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Letterpress is such a passionate and heartfelt craft shared by many in the design and printing world. It has a long legacy and history starting from its inventor Johannes Gutenberg in the mid 1500s to our current day heroes such as Jim Sherraden at Hatch Show Print in Nashville. In recent years, letterpress has become more mainstream due to its popularity in the stationery industry—now the general public has been exposed to this great artistry. It is one of those things that you never get tired of looking at and touching. The impression, its depth, the ink saturation, and tactile quality all stir a warm fuzzy feeling for those who love this timeless craft. I do not know of any designer wouldn’t want to do a letterpress piece.
Recently we were looking for a letterpress vendor in town (Seattle) for our design firm’s promo book and I came across some very talented craftspeople. Our job had a very short run of 250 so I was looking for a small letterpress printer that didn’t have the overhead of the full service shops. We were looking for a one- or two-person shop that had the passion for the deep impression.
On my google search there was no shortage of talent in letterpress printers. You could see it in their work, how they talked about it on their sites, and how they presented themselves. Although the searching was visually fun, it was also time-consuming and hard to narrow down. If you are looking for a letterpress vendor, here are three that we were impressed by:
Bremelo Press (she printed the of cover our promo book above)
A small shop run by Lynda Sherman, super friendly lady with a lot of talent and great customer service. We picked her to do our promo because she had samples of red ink on chip board which was very close to what we envisioned for our piece.
Swash letterpress
A passionate shop that we also hope to use in the future. Their samples were impressive and jaw-dropping. Julie Cook was our contact, she was very nice and even dropped by with some samples at our office.
Evolution Press
A bigger shop but I was impressed by their work. You can tell from their site that they get it. They also do engraving. If your job has letterpress and regular printing, they are worth checking out.
If you are a designer in town who has used other small shops we’d love to hear about your experience and who they are.
–Jesse Doquilo
Urban Craft Uprising in Seattle had a couple of nice booths: Sycamore Street Press (sycamorestreetpress.com) and ilee papergoods (ileepapergoods.com). Nice deep impressions and really cute illustrations.