Swayspace blog » Shannon

We’re in a Show! New York Writes Itself

Shannon — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:04:44 +0000

In June of this year, we were invited to participate in a letterpress show for a project called New York Writes Itself.

New York Writes Itself (NYWI) is an amorphous creative production where the inspiration is created not by one person, rather an entire city of potential scribes. Overheard conversations, glimpsed interactions or in-your-face encounters all form the ever growing script. A scribe is described by NYWI as “observational and in touch with the people of New York”, it can be ANYONE in short, and these recorded moments are simply submitted by logging on to the NYWI site and filling out a form.

The show we are in is called New York Types and is a celebration of NYC Letterpress community and the people of NYC. This particular chapter of the NYWI production serves as an ideal description of what NYWI is all about; the spoken word or observed daily life experience of a fellow New Yorker forming the impetus for creativity in whatever form it may take, in this case amazing letterpress posters.

Given the opportunity to be a part of this, we jumped at the chance to give life to the individual voices and views of the city and life in New York. Each Swayspacer created a poster based on selected scripts from NYWI and each designer put his/her own spin on the script creating what is an exciting and colorful addition to the show.

Here’s Willy, crankin’ out some posters:

In addition to the ten editions of posters, we also produced a large scale group poster to which we each contributed drawings.

You can see the full posters at the show, which opens Dec 15 at the Art Director’s Club in New York. More info about the project is here, and you can RSVP for the event here. The pieces are also available for purchase on the NYWI website.

See you there!

The Feltron 2009 Annual Report : Behind the Scenes

Shannon — Thu, 06 May 2010 23:36:45 +0000

After about two months, the Feltron 2009 Annual Report is officially completely printed! I don’t think anyone quite understood the magnitude of the job until it was well underway. It’s the biggest job Swayspace has printed, and in the end it was definitely worth the massive effort by everyone involved. You may have viewed the annual report online, or received your copy in the mail recently. What follows in this post is a look at the process of printing the report; a look beyond the finished product at what it took to get there.

The 2009 Report began about a year and a half ago, when Nicholas asked us to print the business card-like invitations to participate in his annual report. They were printed on duplexed two color paper and individually numbered with a numbering machine.

By the end of January 2010 Nicholas had compiled his data and designed the 2009 Report. We wrote a preview blog post earlier about our initial tests for printing the report, and we were all excited about the results of that initial meeting.

Dan prepared the files for plates and uploaded them to Boxcar Press…

…who sent us 16 plates and proofs.

Then the paper came.

It was a lot of paper.

The report is a 16 page booklet made of four spreads saddle sewn together. Each spread was double sided, and each side has two colors. Over two thousand copies of the book were printed. That means that over 8,000 pieces of paper were run through our Vandercook SP-20 four times each. That’s over 32,000 turns of the Vandercook handle…manually.

We were, however, very game for the challenge and leapt right in, beginning with the grey plates.

Julia completing 1 of 32,000+ handle turns

We printed all eight of the grey plates first.

We then moved on to the yellow plates, starting with the cover.

Printing is fun!

John inking up the rollers.

Each chunk of paper in these stacks is about 200 sheets of paper.

Emma and Ben adding packing under the plates.

Kenzan setting up to print.

Dan checking the color and ink levels as he prints.

Following the yellow, the red plates were printed.

Nick himself stopped by to check out the red and even print a few.

The last color we printed was the blue.

The paper just after it’s come off the plate.

Ready to head to the binder!

This is a shot of all the pages cut and spliced together as they appear in the book.

After shipping the report to NB Bookbinding for sewing and trimming, we proceeded to print the stickers. These were a lot of fun to print since they were done in all the colors used for the report, 100 each. Maybe it’s just that 100 seems like a drop in the ocean compared to 32,000.

The final reports received from the binder!

The finished product.

All in all, it was a great experience, and we’re honored Nick decided to involve us in the project. Everyone learned a lot about handing a project of this magnitude. A special thanks goes to all the printers who took the time to help out and sacrificed weekends and late nights to the cause; we definitely couldn’t have done it without you!

….and now for a nap…

Preview : 2009 Feltron Annual Report

Shannon — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:24:19 +0000

Most projects that come to Swayspace by way of letterpress are either wedding invitations or business cards, but every once in a while something different gets thrown into the mix. We were incredibly excited when friend of Swayspace, Nicholas Felton, decided to have us letterpress print his Feltron 2009 Annual Report. The report is sixteen pages of lovely information design comprised of Nicholas’s personal data collected throughout 2009.

A four-color, sixteen page (four double-sided sheets), 8″x10″ booklet is no small order for letterpress printing. At the beginning of this week, we started running some proofs on the press; we were testing color, pressure, registration and checking for areas we might have some trouble with. Nicholas himself stopped by the studio to see how things were going and to make some decisions about how he wanted it printed. What follows are a few photos of this proofing process. Check back later for our post on the finished product, and don’t forget to pre-order your own copy!

A proof of a page of the report and a very serious meeting in the background

A test plate on the press

Checking out a Mock-up

Sweater Twins and Ben making decisions

Different proofs of the Grey plate

Hoping for this as the end result!

Holiday Cards

Shannon — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:55:20 +0000

Happy Holidays from Swayspace! In preparation/celebration/anticipation of the holiday season, we’ve been printing some holiday themed stationery to be sold at the Makers Market here at the OAC Factory on Sundays.

taking care of business cards

Shannon — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:29:08 +0000

Having been the ironic printers without business cards for some time, it’s incredibly exciting to finally have fresh sets in our hands. It was a long process of Patrick doing several designs and everyone voting on their favorites. We finally settled on a design and what followed was another long process of printing. We really went to town doing them in 4 colors. We did 3 main color changes, along with some miscellaneous trials to essentially print over a dozen colors.

what follows are various shots of the month long process:

these colors are my favorite combination

the full set, fronts and backs, finally realized

Rainbow Roll

Shannon — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:01:48 +0000

Patrick has been designing business cards for kids so parents can set up play-dates. It’s part of a new business card system we’re starting with pre-made designs and colors (shoot us and email: studio@swayspace.com if you’re interested). Of course, for kid-business cards, you gotta break out the rainbow roll:

This is a Public Service Announcement

Shannon — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:58:29 +0000

Makers Market Cards

Shannon — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:00:07 +0000

A quick hand-set type project for The Market that we’ve been peddling our stationary at on Sundays. (This is what we pulled those fonts out for)

We’re also starting an exploration in printing business cards with the metal type for smaller business card runs that’d be a little more cost effective if you’re just interested in some nice letterpress cards done in the metal fonts that we’ve got handy. Drop us a note (studio@swayspace.com) if you’re interested in learning more!

The first color/lockup on press

second color lockup

fin.

Type Around the Studio

Shannon — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:05:01 +0000

The other day, we pulled out a bunch of foundry type for a lead type project (post on that to come later). We were looking for some Futura, but I don’t think we ended up finding the right size. In anycase, lots of other type goodness came out of storage. The labels on the fonts themselves are just lovely.

The fonts are awesome, but there’s also a ton of other cool type hanging around the studio so I took a little break and went on a little scavenger hung. Check out this “Finishing Rubber” line

Russian (I think) packaging, the blue is great.

You don’t really get a lot of products nowadays where ‘useful’ is a selling point. Or that are ‘specially designed for rural residents’ either.

P.S. How awesome is that as a band name: The Useful Farmer Assortment

From the lunch ordering days, my favorite post-it order.

Letterpress Lately

Shannon — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:27:49 +0000

Remember Ben’s teaser post, preparation anticipation ? It turned into this:

The shop has been pretty busy the past couple months, here’s a bit of what that side of Swayspace has been up to.

Some business cards for Jos Buivenga of Exljbris, creator of many a lovely typeface (which we’ve used on many an invite). Check out his latest, Calluna, which he used to design his card:

A couple “blind” invitations

An architecture inspired invite

And a fun duotone