We spent all day trying to put things in their place.

We have been asked to run a printing workshop (demo) this Saturday at the Charm City Craft Mafia’s Pile of Craft. We’ll be laying down the second color on posters on an adorable table-top poster press.

Please come meet us in person. We will be holding a raffle for some of our Strategic Plan posters (don’t worry, if you have one already I’m sure you can find someone to give another one to), handing out some shiny new stickers, informational fliers and who knows what all else. You’ll just have to come find out in person.

The craft fair is from 10 AM until 5 PM this Saturday, June 26 at St. Johns Church, 2640 St. Paul St, in Baltimore.

Read more about the event and the other 45 vendors here.

See you Saturday!

It took us a little longer than we’d hoped, but Baltimore Print Studios is thrilled to announce that our Strategic Plan posters are now back in stock!

We’ve printed many many more this time, and there is a split edition.

The price for each is $20. Shipping is $5 domestic and $10 international, regardless of how many you purchase. Once again, every penny directly funds us opening up Baltimore Print Studios this summer. They measure 11×17″ this time around, and are printed on brown chipboard.

Half feature a powder blue screenprinted flat with bright red text.

Our Strategic Plan poster in blue:

The other half features a soft yellow flat with a split fountain red/black text.*

Strategic Plan Poster in yellow:

The interest in these posters has been overwhelming and very exciting. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do. Thanks in advance. Your support helps us get off the ground in a way we never expected we could.

*(Please note: the printing on these posters varies over a wide range, some have more red, some have more black. The poster featured is about halfway between the two extremes. Please understand that when purchasing, and believe us when we say that every poster we ship will look good!)

Click Here!

- – - – - – - – - – - – - HOLY CATS! – - – - – - – - – - – - -
- – - – - – - – - - WE ARE SOLD OUT! – - – - – - – - – -
By the power of Swiss Miss and Twitter combined, we’ve sold out.
If  you missed out on this run, e-mail us! We’re already printing more
(hint – new colors!!!), and we’ll tell you when they’re available!

Here at Baltimore Print Studios, we are working on our strategic plan.

What better strategic plan than THIS Strategic Plan:

Measuring 11×15, these are on heavy-weight chipboard. Screenprint and letterpress printed with metallic silver-grey ink.

Please support us by purchasing our poster. They’re $20 including shipping (That’s $15 + $5).

If you’re buying more than one, please e-mail us first (no need to pay shipping twice.)

Printed in an edition of 50, and they’ll be signed by yours truly, Kyle Van Horn.

Thanks in advance -

16 W. North Ave. Baltimore MD.

A very curious machine, indeed.

We love wood type. Wood type is awesome, and I’m very pleased to note that we have a fair amount headed for the BPS studios (probably about 1 cabinet’s-worth, though it’s hard to guage when they’re all in paper-boxes, stored in an apartment). A LOT of it is a generic Futura knockoff, in a number of sizes (6, 8, 12, 18, and 25 line) and weights (standard and condensed widths) and some miscellaneous other fonts (Brush Script, Cooper Black, and Murray Hill, in various sizes), some unknown serifed font in 12 line (maybe?), and some mixed gothics of in various sizes and incomplete-ness.

We also have some gorgeous border material, and a wicked collection of numbers in 30, 60, and 120 line size (that’s 5 – 20 inches tall), and a nice set of calendar blocks.

But, as much as we love wood type, there are some people out there who might just love it more.

Nick Sherman is an outspoken typophile who runs woodtyper.com. While his day job involves digital font management, his real passion seems to be traveling the country and visiting incredible wood type collections around the country.

Woodtyper.com showcases a lot of things, all typography related, and is an incredible source of interviews and in-depth looks at other people’s wood-type and typography-related projects. For even more drool-worthy wood type goodness, check out his flickr stream (also a winning source of manhole cover and pizza photos).

End-Grain.com is the pet-project of Bethany Heck, who is still in school (studying design of course!).

Named after the cut of wood typically used for making wood type, end-grain.com is a lot of things at once, including a source of interviews and studio profiles, an aggregate of flickr and twitter feeds, and a showcase of her personal collection. She was even interviewed by Nick Sherman about the site.

I have to say, what I find most fascinating is her dedication to reviving incomplete and rare fonts using modern technology. Besides, we all know that pantograph routers would have been replaced by laser-cutters if they’d had the technology at the time…

Oh, and should I also make note of the fact that her collection is VERY enviable..? because it is! Kudos Bethany, keep up the amazing work.

Then we take it back to the beginning of wood type adoration. Rob Roy Kelly literally wrote the book on wood type. One of our more coveted books here at BPS is this one:
It is very out of print right now, and being offered up on Amazon, used, for a cool thousand (and that’s the paperback version). Dang. Luckily for us common folk, the Rob Roy Kelly collection, which is housed at the University of Texas, Austin, is all available online. It’s a pretty vast site, so pour another cup of coffee and tuck in.

In short, wood type is pretty hot right now. The Hamilton Type Museum is finally functioning again, and the subject of a documentary called Typeface.

What is the likelihood that you, the BPS customer, will want to print with wood type? Maybe 50-50, if we’re lucky.

What’s the likelihood that we’ll keep collecting? 100%!

I’m sure you think we’ve forgotten about you, or given up on this whole crazy idea, but NO – we’ve just been a little busy.

The studio space hunt is still underway. We’ve looked at a few but nothing is quite right yet. However, it occurred to us that we don’t really know you yet. We know you’re visiting the site, we know you’ve signed up for the mailing list, but who are you? What do you want from us?

To that end, we’ve created a survey for you – and we tried to include everything, even the stuff we don’t think you’re interested in (because we’ve been wrong about a lot of things before), and right now anything is possible so why not aim really really high!

In all reality, we just want to know a little more about you. After the jump is a handful of questions for you. Please take a minute and answer them for us. You have no idea how helpful it will be.

Also, if you’re not on the mailing list yet, please sign up! (I’d hotlink it, but it’s right there, on the right, just sign up there!)

Click through for the survey >>>

Of course, if Scrooge McDuck was our uncle this would be a lot less daunting. A lot of spaces are available in the city right now, but all are out of our price range. This is a problem. We know anywhere we will be moving into will require no less than 3 months setup, painting, new walls, electrical, plumbing, and easily a couple thousand in expenses we don’t know we don’t know.

In short, the more people that know about this, the better. We KNOW the right space is out there. We really like the North Avenue, Station North Arts area, but we’ll consider anything reasonable. We’re looking for a couple thousand square feet, something with 1st floor access or a wicked awesome freight elevator. E-mail us here if you have any good ideas for us. Thanks!

For those of you not in the know, Vandercook, the company that produced the flatbed cylinder presses we know and love today, turns 100 this month.  The very first model was premiered in September 1909. They were founded in 1909 – (why was I thinking September?) Regardless: in honor of that, we thought we’d offer up a little self-promotional bit we’ve had under our belt for a little while.

Weighing in at 1/2 oz, and with a footprint of 1 7/8″ x 5″ (not counting the feedboard) this SP20 boasts a maximum print area of 1 3/8″ x 2″.

for added miniature-ness, we're showcasing it on our 120 line wood type

Ideal for any studio, office, or car dashboard, this press is as portable as any you could hope for.

Feeling crazy? Print this file at 1370% and build yourself a full size Vandercook SP20. Vandercooks for EVERYBODY!
We’ve even included a tiny printed sheet of the form on the bed.

The legalese:
The Vandercook Logo is a registered trademark of NA Graphics and is used here strictly for authenticity.
This papercraft was designed by Kyle Van Horn for Baltimore Print Studios.
It is not for sale, ever, anywhere.
The internet is a big place. Play nice.

Here you go:

papercraft_SP20 EPS (right-click or control-click to download)
papercraft_SP20 PDF

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

EDIT: I edited the files slightly to fix an issue I was having.  (More glue-tabs on the top, curved part.)