Letterpress face

I love getting inspiration from others work. And there is so much lovely letterpress work everywhere. This is just a love project. Can't believe they did a face with type. Check out The Disciples Of Design :)

Keep it clean

Working with letterpress is a dirty job, fun and joyful dirty job. But there is no reason for not trying to keep it as clean as possible. I don't own the studio I work in, but I'm the one spending most time in there so it feels a bit like mine. And I hate finding it untidy and dirty.

For sure this is a studio at a Uni, and there is no news that Art and Design students tend to not care how they leave a studio. Every week I'm in the studio I hear complains about students leaving the studio dirty. Last week I found already "cleaned" rollers dirty in the drawer! They were full of ink. One student around asked if they were not clean enough. How can he think things are clean when I got my hands full of ink when I touched it?

Why am I telling you this? Because of the importance of keeping the area you work in clean is huge. At least if the studio is not yours. I hate finding the studio untidy and dirty. It makes me bad and I lose a bit of the joy of being their.

When I get my own studio you need to prove you are tidy and clean up your mess before you get to be in it.

Be tidy, be clean, be happy, make me happy!

"Ainafun"

Some days you can't find any inspiration and you're just empty. Those days are when you should just let nothing control your head or work. Play, enjoy, smile, laugh and just work :)
I had one of those days yesterday and after some hours (in a freezing studio) I ended up with this very personal print of how I see myself in a way. I smile a lot, laugh ofter, do funny things/jokes, saying just pointless things.

And this will also be a gift for a very special Aina :)

Event tomorrow "Letterpress: Forward thinking"

For every person interested in Letterpress this it the thing not to miss tomorrow! I'm very excited and I believe it will be many nice talks and interesting people to meet. It all happens at St Bride Library in London. I will let you all know how it was an share some images from the day.

Letterpress video

I feel very lucky for knowing other with an interest in Letterpress, and most of them are very nice to share what they find with me. I really love that! This video from A Design Mafia shows a Letterpress printer using a press that works the same way as one of the ones I use. I get so inspired just by a short video like this.

Thank you Aleksander for sharing it with me :)

Pantone Formula Guide

You can say a Pantone fan is both a Designer and a Printers friend. They are expensive to buy, but they will and should last for a long time. There are different Pantone fans for different purpose. The one I love is a Formula Guide (one for coated and one for uncoated) which shows which colours to mix and how much of each to get to one specific Pantone colour. And the names/code of every Pantone colour. But you can't get the CMYK or RGB values of any of the colours.

I love it for the fact that is shows a range of colours (and I love colours), it is simple to understand and it works! A good example is to tell you about my experience the first time I tried to mix the colour brown. It turned out everything else but brown. It sounds maybe a bit silly and you may think I'm stupid, but it was not that logical for me. Most colours I know more or less how to mix, but with this I'm 100% sure how to get one colour that I want. If you haven't seen one, please do. It is amazing!

Christmas card 2

November is here, and Christmas is even closer. I've started thinking about Christmas gifts, and it brought up another idea for a new Christmas card. Big in size, but still with a playful twist to Merry Christmas is Norwegian ("god jul"). The main colour for Christmas is to me red, a nice proper red. That is why I kept it in pure red.

Detail images of the card.

After printing the whole card in red I had to play a bit more with colours. I created a limited edition with green and silver.

Sneak peek

Normally I don't like to show of any design before its proofed, printed and all finished. But this is absolute beautiful and I just have to show it to you. I'm already thinking about Christmas and doing another Christmas card. These are a couple of fun proof I've just taken of it, and I really like them:D hope you do too!

Letterpress Demo for NKF visitors

On Friday I had visitors from NKF (Norges Kreative Fagskole) in "my" Letterpress studio. Most of them didn't know a lot about Letterpress, and I had a bit over an hour with them. I brought in most of my Letterpress work to show them samples of what can be done. I also brought laser cut acrylic and wood blocks made from photographs of set Letterpress type. The hour went by so quickly. They were all very interested in my work, the technique and all I had to say. Too bad they didn't have time to actually try some setting and printing themselves.

They all made me very happy, not only about my work (which they said they really liked), but to believe in continue working with Letterpress. There is room for the aesthetic of Letterpress. And I think I gave them a good experience in showing my passion and excitement with this technique, the smells, the paper, the "dirtiness" of the working process, the hand craft and simple everything about Letterpress.

I used some old sett type to show how one press works. Funny in a way that all we had time to was printing a couple of sheets, so the cleaning part took longer time.

4 out of the 6 that came from Norway and NKF together with me in the Letterpress studio.

Best Letterpress Cards 2010

Even thought 2010 is not over yet I came across this site with the best Letterpress Cards produced this year. They are all nice:) Have a look! Taken from Apartment Therapy New York.

Absolutely great poster

I came across this amazing and lovely poster from Studio On Fire !! The colours, the font, the size of it. Such nice work. And it is for sure printed from a plate. But it is still such a lovely piece of letterpress.

Lego and letterpress

Came across this inspirational letterpress with Lego through an letterpress email list, check it out at Design Work Life.

Life is not always easy

I've mentioned earlier I get inspiration from different people, subject, theme, etc. Around these times I know several people struggling with life in general. There are different ways to fight for your life, and to live it fully every single moment. I wanted to inspire others the way some inspire me to keep on fighting for what I want and a happy life. Especially Kim Jansen has inspired me in the work on this poster. It says: “Fight for life” (in purple) and “ it is worth it, I’m saying it is worth everything” (in ice blue).

Thank you card

I printed this card for some time ago but added my logo on the back last week and remembered then that I hadn't posted it here yet. I was inspired by a friend who help me collect my letterpress type to do a thank you card.

Saying thank you can be as simple as the design on this, clean and straight forward!

Christmas card

I get my inspiration to do projects from people everywhere. Sometimes the inspiration is not how it looks but what to print. I have some Christmas cards I printed last year (will post them in a few days), but last week I got inspired to do new ones. These are rare and maybe a bit unusual in design, but I had a bit of fun playing with type and letters.

The process of my work

First I need to choose typefaces to use, place them together, set the spacing (with rulers and leading) and make a solid shape where all letters and furniture (the bits used around the type) is locked up so nothing moves.

When the type is locked onto the press (see above image) I can start taking the first proof for adjusting register and to build up warnout type.

First proof will easily reveal the types that needs to be build up with paper underneath. There is no "right" or "wrong" on how equal the type should print. I prefer a bit of different, and I try to always keep most of the texture in wood types.

How much that needs to be adjusted is different on every project. Final result for the first layer for this project is seen underneath.

Small card

It was during a periode where both me and friends had a bit of a down time in mood that I had to do a small piece of card to get myself to smile! This is also one of the first print I did with only my own letterpress type!

New documentary movie coming soon

This movie is about the linotype machine, and how it speeded up the setting of type for letterpress printing. For those that do not now or understand how the setting of letterpress type work (how I work), please have a look at this short clip from the coming movie :)

http://www.linotypefilm.com/

First proper printing with my logo :)

I was so happy yesterday printing with my logo for the first time. Printed it on some already finishing prints and on new paper/cards ready to be printed! It looks so nice, and I'm happy about it:) This images is not showing how well it looked, you need to see it with your own eyes:)

I got inspired from a girl at twitter to print some Christmas cards, well I was more playing and enjoying myself. When its done I'll show you!

Lovely new letterpress book

I just picked up this book yesterday! Just had a quick look through it, but I absolutely love it:) so much inspiration!! If you love letterpress, you need this one:)

Finally back in the studio

After a bit of Holiday, being sick and not able to get in, I'm back in the letterpress studio! I want to do so many things. What's really hard is to know what to start with. This is a small think I'm working on! Going to be some kind of selfpromo for my work:) Also I got more prints already done to show you, will post it soon:)

Need help from YOU!

Hope you can really help me! I've been working on some logo for my work under the name little norwegian letterpresser ;) And now I thought of asking you which one you like the more.
I would be very happy if you had a look, and took the time to tell me what you think.
Thank you :)

Play !!

Been so much going on lately and first of all I've been tired and not in a good mood at all!

Today I had to really try and get myself to enjoy the day, so I played with letterpress ;) here is a bit of it!

At Knack Magazines stand at Futurising !!

Just showed my work in a video booth at Knack Magazines stand at Futurising. A lot of fun, but it was a bit weird and I have no idea how it looks like :P but maybe maybe it will be shown in their interactive magazine later at some point. Just have to wait and see I guess :)

Cover for book

I made this small book with a cover for my friend's birthday. It says: "My favourite drinks", and is printed with letterpress in a random pattern. This is my first try on printing a pattern very random, and I'm quite happy about it. I am actually so happy that I will for sure do more of this kind of printing. The cover is printed in two of her (my friend) favourite colours, and I printed the second colour while the first was still wet with great result.

She likes it, and that makes me even happier about it :)

Follow up on the cover for BA publication

Just a small image to show how it looked with all the covers folded on the private view for the BA Graphic Design show "Treadmill" at London Met. Seeing it lying there I was happy about the result, it looks nice and the colour is so amazing!

Cover for BA publication at London Met

I did learn so so so much today, about work, others, limitations, my expectations vs others, perfection and creativity!

You will not believe me, this is printed on a press too small for it :p but somehow it ended up with resultat that is good enough! This time it was not about what I wanted and liked only, but what London Met wanted too! It was a nice day where I got to test out a few things on the press.

The cover will be folded around where "N" is in climbing. Inside will be a publication about the show and the BA course in Graphic Design.

Hope you like it, and if you want to see it drop by at London Met, commercial st on Tuesday (15th June) for the private view ;), limitied edition of only 90!

My craziest and biggest project

I said yes to do this cover for a broadsheet information paper almost for a BA exhibition (and for the course in general) at my old uni here in London. I thought the idea was to have a title and a small quote or something, but it ended up being one huge quote (not long, but huge in size)! 17 words is set in a 16 line wood type, not exactly sure how big that is in cm, but at least 10. I'm done with the first lock up in a way, but it needs to be locked up on the press, and that is a challenge. Not sure if you can see how big it is on the image, but next week after I hopefully have finished printing it I will have all the measurements for you.

James Dean, my favourite quote !!

Most people know that I'm a big fan of James Dean, and have all (three) movies he got time to make before he was in a car accident, which cost his life. I’ve always loved this particular sentence he used to say, and have wanted for so long to create something with it. After setting it up and printing it, I feel good about the fact I finally got to print it. But at the same time, I feel that maybe some day I’ll reprint it even bigger! The reason for all the extra white space on the left side is for a personal message or reminder to you or the one you give it do about focusing on living your life to the fullest every day.

I've printed the quote in two different colours. Green because it's my favourite colour, and orange because it's sort of a colour I feel has this dreaming feeling, and positive attitude that this quote represents for me.

James Dean had the future ahead; he lived by his own quote and so should we. I’ll always keep it close.

Got a new letter !!

This time it was a reply from the Prime minister in Norway. My conclusion from this experiment is: someone replies on their behalf every time, even to me! Which I would say are quite good :) Haven't heard anything yet from the Norwegian Ambassy here in London or the Norwegian Sjømannskirke in London. Still they got a nice card for 17. mai.

Posters from Hand & Eye Letterpress

I did a two weeks internship here as well last summer. Phil, Rosa and Nick that works there are nice people, and they all love letterpress. Together these three have made several posters which I think are amazing, really good letterpress work.

Next wishes

My new wishes of stuff I want to get my hands on (of letterpress stuff) is big wood type, but I also want to have smaller. But really really big ones would be so fun to work with. Have never had a chance to do work with bigger than 24line. Check out the link to see one example of use of big wood type. I love ilovedust <3

First test-print

Finally got my hands on my type! It was as fun and exciting as I thought it was going to be :)
Small info about my type (I like the sound of that):
• 15 cases with type
• 1 empty case
• 3 cases finished organized and lightly cleaned
• these are the fonts;
- 8pt Gill Sans
- 10pt Gill Sans
- 10pt Gill Sans Bold
- 12pt Gill Sans
- 12pt Gill Sans Bold
- 12pt Temple Script
- 14pt Temple Script
- 18pt Times Roman
- 18pt Times Bold
- 18pt Palace Script
- 18pt Grotesque
- 18pt Imprint Shadow
- 18pt Imprint Shadow Italic
- 18pt Unknown
- 24pt Unknown x2

There are also some cases with italic together with roman, and some are just in capitals. Some are just a few of each letter, but I still love them all! There is still a lot of work organizing each case, but I will manage to do it at some point ;)

Quiz of the day

While I'm tidying up in the cases of type I bought last week I thought of a quiz; what letters are in the photo above (from left to right)? ;)

Letter from the Norwegian King

Yes, actually I did! :) I sent one of my 17. Mai cards to him with a small personal note to him and his family saying Happy Birthday on our National Day. Of course it is signed by the Cabinet Secretary on his behalf, but still. I hope this means that he actually saw it, but I don't really think so. But still nice :)

MY first complete set of type !!

I'm so excited to start printing next week!! Yes, it is true!! I bought a cabinet of type, and I got lovely Sophia to help me go and pick it up today:) I'm so happy for the help:) thank you sooooooo much!! My first metal type (a set) that is mine, and all MINE!! This is a start of my collection of letterpress equipment that I dream of having in a few years;) I'm so happy now!! Can't believe I got that amount of type. Hopefully I will soon have something printed with it :)

Road trip next Tuesday !!

I can't wait for me and Sophia's road trip to Salisbury to pick up a surprise :D I'm so excited, happy, overwhelmed and eager. On Tuesday or Wednesday I will let you know what the surprise is :)

New card trend for Norway?

This is going to be my second year without the traditional way for me to celebrate Norway’s National Day 17^th of May. I started to think about that a couple of months ago since friends and family was talking about coming over for a visit that weekend. It got me into a “I-miss-celebrating-the-Norwegian-National-Day-the-proper-way” mode and from that I got an idea of making a Happy National Day (a Happy Birthday Norway card) that people could sent to each other, especially to those who are not in Norway for the National Day. At this point I think a national card has never been made before, but I hope to maybe start a new tradition. (Please let me know if I am wrong.)

Since I had a positive experience printing the birthday cards on the Adana Press I decided to use it again for this card. I wanted to print in the national colours red, white and blue. And make the amount used of each colour similar to the proportions used in the flag. Actually I printed only in white and blue, but on red cardboard paper. On the card I did an experiment on possibilities with printing two colours on the same card without allowing the first print to dry. It worked very well, and my guess is that it worked because of the fact that the print is not touching each other. How or if it would have worked if it was an over layered second print I need to do test into that. I will test it out with in the next few weeks, hopefully already next week. Unfortunately I can’t post pictures of the test results as will be tested on a design for a gift, but I will tell you how it went. 

Always someone’s birthday

Don’t think anyone will disagree with me on the fact that there is someone’s birthday almost every single week (that you know of).
The idea for this card came when a couple of my friends were going to celebrate their birthdays together. All I wanted was a simple but personal birthday card to give them, but slightly different than the ones you can buy. 

The birthday card was my first project on an Adana press. All previous work has been produced on a Stephenson Blake proofing press. The Adana press is small and offers a fun work rhythm, and the only thing that makes me like the Stephenson better is the easiness of hand inking while you are printing with one colour on the press. I found that hard to achieve on the Adana. That is my experience at least :)

The art work is a combination of wood and metal type, in two different fonts. The card is printed on several different papers,
a range of white and yellow, and also on a black cardboard paper. Considered the fact that I want to offer at a later point a range of different birthday cards I only have a small limited number of cards printed.

Inspired by a song

While I was working in the letterpress studio on the “as long as […]” poster, I one day started singing on a song I used to sing when I was a kid. And a part of the lyrics got stuck in my head, and I thought it could be a rather interesting, yet simple layout for a square poster. The song name is actually "Du og jeg og vi to", (translated: you and me and us two), which was the part I kept singing on repeat all day long. I added “oss” (translated: us) as a over layer (printed on top).

The setting of the quote made a nice rectangular shape, and I wanted to add even a more square feeling by using a square format quite much bigger than the actually print. This piece is only printed in purple, with a paler version of the colour on the over layered word. From poster to poster the paleness of the second colour varies. 

Feel free to

- ask questions about the work, me, etc
- post comments
- give me suggestions/inspiration for new projects
- hire me to design and print things for you, friends of family

I promise to try my best to answer question, reply, come back to you and so on! <3

As long as […], we will stay friends

I came across a Norwegian translation of a quote from Marion C. Garretty about how communication will guarantee that we will stay friends and have joys and worries to share. When I first read it I knew I wanted to make a poster out of it. Until this point I had only printed in English, and felt the need of using my birth language Norwegian. The quote says; “Så lenge posten kommer fram og telefonen fungerer, så har vi noe å fortelle, gleder og bekymringer å dele, vil vi være venner. Bestandig”, (translated it means: as long as the mail reaches you and the phone works, will vi have something to tell, joys and worries to share, will we be friends. Forever). In Norwegian there is there extra letters from the English alphabet; æ, ø and å. Æ is an old English letter not used anymore so it is possible to find, but ø og å is impossible to find in England at least so I decided to use the old way of writing the letters ø=oe, å=aa.

I wanted the format to be tight and narrow, but could be slightly long. The idea was to highlight a few words in the quote and use a mixture of wood and metal type. The final piece is not just one poster in one colour, I had a lot of fun printing this is a single colour, two colour (different ones also), and with a mixture of several colours that I had to ink by hand.

First thing first

Before actually posting my work and so on I should properly introduce myself for those who doesn't know me. I'm soon 24 years old from a small place called Aurskog, east in Norway. Yes I'm a proper country girl :) I've got a Bachelor in Media Design from Gjøvik, and a Master in Graphic Design from London. Currently I live and work in London. These few words describes a bit about me: smiles a lot, got too much energy, hardworking, straight forward, ambitious, curious and playful.

My big passion and interest within Graphic Design is Letterpress and Typography. I love; print media (books, posters, magazines, etc), bright colours, elements (water, fire, air, earth), black/white photos, old stuff (almost everything), bookbinding, craft, and a lot more I just forgot right now!

My work is based around ideas I get from different sources. I do work in both Norwegian and English, and with famous, old and new quotes and sayings. At this point the themes are mainly positive and in some way reflects me (I would say that I'm quite positive)! The dream is to be able to have my own letterpress equipment and company!

London Original Print Fair 2010

I went to this yesterday, never been there before (neighter at the Royal Academy of Arts or the Print Fair). It was nice to see a lot of good old prints and new made with older printing techniques. I learned a lot about how much you can take for a piece of art!

I just have to say that some people buy weird and NOT good art, and for a lot of money!! But there were many I could have consider buying if I had too much money ;)
Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

No progress :(

I'm really really sorry that I never got any further here :(

But that will change now :) At least I hope so!! (Thats my plan and goal!)

I have kept on working with letterpress producing material in both English and Norwegian,

and photos will be added soon :) I have also been interviewed by Pica Pica Magazine, which you can find on page 8-10 (click here for link to the magazine) !! :D Thank you very much Pica Pica Magazine, I'm very happy to show some of my work!

I got some more plans, but I'll let you know later about some of them!

:) Aina

Finally :P

I'm getting there, one step closer to distribution of my own work. I'm scared so please go easy on me ;) As a starter I want to say thank you to Becky Gooby for the name "Little Norwegian Letterpresser". I will post as soon as possible pictures of recent work and from the last year during my Master Degree in Graphic Design.

Hope you enjoy my work, and tell me please if you have something on your mind.