Monster Parade with Ed Emberley for Cloudy Collection

Printing for the Cloudy Collection is, hands down, one of the coolest things we get to do around here. Recently we had the sincere privilege of printing this cool art print, Monster Parade, created by Ed Emberley exclusively for the Cloudy Collection. Printed in green, red, dark blue, and black the print comes in a custom folder, with metallic silver printing on black paper. Each of the prints and folders in the edition of 250 is hand-numbered on the back and is available now to ship anywhere around the globe. A portion of the sales of these prints will go to Heifer International, providing reliable sources of food to women and families in developing nations, and to the Central Asia Institute, which provides books and literacy and educational opportunities to girls and women in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

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2011 Earth Day Clean Up

This past weekend we held our traditional Earth Day Clean-Up, rounding up the troops to spend a bit of time cleaning up the area around our building in downtown Syracuse and the local neighborhood. Armed with sunny skies, brooms and trash bags, the crew was off and cleaning! Nothing says spring like a little spring cleaning. Big thanks to our youngest helpers, Francesa and Max, for spending the day with us and making this year’s Earth Day Clean-Up so much fun.

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Funky Fresh Orange + Blue Save the Dates

We printed these crazy cool letterpress save the date for our friend Rebecca at The Pink Orange. They feature an ornate 3-color letterpress design on the front and an all over blind deboss pattern on the reverse. Paired with a great 2-color envelope, they’re a little bit funky, a little bit sophisticated and a whole lot awesome.

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Blackletter Business Cards

We’ve been printing a lot of cool letterpress business cards of late, not the least of which is these sweet cards we printed for Blackletter. They feature a great letterpress flood printed in black, offering sharp contrast to the bright white paper and perfectly setting off Blackletter’s simple, typography-loving branding.

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Designerly Cool Letterpress Business Cards

We printed these cool letterpress business cards for designer Christina Clugston. The logo is designed with a series of super fine lines, overprinted to give a three-color look to a two-color job. Paired with simple typogprahy, these cards are some of the coolest we’ve seen in a while.

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Boxcar Goes Bowling

Last Friday night we packed up and headed out for a night of bowling. There were color-coordinated shirts, lots of trash talk, fake mustaches and ample fun to be had for all. With catchy team names like Gutter Down and Split Happens, we brought our finest bowling skills to show up the local competition.

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The rumors are true. Carrie – the most senior member of our printing team – can often be found sporting a cape after hours. Perhaps not coincidentally, she can also be spotted hanging out with Cathy, our esteemed platemaking account manager, on a regular basis. Cool people tend to hang out together, we’re told. (Cool people? Super heroes? You be the judge.)

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Two newer members of our team, graphic designer Racheal and client coordinator Erica, survive their first Boxcar Press outing! Turns out, Racheal is a rockstar bowler. (Former varsity bowling team rockstar. For real.)

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All in all, we enjoyed a rather cheerful night of innocent debauchery complete with one failed Orangemen attempt at beating UConn in OT in the Big East and a darts showdown to end all showdowns. Bowl on!

Amos Kennedy Prints!

Last week, we were honored to have famed letterpress printer Amos Kennedy pay us a visit. In town for Amos Kennedy Prints, a special exhibition at the Community Folk Art Center at Syracuse University, Amos shared with us his love for old wood type and snapped lots of photos of our newly expanded print shop. (Also, it should be noted that Amos is one of the funniest guys we’ve ever met and had us cracking up the whole time he was here.)

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(Umm…we may or may not have been really excited to have Amos drop by for a while.)

Of course, it was only fitting for a Boxcar contingency to go visit Amos in action on the opening day of the exhibit where his passion for wood type, bold color and political innuendo took center stage. As a sponsor of the exhibition, one of our old Vandercooks stands proud and at the ready now through April 4. More details can be found at the Community Folk Art Center’s website. If you’re in the Syracuse area, don’t miss the chance to take part in this special event. Thanks for stopping by, Amos!

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Letterpress for Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary

We recently contributed pro bono printing to a really great cause supporting the nearby Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. Designed by our good friend Tara Hogan of Ink + Wit, we were honored to be a part of this great collaboration.

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Tara shares, “I first met Jenny Brown, founder of Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary in 2008 at the Bust Holiday Craftacular in Manhattan. Anyone that knows Jenny will tell you she loves herself some craft fairs! Jenny stopped by my booth not knowing that I was devoted to yoga nor did I know she was a yogi herself and animal lover. But, we quickly clicked and found out we share the same interests. I had been thinking about working with a farm sanctuary for a while to help raise money for the animals. At that time, Jenny and the farm had a goal to build a separate medical facility to operate and treat the animals. They had been working in very small quarters for some time.

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I came up with an idea to design a limited edition  letterpress print for them. Printed by Pistachio Press, 50 prints were given to the farm for full profit and the rest sold by INK+WIT with 5% donated to the farm. WFAS also made the design into an organic cotton t-shirt with 100% profit donated.

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WFAS has since built their medical facility made possible by the donations of many giving people. They continue to support the animals and hold various event with artists like Moby, Chrissie Hynd, and many more. They hold jamborees and wonderful opportunities to visit and help out on the farm. They have my heart and then some. Recently, I was asked by Jenny to take the existing print and shirt design and create a letterpress folded note card they could mail to their donors. Boxcar Press generously donated their time and energy to print the card and they turned out beautiful. Thank you Boxcar for helping a very great cause so close to my heart!”

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Thank you, Tara, for allowing us to be a part of this great project. We admire everything Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary is doing and are happy to do our part to help out!

The Boxcar Press Open Studio 2010

Hello and happy New Year! As we kick off another fun and exciting year, it only seemed right to share some photos from our recent open studio event. We invited the local public, media, clients, vendors, friends, family and anyone with an interest or passion for printing and the arts to come pay us a visit. In return, we had printing demonstrations, tours, giveaways, an excess of sweets and goodies from a local bake shop and loads of letterpress fun. A huge thank you to our friend and awesome photographer Alice G. Patterson for capturing these moments from the festivities. We can’t wait for next year!

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To everyone who came out to see us (all 300+ of you!) – you rock. Thanks for making this day so much fun and a huge thank you to Alice for being here to grab these incredible photos. We are honored to have the friends that we do and we look forward to making this an annual event. Stay tuned for 2011!

{Photos by Alice G. Patterson.}