calendars for 2009

I love hidden messages and meaning in art and calendars are great mediums for experimenting with type and forms!


New for 2009 is a perpetual calendar for birthdays, anniversaries and such! I've been thinking on this one for awhile--I wanted to make it fun, engaging and purposeful all in one. I stumbled on the idea of using the celestial map for background image and then came across Asa Smith's lovely book with illustrations from the 1850 constellation maps and I'm very happy with the results!


I've also reprinted 2009 editions of my favs, luna and poseidon...


Unlike desktop printing, where you can do a quick change and reprint, when printing letterpress, the elements can effect your final outcome and it is not easy to just "reprint". With the lessons learned on the first runs, luna got an upgrade to a more intense moon image background and poseidon is printed in deeper versions of the same colors.

bookworks 2008

The past few months I've been kept busy with some great projects, like the logo, signage, labels and catalog for bookworks 2008
as well as my own artists' book nothing which has developed over the past 2 1/2 years to what you can see (part of) here!


photo by kate godfrey

You can see more photos of the exhibit at greenchair press

poets pulling prints

I was asked to design two broadsides for SFCB's Poets Pulling Prints, which was an interesting challege—the poetry and quotes I choose to use in my work are design dependent and are usually from authors from earlier centuries, not modern poets and designed to the author's words.

In my approach, I used Beatrice Warde's philosophy on the Crystal Goblet, that the typography should enhance the text, not detract from it.


For Emily Raabe's Milestones, the colors green, blue and brown immediately came to mind. Her passage through time and space had a definite weaving and intertwining quality. The introduction of interlacing random threads was an immediate idea and worked well in theory and on the press. Mrs Eaves was chosen as the text face because it's excellent letterpress results and the modern feel of a rendition of Baskerville, a 18th centry typeface design.


For Brent Foster Jones' poem, the imagery was more challenging. My first thoughts went to the vivid text of pools/circles of red, harsh yellow lines, blue folders/squares, but after playing with these elements and colors, the imagery always overtook the text. Deeper thoughts into lifelines/ekg lines and stock market graphs resulted in very simple interacting visuals that sang to the text, not taking over. The line elements were paired with DIN Schrift, a crisp and clear typeface with a European flair, used in Germany for transit signage.