Zida Borcich Talks About Letterpress Printing

This is our little 1927 hand fed C&P (stands for Chandler & Price) printing press. We still use it now and then. It’s like one of those really feisty old grandmas who like to wear sneakers and go to parties…

I am having a Wayzgoose this year, actually two Wayzgooses, to celebrate my twenty-fifth year in business. One will be in LA, at Arundel Antiquarian Books, and one will be in my shop in Fort Bragg, in November. Sometime I will tell you what a Wayzgoose is, but you can look it up in the OED if curiosity won’t leave you alone. I’m too busy to go into it right now.

I was just writing a comment on a blog that put one of our business cards on a list of twenty outstanding letterpress business cards — http://bestdesignoptions.com/?p=5384#comment-7802

The author spoke about “ramming” the type into paper and I had to add this to his description:

Having been at this for 35 years, I have seen a lot of changes in the way letterpress is done. When I started, we just hand set everything in lead, one letter at a time, into a composing stick. I still have many zillions of pounds of type at my shop in Fort Bragg, California, if you are looking for any. (I have to sell some of it to make room for a new imagesetter, so call me up if you are interested.) Each letter is a separate piece of metal, so designing was REALLY hand crafted. In the process of my apprenticeship, the way type looks and acts was actually imprinted into the muscles of my fingers, so that when I started doing computer designing, the look of my design work retained the letterpress aesthetic very naturally through knowing spacing quite thoroughly in my body. It’s so exciting to see how letterpress style has developed over time and with the advent of photopolymer plates and younger artists coming into the craft, influences of modern graphic design, MTV, grunge and whatnot showing up in this living artform.

In those days, the idea was just to “kiss” the paper with the raised type, so barely any impression showed. You can see this effect in old letterpress books; you have to hold the printing in bright light and sideways to it to even see any impression at all. This was to make the type last, as they used to say, “for the life of the printer.”

When I came to the craft, many type foundries were still in business, though much of the letterpress business had lost out to more modern methods of offset printing. You must notice that since Gutenberg developed movable type, taking business away from the scribes and putting reading in the hands of ordinary people (royalty and rich people were up in arms about this and the scribes were up in arms about losing their jobs), printing has been this dynamic, inventive, ever-evolving thing, with digital printing now taking over where offset left off (offset printers are up in arms about this). It’s always a big revolution, but I have been so out of the mainstream that I once had a show called “Ten Years of Letterpress Printing In the Wrong Decade.” Now look what’s happened. Letterpress is so back in style they are blogging about it. Even I am blogging about it.

When I opened my own business, in 1984 (yes, this is my 25th anniversary), type foundries had already started to go under and I have seen almost all but a handful go extinct. Most of my lead type is now on its second or third printer’s life anyway. But every impression takes a little toll on the soft lead/tin/antimony pieces of type, so we used to really try to protect it from smashing, or ramming, as you say. It was a point of pride not to let the impression show too much. Nowadays, of course, people really put way too much impression on, but that is the style and I am all about style so we do it too, and I have started to embrace the look very much. I mean, if you are going to pay a dollar a piece for your business cards, you really want people to know it is letterpress! Letterpress has taken on a much more sculptural intention, the message is in the sculpture as well as in the actual information conveyed so you have this incredible amount of juju in a very tiny piece of paper.

We also never, EVER used to do big solids with dropped out type, but have been forced kicking and screaming to that as well, and now we do love the look, though technically, it is a harder thing to make it work and usually will have to be run separately from finer type so the fine type is not mushed up by the extra ink you have to carry for heavy coverage. We have been loving Cranes 600 gram Lettra, of course, for it’s cracker-thick weight, so it can take that kind of pressure without too much flicker on the back, as well as black and other colors of heaviest Museum Mount. My friend asked me why we just didn’t print along the edges, there is so much room there.

Anyway, I am going on too long for a sound byte (!) but was very inspired by these twenty beautiful pieces of art. I am so proud of belonging to this newly revered coven of letterpressers (letterpress is often called The Black Art, and anyone who does this work really knows what that means). I have seen its popularity rise and ebb a few times, and always just loved it so much every single day. It is some kind of magical thing, and has its own power, which is what people feel when they are handed a business card with such richness of art, beauty, history and craftsmanship layered into it.

Very best,
Zida Borcich
Studio Z Mendocino
www.studio-z.com
http://studiozmendocino.wordpress.com

Baechtel Creek Inn Rack Cards

“To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshemt.” Jane Austin

Jan Rodriguez, at the Baechtel Creek Inn and Spa in Willits, California, needed a new look, new ads, and new rack cards that really expressed the allure of her location, location, location, which is in the very Heart of Mendocino County, central to everything people want to see and visit, with the extra, added attraction of the beauty and serenity of her place. Her inn is so beautiful and luxurious, a surprise in the middle of a town that is not usually associated with indulgences like spas and gorgeous decorating. The resulting rack card we designed for her captures the mystery (and “verdure”) of northern California’s spectacular redwood forests. We used a photograph taken by noted Argentine photographer, Pablo Abuliak, who also shot the header photo on the beach for my blog. Baechtel Creek Inn and Spa offers a different take on “nature” and “nurture.”

Here’s the back of the rack: 

Next time you come to Mendocino County, you can make Jan’s Inn and Spa your headquarters for exploration into every corner of our incredible county. After your hike in the woods, you can get a massage and hot tub — what could possibly be better than that?

Art in the Gardens, Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens Annual Fundraiser

Recently I told you about the Art in the Gardens posters, rack cards and other collaterals I designed for the Fort Bragg Mendocino Coast fundraising event. Here are a couple of views of what I did for them. This is the unveiling invitation:

It’s a 4 x 9 inch card that fit into a #10 business envelope. We didn’t want to give anything away before the Great Unveiling so we just put little snippets of Julie Higgins’s painting Back to the Garden as teasers. It was very economical, yet very appealing with the bright, dramatic colors.

Here is the poster:

We also did small posters, and more things to come. Everyone is so happy to look at these things. We predict a HUGE success this year!

AK Photography Letterpress Thank You Notes

 Script Cards or Buck Slips and matching #10 Envelopes find endless ways to be useful. Plus they are so good looking you will make any excuse to write to people on them. AK’s new  thank you notes/stationery are particularly handsome with her bold logo deeply letterpressed in rich black ink.

Kim Ashford ordered stationery to match her matchless business cards. We posted those a month or so ago. We suggested she get Script Cards (aka “Buck Slips”), which are 4″ x  9″ slim cards that fit right into a #10 business envelope. Buck Slips find favor among movie stars, directors, producers and agents, who use them to paper clip to scripts — “Love-Love” or “Hate-Hate” or whatever they have to say about scripts. But they are inordinately useful in any number of other situations. A thank you note to your latest client, a message accompanying a check, a mash note or what-have-you. The greatest thing is that the envelopes are endlessly useful so you ought to buy more of them and when you decide to get 8.5″ x  11″ stationery, that also will fold into the envelope. So it’s a double duty type thing and you don’t have to buy a special sized envelope for your thank you notes. We use them incessantly here at the shop. When they are printed by letterpress, there is that added flair, the 3-D texture that sets your correspondence apart from the crowd. We like to print your name down at the bottom so you can “slash.” …Slash? Didn’t I tell you about the Art of the Slash yet? Oh, I love it so much. It’s so chic. You just “slash” through your printed moniker and scribble your initials right next to it. Don’t you want to get some too?

Larry’s Books & Autographs

I bought my first Heidelberg Windmill from Larry Rafferty. That was back in 1984 as I was getting ready to open my first business, and may I tell you,  I was terrified to open a letterpress print shop, my first foray out into Mondo Entrepreneurial. Larry had a long history with letterpress, broadsides, publishing, among many other things and he introduced me to all the old guys in San Francisco who knew anything about letterpress, who bought and sold lead type, who fixed equipment, sold paper and ink, and basically showed me the ropes. It was a gnarly world that, as one who “enjoys being a girl,” I somehow managed to fit into with so much joy and craziness that it kind of shocks me to look back on it now. Larry introduced me to the extreme type and equipment horsetrader, Jim Heagy, who in those raer less PC times, gave me a 10% discount “for being cute.” Hey, 10% is 10%.

Recently, Larry moved to a new house and studio, and he asked me to design a new logo and do up some new stationery and business cards for his online business, Larry’s Books & Autographs, www.mrbebop.com. Because he was having a new web site built, he also asked me to put in my two bits on his home page too. I said, “Larry, I want to do something modern and clean for you.” So I did. It’s Orange and Black and very, very chic. I recommend you go see Larry’s web site. He has the most amazing collections of music, autographs and books.

I just want to say Thank You, Larry, for all your help and encouragement for these last 25 years. I loved doing your new stationery. It looks great, don’t you think?

We used 600 gram Cranes Lettra for his business cards, and also made up stationery, #10 envelopes, mailing labels and 4″x 9″ script cards, all on Cranes Flourescent White papers.

Patricia Karina’s PK Photography Business Cards

We recently had the pleasure of making business cards for Patricia Hildebrand, AKA Patricia Karina. It was a fabulously collaborative project. Patricia is an artist down to her bones and has very strong ideas…Me too! We talked a lot about directions we could go, questioning and retrying each iteration, and in the process grew to enjoy and respect each other very much. This is one of the greatest things about my business — getting to know and befriend my clients. Because we trusted each others’ instincts so much, it was a very satisfying ongoing conversation that bought us to the finished product you see above (and after her essay below). Would it be horizontal or vertical? What ink colors would be used? Would it be too much to use foil? What effect would be gained by this or that decision?

In the end, I decided to reverse out her PK monogram, using our new favorite “cappuccino” colored pearlescent foil. The PK plumps out from the pressed-in foil, for a super 3-D pillowing effect. In counterpoint, her very clean sans serif typeface, in black ink, presses deeply (but not TOO deeply) into the cushy paper. Altogether a feast of textural scrumptiosity. Yes, we love them and we are so happy she does too. Soon to come; matching thank you notes and envelopes!

Here is Patricia’s story. I told her I really didn’t need to do anything but lift it straight off her blog and blush with pleasure from all her complimentary words. Thank you, Patty. My pleasure:

600 gsm(s) of Paper Goodness

June 13, 2009

It started when I was really young. Not sure exactly when, I just know my business card fetish developed at some point during my childhood. I can remember my father handing out his business cards, proudly, as most entrepreneurs do. He used to have a collection of hundreds of business cards he had gathered from different business contacts and would meticulously store them in a black vinyl business card folio. As weird as it sounds I used to love playing with that thing! When most little girls were playing house, I was picking out my favorite business cards, taking them out of their designated slips, and pretending to hand them out to big potential clients. Gosh, I’m sooooo my father’s daughter!! I couldn’t wait to have my own REAL business card and that day came when I was 16. My friend and I started a t-shirt printing company and the first thing on my priority list was a business card!! We got what we could afford……and I was devastated!! Like I was bawling my eyes out devastated!!! My friend couldn’t understand why it was such a big deal, and although at the time I really didn’t know marketing lingo and principles, it was very clear to me that I was devastated because our cheap little cards didn’t reflect who I was nor left a good first impression. We were kids but I wanted to be taken seriously, and our business cards didn’t help!

Since then I’ve worked several jobs and have been given many business cards. Mostly ones decided upon by pharmaceutical companies. However, not till now have I had a business card that helped heal the trauma I experienced when I was 16. Really, to this day I still cringe when I think about my first card! I’m now the proud owner of beautiful, thick-as-a-piece-of-chewing-gum, Crane’s Lettra 600 gsm paper, stunning, letterpress business cards!!! They’re so amazing I had to blog about it! But more amazing is Zida Borcich and her outstanding team at Studio Z!! I’m convinced Zida is the Mother Theresa of the letterpress world. She was so patient and attentive with me and helped me throughout the entire process. Working with Zida was such a great experience that I’m hoping to run out of business cards soon so I can do it all over again!! She on other hand may want a break from me…..for about 10 years! Seriously, the woman is a saint and ridiculously talented!

So thanks to Zida and her team for helping me create such an impressive business card that truly reflects my business and who I am. It’s a card that I’m proud to hand out and doesn’t make me want to cry!!

Thank you to my husband for being my hand model. Sadly, his hands look better than mine these days.

The Beachcomber Motel Business Cards

We just finished up Pam Amante’s reprint on her business cards. It’s people like Pam who keep printers in business. She passes them out wherever she goes, and she goes to lots of places where lots of people who like to travel go. She passes out so many cards that we had to replenish the supply! Most recently, she visited a convention of 25,000 travelers, all potential guests for her place On the Beach, here in Fort Bragg, CA. She told me this great thing that corroborates everything I have always believed about good design and typography. She told me that she had a lot of rack cards and other materials out on a table at the booth she was working in and noticed that people gravitated to the prettiest rack cards and took those, leaving the less gorgeous ones where they lay. I suppose it should not come as a big surprise but I loved to hear it…especially that the rack cards that flew off the table most quickly were The Beachcomber Motel’s, which we designed here at Studio Z Mendocino. Here is another view of The Beachcomber Motel business cards:

We love the gleam of truquoise foil that hints at the sweep of waves you can spy right from one of the decks of Pam’s perfectly located lodging place. We deeply impressed the type into her cards by letterpress in gray ink (sort of sand colored gray) and overprinted her “swoosh” in the blue-green metallic foil, on thick white paper. We think these “little ambassadors” speak volumes about the fun atmosphere, the nearness of the beach, the comfy vibe you will find there. This is the essence of what we do, creating a visual mood that expresses what a business wants to say about itself. Yay for the power of letterpress!

Art in the Gardens Unveiling Ceremony Tonight

I am all excited about the unveiling of artist Julie Higgins’s painting tonight at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens. She is the featured artist this year and I got to be the graphic designer of all their printed advertising, which included big posters, small posters, rack cards, post cards, and an invitation to the unveiling. Everything looks so LUSH…Julie’s acrylics have this vibrant inner glow; it was SO much fun to work with this art. I can’t show you ANYTHING yet, not till after the unveiling…Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Wait till you see! I will show you tomorrow after tonight’s festivities. The party’s outside at 5:30, if you can make it. Hope the 40% chance of rain gives over to the 60% chance that this overcast will clear up by then and we can all revel away sans umbrellas.

Z

Graphic Design Curiosities

Yesterday, Saturday morning, I woke up early and completely tore up a little three-fold brochure I designed last week. Two colors (didn’t need to be, since it was going to be printed digitally — I planned it that way), kind of a cornball Dean-Martin-swingin’ bold script, combined with a nice, clean sans serif for the main information. Not at all my usual style, but I liked it for its straightforward, ‘Fifties vibe, and, though I wasn’t totally crazy about it, it had a certain appealing consistency and rhythm of its own. It was okay, you know,  and since this was a “quick turnaround” thing, a “no big deal” thing, a “let’s get it to the printer, this is an emergency” thing, I dashed it off and delivered the PDF to my clients in record time. They LOVED IT…and then decided it really had to have some pictures.

Uhh. What most non-designers don’t know is that once a design is close to being finished, it is just about impossible to add unplanned-for elements and have it retain any of its original integrity. So, dutifully, and knowing this, I stuck in the tiny photos and it was, predictably, terrible. I could not let it go out that way. No way. NOOOO way!! That is why six a.m. Saturday found me excitedly redesigning it from scratch.

The good news is, it’s a lot better than the first one, actually, and it has pictures and it’s not going to be a smirch on my design reputation…and the clients like it way better too. I feel much relieved and much happier all around.

In spite of the happy ending, this episode reminded me of the hilarious  YouTube video about what if a corporation were trying to redesign the Stop Sign — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwqPYeTSYng–

If you are a designer, you will totally die laughing. It’s our life! But it also makes me curious about this process. It’s almost as if the design, be it a new logo, a flyer, an ad or total redesign of an identity, wants to be a certain way. It’s the designer’s job to find the path to it. There is this interior exploration on the designer’s part to understand and “get” the spirit of the company or client, the intention, the vibe, and translate that so it becomes a truthful, emotional depiction of it, visually. In truth, there are infinite possibilities available, but there is only ONE that will be chosen. This means that every comp the designer delivers needs to be GOLD. The designer ethically must believe in every iteration, because the client could chose any one, and if he chooses the one Ms. Designer threw in as bait, she is sunk. She is saddled with a smirch on her reputation.

Yep, every design concept is completely, absorbingly crucial. It takes hours and hours of creative digging and fooling around and playing and going back and forth, tons of experience and study and knowledge of typography and placement. I have been learning these things for thirty-five years of so now and I still feel such angst over design, such elation when I hit on something that really “sings.”

Hardly anyone but another designer knows the creative tussling this requires. So when a designer delivers something, there is usually a lot of love in it, to tell you the truth. We fall in love with our work, unfortunately, and that is possibly a bad mistake, but a natural piece of creativity too. In a sort of woowoo context, designers are mediums…artistic witches interpreting the clients’ hopes, and passing them through the filter of our own aesthetics and skills, to come out with an ineffable something that does its job with elan and grace. We aim to please, but get our own volition involved in there too.

Graphic Design is a crazy mystery. We love the process and the struggle. We love the work itself, and we love the clients too, almost all of them.

Z

Tara Sharma Photography

Tara took these gogeous photos and put them up on her blog where she wrote:

Wow. Check out my new business cards. I am so in love with them! I recently saw the work of Zida over at Studio-Z, and the minute I saw her work in a few places, I knew I had to have them for my branding and my business. I love stationary and these cards just scream elegance, seriousness, and a whole new level of sophistication. From the moment I started speaking with Zida and her team I was impressed with their customer service and how she just ‘got’ my brand and my idea for a card. I am so excited to be able to give these cards out to my clients, peers, future clients and anyone else. It is a great representation of me and my business. The feel of these cards is like none other – the paper is so thick and textured it makes you stop a second and think about what you are holding, and therefore the brand that it represents. I take my business and photography seriously, and these cards further that ideal. Next time you see me, ask for one of my newly minted cards because I want you to feel these in your hands and love them too.  A million thanks Zida!

Thanks! Please see Tara’s work at her lovely blog.