Milwaukee Ballet Brochure

I had the opportunity to design the Milwaukee Ballet program brochure for the 09-10 season. It was a delightful project and I was so thrilled to be chosen to design and art direct the piece while at GS Design. I will never forget it because it was during a time my daughter was undergoing open heart surgery, and happened to be my final big job at GS. Sometimes I miss those days ... but being able to grow and learn with my daughter has taught me so much. I wouldn't have had it any other way.

As it turned out, I wasn't able to finish the final project myself. Being critical in every detail, the printing quality seemed to be less than perfect. So, I feel a desire to show a few of the original concepts I presented.

Spacing Issues

Oh, dear! Please accept my apologies for the major spacing issues on this blog. I might need to find a new format. Of course I am pretty new to blogging and html is just a foreign language to me! Although, I did take an intro to html once ... a few years back! And, I did design our small site here: centennialpress.com, but really it is pretty basic and also has a few quirks. You could think of it as a unique, antique treasure, that's what gives it character!

Pressing Letters

Last year, I had the wonderful opportunity to take a Letterpress class, thanks to some new friends who invited me to join them. They found a workshop in Evanston, Il that offers an intro to letterpress class. I always had a passion for the art of letterpress and someday hoped to acquire an actual press to print our small press poetry. Now that I had my newly found business of designing wedding stationery, I thought this was a perfect opportunity to learn how "press letters". It was an awesome experience! The teacher did a fabulous job and we were able to print whatever we so desired. I decided to print my business cards along with my husband's, as well as a few odds and ends that would help me grow my business. Here are a few examples:

The class was right before St. Valentines day, so I decided to make my love a card. This was printed on the antique and very lovely Chandler and Price Press. I made a blind impression on the first printed pieces, then I decided to ink it up and use some old wood type to spell the word "love". After I had it inked up I wanted to see how just the calligraphy design inked on the paper would look. Fine results I think! Check out the video my friend took of me printing these below.

I loved experimenting with different papers and inks. Since the paper is handfed, one by one you can just feed different papers and sizes through if you want to see how the ink looks on various stock.