Category: Custom Work

  • Every Couple Wants Their Own Postmark

    I won’t try to fight it – and why should I?

    1helen-invite-rsvp-no-address

    My youngest sister mad-helen

    (why is she so angry all the time??) is getting married this weekend and I designed/Jen printed some invitations for the blessed event.

    The event will be very celebrity-heavy. By “celebrity” I mean “family.” It will be full of family. You can crash the wedding if you want – but no pictures. Just kidding. Take pictures – I can’t stop you.

    cathedral-polaroid

  • Kitchen Photo Shoot And a Guest Appearance

    Pat Carney stumbled into our dimension on Friday for the Gute photo shoot.carney-in-the-kitchen

    Edmund made latte after latte while Loretta babbled in the background. We think she was talking about Pam the kitten/her prisoner. Anyway, I had to punch Pat in the face to get one latte away from him for a prop. He took it like a man. Except for the tears.

  • METRO home found us!

    It was only a matter of time because we were standing outside their office.

    METRO home is a new special section in METRO. The cover of this months issue is intriguing and frightening. It might be a photograph of a bedroom/torture chamber. What’s behind those curtains?metro-home-cover-grabYikes! This room comes with shackles and nightmares.

    Urban Living Manifesto sounds really serious. Do people really take themselves that seriously?? Two words for them: settle. down.

    Oh, but here’s something cheerful - it’s about Zeichen Press:metro-crop-full-page-spread-grab
    Those Room & Board prints were sure worth all of the sweat I dripped on them last Summer!

    fran-in-the-sweat-shop

  • Franstravaganza Part II

    “It is finished.” She gasped as she crumpled to the cold, concrete. It was, by all accounts, glorious. The work would outlast the artist and elevate the art form to new and dizzying heights. 

    But she, exhausted and covered in ink, was oblivious. To her, this was nothing more than an exercise. A functional and fleeting piece, it would be handled roughly and discarded by Springtime.

    Um, so, that poster for Craftsravaganza is, like, done:

    craftstravaganza-poster

  • Franstravaganza!

    There are a couple of things going on around here:

    1) Our fax machine is spitting out orders faster than we (jen) can fill them.

    2) We (I) are (am) making the poster for this year’s Craftstravanganza.

    Just to make my load fair, I listen to a recording of screaming children while I work.

    I think it really shows:

    craftstravaganza-layout-export_1

    Today, I will put ink on that – it will be so spectacular there won’t be a dry eye in the room. (I’ll be the only one in the room.)

  • Working in the Bathtub

    I love the ladies of the Jelly Shot Test Kitchen. And when I say I love them it means I love that they trust us. Trust us to create business cards of the future. We’re not sure how lasers work but we all saw Superman II.generalzod

    These days, lasers are used for more than just pulverizing concrete. And I can prove it:

    jstk-polaroid

    The latest project for JSTK has nothing to do with lasers. Or letterpress - don’t they know we do LETTERPRESS??  They asked us to create some instructional films.

    Naturally, I cleaned my bathtub and got to work:fran-bathtub

    Here’s what I made:

  • Magic Birthday

    Aunt Clare –>

    not-clare

    In other words, it’s her Magic Birthday!  The Orange Five print was created especially for her:orange-fives-blog

    It’s pretty tasty and she may try to lick the ink but I can’t be responsible for that. Just like I can’t be responsible for anything I did from 1985 – 1995.

  • *A Woman of Letters/Serious Letterpress/Room and Board/Minnesota Monthly*

    Speaking of letters! The new prints arrived at all of the Room and Board stores across this great land. The photographs on their website are gorgeous and make me feel like I live in a crack house.

    Room & Board red

    I have nothing against crack houses, I’m sure the people that live in them are perfectly lovely and are just misunderstood.

    The legendary, Katie Dohman (Minnesota Monthly) already wrote a little something about them. I’m feeling pretty fancy.

  • Lord of the Letterpress Flies

    I remember some sort of Mexican-standoff In an early apartment that involved my roommate, dirty dishes and refried beans. Neither of us wanted to do the dishes and so they were stacked, teetering on the counter – pots and plates on top of other pots and plates – the bottom of the pile forgotten like a lost tribe. My roommate, a vegetarian, had a particular pot that she favored for heating her refried beans – she used this day after day until one day it was forgotten – and the pot joined the pile. But not before she filled it with water, she believed in the pre-soak method. I’m not sure how much time passed – a forensic scientist would be able to determine that based on the evidence in the kitchen.

    One morning (or was it afternoon?) I discovered something disturbing: the kitchen windows alive with hundreds of flies. I don’t remember either of us being overly surprised. I do remember having to do the dishes in the bathtub.
    There are no dirty dishes in the shop and certainly no vegetarians – and yet, I awoke to the same disturbing scene: windows alive with flies. The only conclusion that makes any sense has something to do with the devil. I’d like to believe that our printing projects aren’t evil but I guess I can’t be the judge of that.flies
    Oh, by the way: Before the flies, I finished those prints for Room & Board:new room and board
  • Tortured (commercial) Artist

    I need to get into character for the big Room and Board project… “WHAT’S MY MOTIVATION??!”

    Backstory:

    In a post-apocalyptic world, one breathtakingly beautiful woman finds herself wandering through the residential remains of South Minneapolis. She stumbles upon a letterpress print shop – it is impossibly intact. She drags her shopping cart of possessions inside and studies her surroundings. Type, ink, paper, a giant wrench and an autographed photograph of Kelly Clarkson. This is exactly like her dream – except without Abraham Lincoln. There isn’t much time before the feral cats find her…  But she finally has a method to preserve the dying language – at last! At long last… 

    Whew! That was intense! Okay, enough screwing around – the clock is ticking and the cats are coming.