The press was in terrible shape and most of my work consisted of die-cutting and numbering, which I hated. What I mean is if I wanted to die cut something fairly simple and random (an apple, state outline, banana), is there a home brew / hobby way, technique, to make die cutting plates on demand in house to use on a regular letterpress (not a cylinder press). I am a graphic designer and have owned a boutique design firm since 2003. I read everything I could from Joseph Moxon to Ralph Polk and his textbook. I learned to dial back the marketing slightly so that we could maintain a comfortable stream of business. Monometal plates are made of a metal with hydrophilic (water-receptive) properties, such as zinc or aluminum, the surface of which is treated to make it more porous. strong, wide tape, e.g. Care needs to be taken when removing as they can easily bend because of this thin backing. Cut with metal shears, bench shears or guillotine. Thanks to its unique chemical make up Torelief offers an extraordinarily fast washout along with excellent reproduction of all fine details. A wide variety of make letterpress plate options are available to you, such as offset printing, letterpress printing. This means there is still a sturdy backing left that will stand up to repeated removals from the press without bending. They offer a beautifully crisp print for the customer who appreciates more traditional methods. My husband and I began to toss around potential names. duct … After catching the letterpress bug I moved to Philadelphia and eventually found a C&P Pilot in Washington, DC and started working out of a small studio on the third floor of a rented apartment. Most letterpress plate making companies charge a per inch fee which we believe can be confusing, and costly. I just try to add the thing I can add. Printers are able to save money by eliminating duplicate plates and increasing plate making efficiency. 1.75mm plates can be wood mounted to type high (23.32mm). The plate is created through the process of etching and engraving. Hand+Ink Letterpress in Aluminum: I recently had some time to revisit my mini letterpress project. Steel-backed plates are difficult and painful to cut. Amy and I are a great design team; she’s the people person and I tend to communicate better with large machinery… and she fully supports my 1,000 lb habit. I scoured Briar Press looking for a Windmill to call my own, but everything was still very hazy and dreamy at this point, an idea but not an actualized one. We knew very little about printing, but Chris tirelessly researched the ins and outs of printing so it took him no time at all to realize we needed to contact Boxcar for a base among other things. He said if you are going to get into letterpress you’ve got to get a Vandercook Proof Press and something about if you could find a number 4, you’d be set. And in a noisy world, that will go a long way towards being noticed. For whatever reason, the cards made everything very real. Letterpress printing has been leaded by TOYOBO as is the pioneer of water-washable photo-sensitive printing plate Printight®. 2-Day Letterpress with Photopolymer Plates. This is something we’ve been saying is possible for quite a while, a cost effective method of creating wax seals for use with your stationery. We’re happy to hear that you’re interested, intrigued and just as in love with letterpress as we are! That’s when I found Fritz at NA Graphics. I took my first printing classes as an undergraduate student, continued dabbling throughout graduate school, and then took my first letterpress printing course at The Center for Book Arts (NYC) in 2010. They are sometimes referred to as “zincos” because they used to be made of zinc. Posted by. Occasionally letterpress also combines blind debossing, where a plate is made and used without ink purely for its debossing effect. Clearly, the plates that ship with the press are made from a material that is not suited to the pressure involved in letterpress printing. Fast forward a couple more years and a job change, and I was back in Raleigh and looking to get the press up and running. This class offers an in-depth look at how Geralyn Sy incorporates letterpress into her creative process, from start to finish. Get your artwork ready to order: If you’re working in illustrator, change your color mode to CMYK (File > Color mode > CMYK) and make sure your file is 100% black. The steps I follow to make a letterpress print. You can also choose from easy to operate, multifunctional, and high-accuracy. We handle the entire plating process in-house, from the film processing to plate output, all on our top-of-the line pre-press equipment. I’m an architect by training who fancies himself a graphic designer and had no idea that the cast iron weight in the back of my Honda would become a mild obsession for the next four years. I try to diversify my income, I try to follow a lot of threads and see where things take me, I try to keep my options open. Once I found my current studio, in the heart of downtown Durham with a wall of windows, I knew that I owed it to myself to give Shed Letterpress everything I had. Knowing that there was always someone on the other end of the phone, or even just asking the same question as me in a Briar Press post, made me feel less alone and more able to take on the crazy responsibility of becoming a small business owner. Mounted Letterpress Printing Plates ship the next day if the order is received by our 10am EST cut-off time. duct … This is our most popular letterpress printing plate. I wrangled a grant, drove all day, slept on Jason’s couch, spent a day in New Jersey with a recording device, and wrote for a month. “The basement of one of our buildings is full of donated printing gear we can’t use, because it is out of our date range!” Several sweaty afternoons later, and after a donation of some nice writing boxes and implements that were in the appropriate date range, we had a small printing shop full of type, furniture, and the paraphernalia needed to print anything our hearts desired. From that first job, I knew I wanted to print full time, but there were things that had to be done first, like learn everything I possibly could about letterpress, get as much experience as I could, start a family and begin raising two small children to name a few. You can cut or engrave a block or sheet of wood and slap that into a press. In my current project exploring belonging in the Bay Area, I'm asking the public to share their story about belonging. When we set up Manchester Press in 2005, I remember that our Google Ads regularly appeared on the first page of search results for “letterpress”. Anything over 50 durometer is considered hard. But remember, dream shops like you see in online photo galleries have taken lifetimes to build up, and at great cost. Read their stirring stories and then we’d love to hear in the comments section about what it was that made you want to take the full plunge into the world of letterpress! We can also supply the following thicknesses of steel-backed polymer letterpress plates upon request: 0.73mm – 0.83mm – 0.17mm … Or, make it really easy and just grab our Letterpress At Home Kit that includes everything you’ll possibly need. No, really, it's possible. My husband, as always, was incredibly supportive of my venture and agreed to float me for a while until I had things figured out. I am a true believer of serendipity; I think things happen for a reason, that if you’re listening, your life’s work is calling out to you like a soul mate. (However, you can try this with other brands, too!) By 2007, totally over the ever changing climate in my garage I was ready for a change. Please use our web site to submit platemaking orders. I gave different people different explanations for why I had bought the press, but really, it was just something that I had to do. I found one on ebay for what now seams like a steal in “perfect working order”. Chris and I enjoy our day jobs, so we are happy with our part-time status. After the plate is created, ink is added to the sections of the plate to be printed. I did not get into the whole thing as part of any clear plan. Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing.Using a printing press, the process allows many copies to be produced by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against sheets or a continuous roll of paper. make letterpress plate, Find Quality make letterpress plate and Buy make letterpress plate from Reliable Global make letterpress plate Suppliers from mobile site on m.alibaba.com Flroiant uses his Shapeoko 3 to make wood blocks for letterpress printing. When the opportunity came up to drive down and profile Theo Rehak at the Dale Guild, I just did it. Make a business plan. My husband still has a full-time job, and he helps me at night and on weekends. But the founding principles―the “why,” and the financing― are what will make a big difference between a zealous hobbyist and a lasting professional. I didn’t tell lots of people about it at first, and when we had friends over for dinner one night I invited them down to see the press. For me, the excitement is in the creation. Large plates are carved, then inked up and clamped in a flatbed press. You can cut or engrave a block or sheet of wood and slap that into a press. If you are looking for something that is more of a “dip-your-toes-in-the-water” style of press, then we advise researching the L Letterpress Press or The Evolution. Welcome to Letterpress Plates by Elum, a photopolymer plating and film output service for commercial printers, designers, and closet letterpress tinker-ers everywhere. For all our plate types, the largest size plate we process is 16.5 x 20. I knew I wanted to do letterpress full-time when I realized two things: how happy doing it made me feel, and how happy a custom piece of stationery made my clients feel. He also uses it to replace vintage wood type that he’s accumulated over the years. Thanks !! You’ll receive them sealed in a bag, so all you have to do is remove them, peel, and stick. Obviously everyone has to eat. Letterpress printing has become the go-to printing technique for wedding invitations, greeting cards, and business cards for anyone hoping to make an impression (pun intended) on the recipient. We figured out how to get plates made at Owosso Graphic (just north of us! I felt humbled and elated by the process. The KF152 fits perfectly in between the 1.75mm and 0.95mm, serving as a great all-around plate being slightly harder than 1.75mm and giving a deeper relief than the 0.95mm. Required fields are marked *. Workshop Day 1: Overview to letterpress, negative exposure to create polymer plates. Depending on how you use these products, you can get either letterpress or foiling effects. It didn’t matter if I was printing for myself or the fanciest society soiree; when I was printing, I was happy. included: $30 for materials. I have 2 C&P’s and 1 (scary) Heidelberg… Sitting starring at me for 3 years now. Our photopolymer plates aren’t your typical letterpress plates. Saturdays February 15 + 22, 10am-2pm REGISTER HERE This class will cover the old and new uses of the letterpress using light-sensitive polymer plate We’ll be happy to cut your steel-backed plates for you if you include a simple cutting diagram (with the smallest plate size we can trim being 1.5” x 1.5”). The L Letterpress Revisited Every time I pull out my pica pole or tweezers that I’ve owned for 25 years, I get a sense of accomplishment and nostalgia that hitting the print button on the keyboard couldn’t do. But alas, calligraphy was not being offered that session so I enrolled in another class – Intro to Typography, a beginners letterpress course. I set up the tabs and plates exactly the same as I would for thin metal dies: tab one on the base, one cutting plate, and the paper. I was instantly smitten. What you need to print well on your L Letterpress Machine, Sharon Braun Hutton – Letterpress of Tulsa, Amy Arndt Lesniewicz – Alice-Louise Press, L Letterpress Printing Techniques from Boxcar Press. It doesn’t have to be a super detailed, even just a short list outlining your goals and expectations can be really helpful. For example: you can cut a piece of Lino and mount it on some wood and slap that into a press. During that time, I got engaged and discovered letterpress printing. To make sure that I got good impressions, after each print I wiped the plate clean with a dry cotton rag before reinking. Every job presents its own challenges, and even a routine run can turn into hours of troubleshooting, head scratching, and pacing. And I was OK with that because I was producing far more than I could ever keep! If you go into debt to start up, then you don’t really own the business, your bank does. Her studio was my happy place… I was always enamored by the smell of print: fresh sawdust in the wood shop where plywood became relief, the earthy smell of ink mixed and spread, turpentine in the air everywhere. It is another deep-relief polymer similar to the 1.75mm Polymer. My mother was the village librarian in Parma, Michigan, where I grew up, and I was always surrounded by books. I look at those invitations now and I see a lot of “mistakes” (you know the regular suspects; too much ink, too much impression, rollers in need of replacement etc.) They can also withstand very high temperatures required for the moulding process. Had I not been laid off from my job, I’m not sure if I would have ever gone out on my own. And this May, after five years of attending NSS as buyers, we will be exhibiting for the first time as a part of the Ladies of Letterpress booth (booth #2374-80!). (photography courtesy of Green Door Photography). By February of the following year we had our website up and were getting letterpress inquiries. I was lucky enough to land an apprenticeship in the garment district at a commercial shop, where I quickly learned the difference between futzing around with type and making sure that stationery for Versace and the New York City Ballet looked its absolute best. Having studied environmental design, then landscape architecture, I used that formal education to develop my first projects. We can also supply the following thicknesses of foil-backed polymer letterpress plates upon request:0.43mm – 0.80mm – 1.14mm. But mostly I am stubborn and I want things the way I want them. Your email address will not be published. I’m three years in now, and going strong! These plates are called photopolymer plates, and are what present day printers use to make letterpress plates from your computerized work of art. Steel backed letterpress plates are ideal if you are using a magnetic base as you won’t require glue or double-sided tape to fix in place. How To Make Letterpress Plates At Home Fall 2017 - NYSATA Home Your hand on the potter’s wheel or make a letterpress card. Enjoy the presses and happy printing! Fortunately (or unfortunately), all I know how to do is run a letterpress so it made the next step undeniable. I have taken classes and studied about these machines from the past…. And I realized that I had a day job teaching, a night job writing, and neither my wife nor I had any real design training. As the process is very manual, letterpress prints tend to also be as much about the paper stock as the print itself, with the printer and designer working together to choose unusual, richly textured or heavyweight stocks. We’d recommend to start with something small, like a note card or thank you card and work your way up to more advanced projects. It is sometimes referred to as “deep relief” if using a Boxcar base. However, it’s time for the business to grow exponentially. Not laser engraved photopolymer, but laser engraved non photo-sensitive materials like wood, linoleum, sheet plastic, etc. You can achieve a slightly deeper emboss or de-boss in the substrate with this extra relief compared to the others. What is Proportional or Disproportional sizing. Here are our the options for K95 plates. I am probably the oldest person starting letterpress, as I am 50 something. And it marks us as different. I did what I felt compelled to do. Thanks for any help!!! For use in the L Letterpress your plate will needs to be less than 15cm wide. The NYC Resistor member posted an excellent guide on how to use a lasercutter to create intaglio letterpress plates out of acrylic, which is much less expensive than using the traditional copper. Thanks to its unique chemical make up Torelief offers an extraordinarily fast washout along with excellent reproduction of all fine details. Shortly after finding our press, I struck up a conversation with a “living history” exhibitor at a local museum. The most effective method to make letterpress printing work of art . However, it is the hardest polymer product available and is well suited for Bakelite mouldings. Hand & Ink: a Mini Letterpress: Hand and Ink is one of my on-going side projects. Convert your text to outlines (Type > … Today’s cottage industry of letterpress printers has been built on the shoulders of 100 years of printing industry, starting around the late 1800s. It took me so long to weed all the little bits that I was dreading doing it again! The picture below is with my plate inked with a bit too much ink, but unfortunately I didn't take a picture with it inked the right amount. Making your own letterpress work of art is very direct. Thick Plastic or Steel Based Plate 1.75 mm ( 0.07") Available in plastic or steel base, these make a very deep impression, but it can be a little harder to The Evolution Machine (from We Are Memory Keepers). I wanted to design beautiful things and print them, too. Plate size and proofs. I was looking for a creative outlet to provide an escape after my corporate workday. My friend Ben, who I had known by then for 7 years looked at the press and then turned around and offered me his hand. Then list out the steps you need to take in order to achieve your goal. Because they are 4mm thick to begin with, they allow for a deep etch of around 2-3mm. Apr 12, 2018 - All the supplies and inspiration for DIY Letterpress! Press durability Torelief plates enjoy excellent press life thanks to their unique durability. There were craft printers in major urban centers, and some shops who still had letterpress equipment, but Martha Stewart (ie the Broad Public) was only just re-discovering the form. Needless to say I was in awe of and I’ll admit pretty intimidated (still am!) Well, there were a few things going on there…first and foremost, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, and there were in fact several parts missing or broken (so much for perfect). Through phone conversations and emailed photos, Fritz was able to diagnose and treat my ailing press (he is a true hero of letterpress… and there are many more out there that if I mentioned them all here this would be a hundred pages). There was a book, a history of the village called CRACKER HILL CRUMBS and I remember my mother telling me that the Friends of the Library owned the plates from which the book had been printed. The broad public was just starting to think about letterpress as a luxury printing option. Die Cutting / Embossing Machine that is the platform used for the L Letterpress kit. After the plate was inked I put my paper on the bottom board of the letterpress bed. Now on to gorgeous letterpress … He had designed them and had them printed by my former mentor, Tim Chapman of Press New York. The other facet of our “why” stems from our love of classic typography and design. strong, wide tape, e.g. Photopolymer letterpress plates are able to hold finer screen frequencies, but some customers prefer traditional magnesium plates because they produce a crisper “shoulder”, in their opinion. A wide variety of make letterpress plate options are available to you, such as use, style, and type. It was bliss: in my garage, radio blaring, dancing a little as I rolled the cylinder back and forth getting into a rhythm. I enjoyed reading the stories on letterpress printing. The smell and patina of the lead on my fingers reminded me of days spent in my grandfather’s shop as a child, and the presses…well, the presses completely fascinated me. We currently share a studio/shop space with The Raleigh Architecture and Construction Companies in an old tire shop and have been continuing to work and collaborate with clients and artists in the area. We had already planned to leave NYC, but hadn’t yet set a date. The L Letterpress can produce nice printing. Mar 6, 2017 - So here we are at the third installment of the process of getting from illustration to letterpress product. Ordering. What I loved best, though, was the sense of accomplishment that I felt after pulling a print—the instant gratification of it, combined with the knowledge that every impression was slightly different. The press arrived refurbished in November of that year. CreAtinG letterPress PlAtes witH AdoBe illustrAtor with the skills and tools to make your own custom books at home! Attend the local wayzgooze. For example: you can cut a piece of Lino and mount it on some wood and slap that into a press. One of the biggest recommendations I have for people is to grow slowly and avoid excessive overhead whenever possible. I still distinctly remember the night after my first letterpress class at the Center for Book Arts in New York City. I have't done letterpress, but I have done lino block printing and I used to just make registration marks for the plate and paper underneath where the plate was placed. It only took us 2 or three jobs to realize that we loved the process AND we needed a bigger press! I spent six weeks making it into a habitable printshop and had $6000 to my name at the end of it. It may be tempting to lease out the shop space of your dreams, surround yourself with type cases and presses, and revel in the printing life. Geralyn will demonstrate five fun techniques for printing with letterpress plates for your layouts, cards, and pocket pages. Thankfully, we have been making custom photopolymer plates for years that do withstand the pressure of letterpress printing. Local jobs were scarce so we figured it would be best to start our own business. Letterpress printing is an obsolete technology. Steel backed letterpress plates are ideal if you are using a magnetic base as you won’t require glue or double-sided tape to fix in place. ... Design store by Kolette Hall. For me, the art was in the process, not the end result. I was lucky enough to find a C&P 10×15 in my hometown of Raleigh, NC a couple of years later and with the help of family, friends, and forum searching moved it into the family garage. The entire letterpress … Boxcar Press, and its amazing products, figured heavily in my decision to pull back from full-time press work. They may even be able to create an angled shoulder. In that five years we have had to put a lot of focus on the retail end of our business, but in the meantime we have been building up our letterpress forces in our 1,000+ square foot basement. As well as from positive. There were many schemes that were tried and discarded, including working as an under-the-table Windmill pressman at a large commercial print shop on the docks in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Your email address will not be published. We went from almost full-time down to hobby pretty quickly. Syracuse New York 13204 6 months later, I did. I open my own letter press studio 4+ yrs ago in the Washington DC area. I just couldn’t remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated by printing and by how books are made. Any ideas as to how/where to promote it? Your second fill (the shadow) should be slightly darker than your background and text color; your highlight (fill #3) should be the lightest version of your color. We usually etch 1mm, leaving a backing of 0.63mm. Wait a minute! I try not to do things I feel like I SHOULD do, or that would be GOOD for me, or my career. And of course, as a print maker, the precision skills do come in handy. I try to focus on things I MUST do. I figured I could last 3 or 4 months without earning a dime, longer if I slept on the printshop floor. This makes them clearer and … The store would bring together beautiful handmade cards and stationery from around the country while featuring my Vandercook #4 proof press as part of the retail environment. Of course, this all takes time to accomplish. I quit my job and, four months later, we found ourselves in North Carolina and Shed Letterpress was born. We’ve brought letterpress into the 21st century. Literally the day after returning from NY, I ran into Amy, then just a casual acquaintance, at a local restaurant, where we decided to open a store together. We output halftones at 100 LPI (lines per inch) If you want a different line screen, tell us in your comments when you place an order. In your logo, on your website, in your email signature line, on the back of everything you print. Health insurance and a steady, decent paycheck are difficult things to turn one’s back on. Our customers could watch while we printed anything from greeting cards to wedding invitations right there on the sales floor or through the large picture windows that looks into our tiny pressroom from the arcade of our historic building. It was actually scarier, to me, not  to go ahead and do it! I went off to college for creative writing and back again for graphic design. There are two major aspects of a business: producing goods, and selling them. Not the best clients to have at that time. Any help appreciated. Ask yourself, where do you want to end up? And as a bonus, you sound smart and confident when you talk to people about your new business because you’ve taken the time to establish a foundation. As with every successful letterpress project, start from the end and work backwards. Do we hope to go full-time in the future? In 2010 I planned a family trip to Santa Cruz for the week. However, there’s no boxcarpress equivalent in my country. How to use Lifestyles Crafts Letterpress Plates in your Big Shot! I had been commuting to NYC from the Hudson Valley, and we didn’t want to move to the city, and I was exhausted from commuting for 5 years. I knew I would have to sell my work in order to pay for more creation. Like, when I bought the press, I was meeting myself for the first time. If you’ve got a story about your transition from hobby printer to career pressman, please tell us about it in the comments section below! There was a big learning curve to printing beautifully: from packing, to platemaking, inking as well as learning the quirks of each press. But by 2006, letterpress shops just started sprouting everywhere. “Hi,” he said to me, with a look of amazement, “I don’t believe we’ve ever met before.” That’s how I felt, too. I think letterpress found me more than I went looking for it. You never know with whom you can trade equitable favors. Once you have a “why”, trumpet it everywhere. Thin plates always wash out very well and remain flat because there isn’t as much photopolymer product to react with the air when stored. And even then you will be working like a dog, but at least you won’t be broke.” So don’t quit your day job. I didn’t know the exact name for those things when I was a little boy, but I do know that one of my earliest memories of the library was thinking about how this thin little volume existed, somewhere, in the form of 196 metal plates on galleys in Brooklyn, Michigan at the Exponent Press. Hello there Howard! I was laid off from my job doing design and animation for a national morning television show. What I mean is if I wanted to die cut something fairly simple and random (an apple, state outline, banana), is there a home brew / hobby way, technique, to make die cutting plates on demand in house to use on a regular letterpress (not a cylinder press). We were taking letterpress classes and researching business development while I was still working, but hadn’t planned on starting a letterpress business so soon. But by 2006, letterpress shops just started sprouting everywhere. #letterpress . (I would love to start on my kitchen table like you mentioned in your article). Steel backed letterpress plates are ideal if you are using a magnetic base as you won’t require glue or double-sided tape to fix in place. Your background letterpress work of art is very direct, after each print I wiped plate! Gorgeous letterpress … Flroiant uses his Shapeoko 3 to make the ordering process!! By TOYOBO as is the pioneer of water-washable photo-sensitive printing how to make letterpress plates Printight® smaller relief makes the clean! Of water-washable photo-sensitive printing plate Printight® hastily picked more for its convenience than its appeal dry cotton before... 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Skills and tools to make the ordering process easy 'm asking the public to share their story about.. Bay area, I was OK with that because I lost my doing! Replies so far how to do is remove them, peel, and I was interested! Who have made the next day if the order is received by our 10am EST cut-off time thing can.