiday Greeting cards. You may remember my post from last year when I showed off the e-card I had worked on for Cockrill Design & Planning.  I have decided to stick with the forest animals teamwork theme to create a nice series over the years.  A family of deer have come together to decorate their woodland home.  This was a challenge for me, as I had very little support on the technical side and after several online tutorials I  learned Flash well enough to animate the scene.  I am very pleased with the way it turned out – turn on your sound and enjoy this slice of holiday excitement ENJOY!

For more information about CDP (Cockrill Design & Planning) please visit their site.

************************************************************************************************************

On the flip side to an e-card Johnson Architecture asked us to design and letterpress print a unique Holiday card that would be mailed out to all their clients, colleagues, and friends.

Our design incorporated a letterpress printed coaster that was attached to a flat card printed in silver ink.  After Christmas has passed we hope the coasters will still be used and enjoyed by their recipients well into 2012.  They were all sealed up into a red envelope with a matching label.  We are really thrilled with they way the turned out. Next year we hope to have the opportunity to work on these and other business’ cards too!

For more information about Johnson Architecture, Inc. please visit their site.

Which one do you like better – the animated e-card or letterpress coaster card? And which do you think is a stronger marketing tool for touching base with clients?

Thanks for checking out our work!  Happy Holidays + Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones.

Last Saturday we attended out first market as vendors!  It was a little intimidating, as we weren’t quite sure what to expect.  But, we were organized and ready and it turned out better than we could have expected.  There were so many friendly shoppers and we met some very talented vendors, it made me thankful to live in such a great place like Knoxville.  The best part was that we had our small table top press, Babe, for anyone to use to print their own holiday card.  It worked like a charm, and was a big hit!  Children loved it, Our goal was to be able to share a small part of what we do and how we do it and help educate paper enthusiasts on the craft of letterpress.

Look for us the next 2 Saturdays, the 10th & 17th from 12pm-7pm.  Our booth is across from Coffee & Chocolate adjacent to Market Square.  We will have Babe with us for you try out and will have plenty of calendars & holiday cards.  To learn more about the market look here.

A BIG thank you to everyone that has supported us throughout the year – you are amazing & we couldn’t do it without you!

Can you believe December is just around the corner?  It really is such a wonderful time of the year and we wanted to be sure and help spread the holiday cheer with hand-printed letterpress greeting cards.  Check them out in our shop or if you live close by visit us on December 3rd, 10th, & 17th at the Holiday Market in Downtown Knoxville.  We will be revealing our newest table top press and providing demonstrations – stop by to print your own cards!

Making the decision to print our first calendar was a big project. After we started printing each page we became a little overwhelmed at the complexity of our design. Luckily it all turned out beautifully and we are so happy other folks like them too! Click on the banners above to see our quilt pattern letterpress calendar featured by some of our most favorite bloggers. We were also quite thrilled to receive a shout out on facebook by Design*Sponge.

If it turns out that you like our calendars too but have been waiting for a good reason to purchase one then you are in luck! We are offering 15% off all our etsy shop sales on Black Friday. Sale starts at midnight. After you add items to your cart just apply this coupon code BLACKFRIDAY2011. We will be spending time with our families and hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend – safe travels!

Our 2012 calendar is hot off the press – check them out here.

We have been thinking for quite some time about the design of our first letterpress calendar. It was important to us to have a concept that allowed us to be creative within set boundaries.  We wanted to create a geometric patterned piece with overlapping color that tied us to our southern roots.  The quilt pattern theme is an ode to craftsmanship and the art of using what you have to produce something functional and beautiful.   This was our assignment and we each drew patterns on our drafting boards. We layered the colors with tracing paper and had a pin up to select our favorite designs.  It was very much like architecture school, but a little more loose.

This was our biggest printing project thus far.  We used a 3 color scheme throughout the calendar – 2 colors on each month of the year.  The overlapping color provides depth to each design and gives the illusion of a 3 color print.

The best part is that it is designed to be two items in one – calendar & 12 notecards! The patterned portion of the calendar is perforated so it can be easily detatched and used as a card after the month has passed and each calendar comes with 12 kraft envelopes.  Each page has been printed on 100% tree-free cotton paper by hand with the help of Holland, our C&P press.  If you need to send a birthday note to a good friend you can separate the card, write a note on the back, and pop it into one of the provided kraft envelopes.  This way you can enjoy the design & share it with someone you love.

We were unsure the best way to bind the calendars so we decided to offer two options – coil bound & fabric tied.  The fabric strip really goes with the quilted look but I tend to prefer the clean structured coil bound version.

Since holiday season is nearly upon us it would be a great time to snatch some up for handmade gifts.

*photos by Dixie Pixel

Pecha Kucha 20×20 Night in Knoxville is happening next Friday 11-11-11.  Pecha kucha is Japanese for chit chat. Pecha Kucha 20×20 is a presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. They are automatically scrolling so you cannot control the speed of the presentation, so you better be prepared.  These events are informal gatherings that allow creative minds to get together and share their ideas or showcase their work. Find out more about PKN [Pecha Kucha Night] here & here.

Cities all around the world are holding PKN and we are fortunate that Knoxville has been hosting them this year.  Emily & I presented at Volume 2 in April and we had a blast!!  It was such an honor to have the opportunity to present in front of our design & architecture peers.

This time we were asked to design the poster to promote PKN Volume 4!!  We wanted to produce a bold graphic that could be printed cheaply in gray-scale and posted all over town. After attending a PKN my mind is always racing with new ideas and the gears are definitely turning.

What do you guys think, did it achieve our design goals, and make you want to get out and see what Pecha Kucha is all about?

download the 11 x 17 pdf here

Caitlin & Andrew just got married 2 weekends ago in Gettysburg Pennsylvania. As history buffs, they were traveling there for a weekend visit when they first realized they were in love and later after getting engaged they knew it was the place they should tie the knot. The invitation design stemmed from the historic relevance of Gettysburg. The battlefields are lined with wood fences that are unique to the area and the tree graphic was actually derived from an image of a witness tree (a tree that was witness to the civil war battles and is still standing today). Their October wedding took place overlooking the battlefields as the sun was low in the sky.

The save the dates were flat printed on wooden postcards and this type of postcard made an appearance as the RSVP piece of the invitation set.  For the primary invitations we letterpress 3 pieces in turquoise and brown ink onto thick cotton paper.  The set included a map of Gettysburg and a pocket for the wooden RSVP. Coordinating fabric strips strung the three pieces together. They were each packaged into kraft envelopes with a matching address label.  The rehearsal dinner invite was printed and backed with fabric.  All the fabrics we used made a reappearance as the reception in the form of little love birds handmade by Cait’s sister. The RSVP portion of the rehearsal dinner was printed front and back on extra heavy cotton paper.

Andrew is my cousin and it was great to Skype with he and Cait during the design process. While attending the wedding, it was really fun to see how nicely the invitations really did compliment the event itself.  We hope you enjoy them!

We have been busy bees here in our letterpress studio. We’ve made some progress on our stationery sets and they are now available online, here in our etsy shop. We have three new sets along with our braille blind letterpress – our braille color notecards, fall leaf notecards, and chevron notecards. Each set comes in 4 different colors, eight cards to a pack and are hand fed with love. They are fun to give/receive as gifts, which set is your favorite?

*photos by Dixie Pixel