You pay someone some money, hand them a box with an address on it, and it almost always arrives at the destination. But what happens in between? Parcel fairies? Sorcery? Elf-style (read: Will Ferrell) mailroom dance parties?

Enter: the Dictaphone Parcel. The Dictaphone Parcel pieces together audible parts of the journey by mailing a dictaphone that records what happens in transit. As an added bonus, there is a fictitious visualization of the process. Good fun!

Dictaphone Parcel from Lauri Warsta on Vimeo.

When I was thinking about what to include in this post, I had a vague memory of an infographic I’d seen a few years ago – a sort of key to different kinds of facial hair. It took some diligent googling, but I traced the it to the source (graphic designer Matt McInerney). Turns out it was one of imgur‘s Best Images of 2010:

Click to see larger image. Worth it!

Why did this come to mind? Because we are constantly trying to evaluate Leland’s beard as it grows. Where do you think he’s falling right now?

I vote full, but I think Leland’s shooting for [typographic] philosopher. One thing’s certain, whenever we venture on BYU campus – whether for a quick bite at the Pendulum Court or their bookstore’s ridiculously cheap cutting mats ($15 for a 24×36″?!) – Leland basks in the awe and admiration given by the many mustachioed gentlemen.

In my searchings, I also came across this gem: The Beard Font by Tim Yarzhombeck (yes, that links to his livejournal. remember livejournals?).

I keep wanting to find my favorite, but it’s a many-way tie. Perhaps z? Gotta love the hair/beard/ponytail combo.

A post about beards wouldn’t be a post about beards without a nod to Beard, a book featuring many wonderful beards at the World Beard and Moustache Championships in Anchorage, Alaska.

Among the greats is one of our very favorites – that of Drew Danburry: friend, musician and gentleman barber extraordinaire. Should your facial hair need grooming, you should consider the straight razor magic of Sir Drew at Danburry Barber Shop. Might we also mention that Drew’s wife, Lynette, is an exceptionally talented seamstress/tailor/human being and custom-made and hand embroidered the very special lederhosen that Drew is wearing in the Beard book. (She writes about that here, whence came this image).

Don’t worry, the WBMC has its own website, too! In fact, it looks like the US is going to have its own beard championship in 2012! We’ll have to stay tuned for that and in the meanwhile, feast our eyes upon some of the gems from past years:

If anyone knows of any good beard links/photos/velvet paintings, we’d love to hear about them!

It’s going to be good. Anyone want to take a stab at what they think it is?

While you wait, quench your thirst for type-nerdiness on Jim’s website here (whence came the preview photo). Still in the dark about the original 34 Typographic Sins poster? It’s ok, just click here. We won’t tell anybody.

Brittany had designed the image of the Royal Wedding Processional Map for a tote bag originally and, after several requests for a print of the image, she contacted us to print the posters. Letterpress printing all of the colors was out of the question, so we decided to combine the craft of letterpress with the fine art  reproduction capabilities of giclée once again.

Registering letterpress to giclée can be quite a challenge. Each 23×35 sheet of Crane Lettra had to be hand fed into the giclée printer very carefully to ensure consistent printing of the image so we wouldn’t be angry at ourselves when trying to register the photopolymer letterpress plates to the giclée image. After the paper is through in the giclée printer, we cut down the parent sheets to fit into our vintage Vandercook SP-15 letterpress. After adjusting the registration, packing, and amont of ink on the press, everything was just right and we started the process of hand printing the posters one at a time. Once we are to this point there is little adjustment and ,other than adjusting the ink, it is only a matter of printing through the pieces. So that is what we did.

The design of the posters was great for creating a deep impression in the paper, so we printed these with lots of packing to really make the impression of the letterpress pop from the poster and work well with the rich colors of the giclée. For a bit of Brittany’s story of creating these beautiful pieces, head over to her blog post on the process and enter for a chance to win one of the posters!

The groom, Arthur, has done everything from farming in Ireland to fixing up a hundred-year-old wooden sailboat named the Atlantis to sail the worlds’ oceans—a true modern day adventurer. We are glad that he was able to find us in his travels so we were able to print these beautiful wedding invitations! You can see more about our clients adventures and how he met his wife on his blog, the CAPTAIN’S LOG.

When I printed this poster, traffic to my site more than doubled. I know that typography is a controversial subject, but who knew it would drive traffic like it did? The poster made it to the FPO: For Print Only website where it was exposed to the full scrutiny of a bunch of typographic nerds. The ensuing conversation was quite opinionated, as would be expected. Anytime someone comes out with a definitive stance on a much debated topic discussed by people who take the topic very seriously, you had better hunker down and prepare for the barrage of flack coming from every side. That’s the fun of it, and if anyone can stand his own with these typographic geeks, I would say that Jim Godfrey surely can.

Jim designed the 34  Typographic Sins Letterpress Posters as a means of educating his students on some of the more common mistakes made when designing with type. If you are curious as to the exact content of the poster, you can download a PDF of the poster on Jims’s colleague, Ray Elder’s website. Think of this as typographic missionary work.

These posters presented quite a challenge due to the size mainly. The photopolymer plate extended outside of my print area and took up every last millimeter of vertical printing space that the old Vandercook Sp-15 had in her. The first problem encountered was running our of ink by the end of the impression. There were mixed areas of heavy inking and small text, so you can’t just add more ink to fix the problem because you will lose a crisp edge on your small text. So, we ended up flipping the plate around and double inking the heavy inking areas only.

The next problem came when we were registering the second color. With such a large printing area, the paper actually stretches by the time it gets to the end of the impression. Because one of the plates had lots of printing area and the other had only a few small printing areas, the paper stretched different amounts for each color. This meant that the registration was almost impossible. In the end we ended up modifying the plate to make it work and we ended up with a beautiful product. I am provided with abundant reminders of my saying that letterpress printing is just problem solving.

Any opinions on just how naughty these sins are?

Giclée printing has traditionally been used for fine art reproductions, so it lends itself well to high-end wedding invitations. Unlike most printing methods where you are using only four colors, giclée printing has at least six inks. The inks are pigment inks which means that they can be stable for up to 25 years on the printed piece. The colors are amazingly rich because of the pigments in the ink. Giclée printing also allows for the use of varied paper including handmade papers and Crane’s Lettra. All of these things combine to make a perfect fit for letterpress.

The hardest part of this job was making sure that everything would register between the two printing methods. If the giclée printer scaled the image down or up at all, then the registration could be totally off when we tried to print with the letterpress. Luckily, due to some forethought and careful printing, our fears of nightmarish registration problems were totally unrealized. Phew.

Unlike most of our invitations, the talented Artist/Designer was the bride herself. She came to us with a great design and the idea of having the invitations 4-color offset printed before being letterpressed. At first, we were having a hard time finding an offset printer who could work well with letterpress and meet our high standards. Then we remembered hearing something about giclée printing while working with a local non-profit art gallery. After a bit of  research, we found the best giclée printer around and got to work. The art reproduced marvelously and the colors were rich and vibrant, showing off the beautiful artwork.

We received a copy of the invitation in the mail and were amazed by the beautiful envelope treatment. A brown craft paper envelope was used and then addressed with beautiful hand lettering in white paint. We will certainly be adding her to our list of preferred designers!

The Artist/Designer’s blog can be found here:

The House That Lars Built

We knew right off that Cranes Lettra 110lb in Ecru would be our starting point, but how to get the variegated staining that we were looking for? We tried all sorts of dyes to achieve the effect that we were looking for: cocoa, coffee, tea, coca cola, etc. We made swatches with the various dying mediums and then tried applying them in different manners to see how that changed the effect. The tea ended up working best with the paper, and went on nicest when sprayed. The only problem was that the tea tended to leave a pattern that was to muted and undefined, so we needed something to make the paper look like it had been locked in a leather seaman’s chest for 100 years in the attic of a leaky old house on the Maine coast.

So we turned to Nature for a bit of help. After much experimenting we realized that if handfuls of pine needles, leaves, stones, and dried grass were thrown on the tea covered paper then the tea would puddle up around these bits to form marvelous and unpredictable patterns. So we setup an assembly line to spray the paper, scatter Nature over it, and then blow dry. The final result looked just like we were hoping for with a nicely variegated pattern that was not predictable and almost oozed old-world manliness.

The letterpress printing was a simple one-color job, which was a nice break after the rigorous work of dying the paper. The only trick in printing was to watch out for small twigs left over on the paper…