This holiday season our designers rolled up their sleeves and partnered with Union Press to handcraft limited edition letterpress posters for our friends and clients. This old-school printing process is an excellent reminder of where we’ve been—our creative roots—and what’s still important. Art. Craftsmanship. A personal touch. In an age of we-want-it-now, high-tech immediacy, letterpress is a throwback to a simpler time, when patience and quality really meant something.
On an unseasonably warm day in October, two Cramer designers, one art director, one copywriter, and one letterpress guru came together to learn, teach and create at Union Press in Somerville, MA. We already knew what we wanted the poster to say—we were there to determine just how we would say it.
We were honest about our letterpress talents and know-how: we had none. That's where Eli Epstein came in. As the owner of Union Press, he patiently guided us through the process.
The first step was to choose our letters. Eli took us into the back room, where he revealed drawers upon drawers of wooden and iron letters, in dozens of different typefaces.
Overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices, Sarah, Lisa and Juliet, the designers amongst us, got to work—pulling letters out, putting them back, arranging and rearranging, literally getting their hands dirty (the letters were, of course, covered in ink).
After a few hours, each designer had selected letters and flourishes—stars, a pointing finger—to convey our message.
Eli showed us how to move the letters from the table onto the press (it involved inserting iron space fillers—much more time-consuming than the good ole spacebar) and we were ready to start printing. After a quick tutorial, we each took a turn at the press, printing our drafts in black ink.
In reviewing the results, we realized that there were elements of all three designs that we liked, and some that worked better than others. We took the drafts back to Cramer and sat with them, collaborated and consulted. Ultimately, we decided to combine the three designs into one complete piece, choosing three different, but complementary, colors. Upon our direction, Eli compiled the three different plates and printed our finished product.
We brought the prints back to Cramer, hand-numbered each one, and sent them in the mail with a postcard. The postcard shows pictures of us at Union press, making the posters. We wrote a handwritten message to each client. The printed copy on the postcard drives to a landing page which not only tells the story of us making the posters, but it also has a video of us making the posters and learning the art of letterpress.
VIDEO LINK: https://vimeo.com/119170948
web page: http://cramer.com/story/2014-holiday-card/
