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 ;)
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