These letterpress business cards, printed for Salt & Syrup, are simple but really cool. We love the combination of blind deboss with a cool green ink. They have a clean Scandinavian feel, perfect for this fun Swedish stationery line.
We get so excited when we see Boxcar’s photopolymer plates & the Boxcar Base hard at work making really beautiful stuff! Thanks to Chandler for sending us pics of “Prop Cake,” the latest installment of the Feminist Broadside Series, designed by Chandler O’Leary of Anagram Press and letterpress printed by Jessica Spring of Springtide Press, using a Vandercook Universal One, Boxcar’s 94FL plates, and the Boxcar Base. The Feminist Broadside Series has been such a success — the last two broadsides are SOLD OUT (yay!), and this one is going fast too I’m sure. Jessica and Chandler will be speaking at the Tacoma Art Museum on May 12, and the power duo had a great mention in City Arts Magazine. To purchase the latest broadside, go to Anagram Press’s etsy store. Check out the first broadside and the second broadside in the series
Chandler writes about the new broadside, “Because we believe everyone deserves an equal slice of wedding cake, the next broadside in the series features a quote by Alice Paul: ‘There is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.’ ‘Prop Cake’ features an original illustration inspired by the architecture of San Francisco, epicenter of the battle over Proposition 8 in California. The broadside is printed from hand-lettered typography, on 10 x 18-inch archival, 100% rag, recycled paper, in an edition of 108, and is priced at $30.”
There are some exciting changes going on here at the old Boxcar – we’re now offering free shipping and faster service to better serve our platemaking customers. Hooray! And while we’re at it, we’d love to get your feedback! Tell us what you think: take our high tech, 4 minute survey and we’ll happily plant a tree for every survey participant. (Oh and you can now follow Boxcar on Twitter, too!)
Free 2-Day Shipping
Be gone, shipping charges! That’s so 2008. We now offer free 2-day UPS shipping on all domestic platemaking orders over 90 square inches.(Edit: As of August 15th, 2014, our minimum platemaking eligibility is 120 square inches) That’s less than 8.5 x 11, if you don’t have a calculator handy! (View our international or other shipping charges)
One Day Turnaround On All Orders!
One day rushes, get out of here! Our standard turnaround is now one day, which means:
* if you send in your order and your ready-to-go files by 5:59 p.m. EST, we’ll ship your order on the next business day. (see new turnaround chart here)
* same day turnaround rushes are still available if you submit your files by 1 p.m. EST (see pricing here)
* if your files aren’t ready to go, keep in mind this may delay your ship date (unless you request that we process your plate no matter what seems wrong with the file)
Questions about any of these changes? Let us know and we’re happy to help!
How to Reach Us (it’s easy, trust us!)
(A happy note: we have finally fired our auto-attendant for our phones. You now get to talk to a real live person when you call during our business hours, 9 a.m.to 6 p.m. EST. Hooray!)
Cathy Smith, Customer Accounts Manager
existing orders & ordering questions • pre-press file prep questions
letterpress printing questions • plate problems • troubleshooting • supply needs
cathy@boxcarpress.com • 315-473-0930 x12Anthony Allen, Prepress Manager
file problems on existing orders
anthony@boxcarpress.com • 315-473-0930 x13
Julie Salzar-Smith, Admin Assistant
billing questions or concerns
julie@boxcarpress.com • 315-473-0930 x14
Kim Stevens, Operations Manager
praise or complaints
kim@boxcarpress.com • 315-473-0930 x15
Cyd Converse, Blog Editor
get your print shop profiled on our blog
share good news and printing samples that we’ll post on our blog
cynthia@boxcarpress.com • 315-473-0930 x19
We like planting trees for you.
Remember, for every platemaking order you place over $100, we plant a tree with American Forests. Over its lifetime, each new tree planted will absorb roughly 740 pounds of carbon dioxide. Go trees!
Need coaching, tutoring, or one on one help for preparing your letterpress files?
We’ve been doing prepress for letterpress for a decade now, and we love helping out both new and old printers & designers overcome technical challenges to create the perfect pre-press files. If you’re new to the polymer world, or if you simply hate file prep, give Cathy a shout out (cathy@boxcarpress.com, 315-473-0930 x 12), and we’ll find ways to make the file prep process a breeze for you. (You also might want to take a look at our file prep tips and our FAQ’s on our web site).
We want to hear your thoughts (and we want to plant you a tree too)
We know Boxcar Press wouldn’t exist without you, so we’ll be honest—we love each and every one of you guys. We admire your enthusiasm for letterpress and we share your passion for cool heavy machinery. And we care a whole lot about what you think. We hope that you share your thoughts, great ideas, and disappointments with us whenever you can—but wouldn’t it be fun to also fill out a high-tech survey about how we’re doing? All you need to do is go here by August 8. It’ll take about 4 minutes of your time, and in return, we’ll plant a tree in your honor with American Forests. Thanks!
Get profiled on the Boxcar Blog!
One of our favorite things to do is recognize our platemaking customers and the great letterpress printing they create with our plates. We’d love to profile your print shop and your work on our blog! Drop an email to cynthia@boxcarpress.com if you’re interested, and check out previous customer profiles on our blog here.
At Boxcar, it’s all about letterpress and the printers who love old presses as much as we do…
Boxcar Press began 10 years ago, with a guy named Harold, a polymer washout brush, a tray full of warm water, a dream about an easy-to-use printing base, a few rescued presses, poetry, and a lot of caffeine. When employee #2 (Debbie, Harold’s wife) joined Boxcar in 2000, Harold was still hand processing plates himself in the basement sink of their Syracuse, NY house and keeping track of orders on a white board. There were no order forms (or auto-attendants either!). Our little company has changed a bit since then. We’ve learned a lot. We have order forms now. Our home is now 12,000 square feet of space in an old artist warehouse in Syracuse, New York, and we have a team of employees here that keep your happiness close at heart. We’ve processed tens of thousands of plates for thousands of letterpress shops internationally. We’ve fallen more deeply in love with letterpress and this cool printing community. And we’ve had the amazing experience of helping shops, both large and small, figure out how to get their hulking cast iron presses to print well. But we’re still the same friendly folks at heart who love coffee and who are doing what we do because we love letterpress.
We loved printing these sweet letterpress wedding invitations designed by Ian Koenig because they are just plain cool. According to the bride, Lindsay, “We did not want to take the whole idea of wedding invitations too seriously…make them fun, non-traditional and have our personalities shine through…We live in the Pacific NW where beer rules all [plus the groom works for Deschutes Brewery] so we definitely wanted that to be showcased as well.” Printed with metallic ink on smooth chocolate brown paper from French Paper, these invitations definitely achieve the goal of being fun and a little offbeat. We love it when couples think outside the box and these invitations are one of our favorite examples of doing just that…
The couple is incorporating a lot of handmade details and a ton of mixed and matched textiles and cool old buttons, vintage salt and pepper shakers and whatever good finds they can score at the farmer’s market on the day of the wedding, which will be at The Gardens at Flying Diamond Ranch in Redmond, Oregon, so Ian took that into account when designing. “I just wanted to capture and compliment all of the eclectic odds and ends that will make up the guest’s wedding experience. We began with a mood board, and from there it was clear that the design opportunity was in the details. The best way to suggest this was through repetition and variation of little icons, the idea that the sum is greater than the parts.” We agree that the sum is definitely great!
Congratulations, Lindsay and Geof!
One of the coolest collaborations Boxcar is proud to be a part of is our sweet partnership with the YMCA’s Downtown Writer’s Center here in Syracuse. In 2002, the Downtown Writer’s Center launched a broadside series as fundraiser for their reading series. Two poets are selected annually and Boxcar’s own Harold Kyle takes the lead on designing and printing the broadsides in support of the series.
This recent broadside is for Jane Hirshfield’s poem, “Critique of Pure Reason” and Phil Memmer of the Downtown Writer’s Center calls it one of his favorites from the series. As Phil notes, “The detail in both the border and background is marvelous, and serves to echo the subject of the poem…and the careful way in which the poem itself is presented is simply perfect.” Phil also shares that the best commentary on the broadside might be from Jane herself, who gasped aloud when she first saw it – we love that!
You can check out other broadsides in the series in our letterpress portfolio. The Jane Hirshfield broadside, $25, and others in the series are available through the Downtown Writer’s Center by emailing phil@ymcaarts.org
Around here, we certainly understand why brides opt for letterpress when thinking about wedding invitations. But a bride who wants to take on her wedding invitations as her first adventure in letterpress printing? Now that is something we can really appreciate!
It is always a good day around here when we learn of letterpress printers getting cool press, so it was fun to see letterpress mentioned last week by Forbes! Congratulations to everyone in the article (which you can read here), including Ben Levitz of Studio on Fire, Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, and The Arm in Brooklyn – all Boxcar platemaking/supply customers! We were also excited that Forbes did a shout out about our Boxcar platemaking services….go letterpress!
On a side note – we also happen to love Studio on Fire’s sweet blog, Beast Pieces and seeing how all that photopolymer translates into mind-blowing prints. You can read more of Ben’s inspiring take on the
letterpress renaissance and the benefits of using photopolymer plates here.
Where will letterpress pop up next?
The opportunity to print these bold limited edition letterpress prints, the first release from the Cloudy Collection, was a really cool experience. Boxcar’s relationship with David Huyck, the self-proclaimed instigator of the Cloudy Collection, dates back to the college years and recently took shape in the form of this really fun collaboration between David, a collection of highly inspired artists, and us.
Keeping the Cloudy Collection prints affordable was a central focus for David in developing the project. Ultimately, each of the seven prints was letterpressed onto one large sheet of paper and then carefully trimmed to the finished 4×6 size. As they were letterpressed together, the ink colors needed to be the same for each print so color became a major unifying factor in the designs. David used that as an opportunity to suggest a theme as a way of keeping the prints conceptually linked as well so the prints would truly feel like a cohesive set, despite having been dreamed up by different artists. With clouds on the brain, the theme was in place and the Cloudy Collection was born.
Each Cloudy Collection set will feature an offbeat seven prints, with an eighth bonus print. At times the bonus print will be offered as a free addition to the collection of seven, but there are also plans in the works to offer annual collections of just the bonus prints from each print set, intended to be released quarterly. The bonus prints will also be available for sale individually.
For the upcoming second set of prints, due to be released late next month, David is moving away from the orange and black palette and adopting the classic ice cream sandwich color combination of pink and brown. Each new set of prints will feature varying colors, themes and artists to keep the collection fresh and to help draw a broader audience to this unique series of ongoing collaborations. It is David’s hope that with each new contributing artist, their following of fans will visit the site, become intrigued and ultimately get introduced to new artists and new perspectives.
With Boxcar’s own eco practices as inspiration, David made sure to keep an environmental perspective in mind when working on the project. David says, “Boxcar was an inspiration here – running on 100% windpower and using vegetable-based inks made me feel like I could add an eco-friendly layer on top of the idea of having great art for sale.” A portion of proceeds of the print sales will be dedicated to The Nature Conservancy, an organization David’s wife has worked with extensively over the years, and a special Earth Day promotion also helped to raise additional funds.
Thank you, David, for the opportunity to work with you on this great project and for allowing us to share it with everyone! You can purchase the first set of prints from the Cloudy Collection on the official website for just $35, but you better move quick as we were excited to learn there are only 5 sets of the 100 limited edition sets remaining!
Receiving awesome letterpress samples from our platemaking customers never stops being fun for us. These come from Officiana Briani in Raleigh, North Carolina where Brian Allen brings over 30 years of work in the field of typography to his love for letterpress. Brian tells us that his primary press is a Swiss-made Gietz, approximately 12×18 inches, unknown model, unknown date of manufacture, likely from the late 1950s or early 1960s – a sweet press, with adjustable roller height, considered one of the best hand-fed platen press ever made. He uses a Boxcar Base and KF152 photopolymer plates, except for those occasions where he turns to handset and wood type.
In addition to past work as a typesetter, calligrapher, digital typeface production worker and letterpress printer, Brian loves to teach the letterpress craft. “Teaching letterpress is a very important part of my mission, sharing my love of letterforms, etc. Most students are young women, but all are people seeking balance and to regain a sense of touch in their lives. Fewer than half of the students have thoughts of printing themselves, the rest just want to see what it’s all about and get their hands inky! I share my 30 years of knowledge of type and letterforms, let students look through my large library and soak in the camaraderie with other students who have felt alone in their passion for handcraft but have found a home at my studio. I love to emphasize finding the extraordinary (lovely letterforms) in the ordinary (a lowly trade). Words and their expression still matter in my world.”
Brian also has a really cool Albion handpress that he eventually plans to use to print posters, but currently uses for demonstrations when visitors come by the studio so they can print their own copy of a keepsake to remember their visit to Officiana Briani. Brian says, “It entrances and seduces people into the magic of communicating with letterpress! The press is an Improved Albion 18×24 from the 1850s, made in London. It’s a crude/elemental machine, but symbolizes much – the arguments over who we were to be as a country were printed on a wooden handpress, one lever pull at a time, just as our single vote makes a difference in the aggregate. The most refined thoughts of the Enlightenment were given physical form with a handpress, and I use mine to emphasize to young people that an individual’s thoughts and actions matter, can be given form. Truly the power of the press!”
Brian’s career has been a true evolution that has led him through three decades of work with typography and even led to his personal handwriting being developed into the Microsoft font Segoe Script, for which he is listed as co-inventor on the patent. He tells us that he found his path “accidentally, but inevitably by working first as a typesetter in Boston and New York in 1975-79, taking calligraphy classes and reading the history of printing and typography. In 1982 Sumner Stone hired me at Autologic, Inc. in Southern California, to work in the pre-desktop world of digital type. Autologic made 700 dpi typesetting machines for the newspaper industry. We used the German IKARUS software to digitize outlines of alphabets, which were converted to run-length encoded bitmaps.”
After a time, Brian found himself at Imagen Corp. making type in a proprietary digital format for before moving to IBM to make fonts in the Folio F3 format, then PostScript Type 1 followed by TrueType formats. During this time, he opened his first letterpress shop as a part time venture, before leaving IBM to make letterpress his full time career. Eventually he closed his shop and returned to font production before finally returning to letterpress in 2005 when he moved to Raleigh and set up shop with Officiana Briani.
According to Brian, “The 1980s/early ‘90s was a very exciting time to be involved with fonts as the desktop revolution happened…It is quite amazing to see how many “civilians” know what a font is now. I was a part of the “font wars” in the late 1980s – the format competition between Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft, with Type 1 and True Type. Now of course, we have the blend of Open Type. The font wars are over. What comes next?”
We’ve continue to enjoy printing a lot of letterpress business cards for cool companies. We loved the strong black ink and clean design of this one — it reminded us of drinking a really good strong cup of (not decaf) coffee, back when we drank coffee…