No, not to some futuristic alien-infested location straight outta your favorite sci-fi novel… in fact, we’re going to take a trip into the Past, the Present, and the Future. Simultaneously. Without a time machine! Designers have dubbed this adventure The Press Inspection, and with increasing rarity in our cost-conscious, hyper-paced profession, I relish these opportunities to visit favorite local print shops where good old-fashioned American industrial manufacturing meets frighteningly cutting-edge digital technology. The alienesque photo above? We’ll get to that in a minute. Or two. But first: How did we end up here on a gray day in November?

Today’s field trip actually begins on the other side of the world in a small children’s residential school called Yemin Orde Youth Village, near Haifa, Israel. Founded in 1953 to accommodate Holocaust orphans during the great immigration waves of the fifties, today the 77-acre campus is home to more than 500 children from war-torn and otherwise devastated countries around the world.

Crossing the ocean quickly to Washington, DC, a small office in an apartment building on Connecticut Avenue, we find one of designfarm’s longterm clients, Friends of Yemin Orde. The American-based fundraising arm of the Israeli youth village, FYO financially supports the programs, the children, and the graduates of the school, as well as other disenfranchised youth who are served by outreach programs.

Next stop, a small unassuming brick building facade in Baltimore, Maryland, home of one of The Whitmore Group’s printing plants, Schneidereith & Sons (fine printing since 1849, 5 generations of printers). This will all come together, you’ll see.

Entering the building, the acrid but weirdly pleasant and somehow comforting smell of printer’s ink threatens to potentially knock you out… until your senses adjust. And as soon as you get past the front office, you know that as a designer you are about to enter another world all together, far from your  groovy little office with its cheap-&-chic Ikea furnishings and an Apple computer or two; a world with a rich century-hopping history AND incredibly up-to-the-minute digital technologies. This is where the rubber meets the road the ink hits the paper. Yet, it’s so ultra-sparkling clean you could eat off the floor.

Just down that long shiny hallway and slightly to the left, is housed one of the most monstrous printing presses you’ve ever seen. The Heidleberg Speedmaster XL-105-41 (at a prices topping 3 million dollars, you may want to buy one used here) is just that… a fiercely speedy piece of German engineering, which when fully revved up will put 18,000 6-color impressions of your project onto paper per hour. A run of 750 pocket folders for Friends of Yemin Orde (two sides!) is completed in about half an hour. And I get to watch!

In fact I am invited to climb aboard the beast (I stupidly ask: Do I need a hard hat? Because I’ve always wanted to wear one…) where I am able to witness–close up and personal–the fact that despite the amazing computer technologies running this badboy… it’s still a lot of beautifully messy gloppy wet inks being laid down with perfection onto luscious bright white paper. The image at the top of this post shows the front end of the press where said paper begins its ridiculously fast journey.

The real reason I am there of course, is NOT to climb around the equipment squealing with genuine excitement and taking photos so I can write another endless (but fascinating, right?) blog post. It’s so I can do the job I am paid for by my client, the aforementioned press inspection.

We will look through a magnifying glass called a loop, refer to our Pantone color guides, check our ink draw downs (for this project, we had ink specially mixed and tested because we wanted something we just couldn’t exactly find amongst Pantone’s 6000 choices)… all to make absolutely certain that the end product is drop-dead gorgeous and will perfectly support our client as they approach donors for millions of dollars on behalf of the children of Yemin Orde (we call this full-circle).

But wait, there’s more.

While I’m at Schneidereith & Sons, “on press” as we say, I am treated to a few other eye-popping lessons in modern printing. Lying around the Epson Digital Press (a machine 1/10th the size of that Heidleberg but pretty impressive in its own right) are sheets from another of our projects. At right, designfarm’s post-move updated business cards, along with former business partner, computer consulting experts MacLab’s promotional folder inserts… looking so… well, Warholian.

Left, is a lovely water color painting. Do printers paint too?? Maybe. But this in fact is not a painting. It’s a high-end digital reproduction, output on archival canvas. A legal fake! Whoa! How’d they do that?

Turns out, The Whitmore Group has been doing a lot of that lately. Pictured left, the beautiful Hasselblad H3D 39-Megapixel Medium Format Digital camera (German engineering again, and with a price tag of $32,000 this ain’t no Powershot, ok?) with which ancient works of fine art are photographed, including many important corporate and government portraits, in order to create amazingly authentic reproductions on archival canvas. (Memo to self: If graphic design career tanks, think forgery, ebay, &tc. JUST KIDDING!).

Pictured right, Whitmore’s digital reproduction of a painting of Paul Morton, Secretary of the Navy, 1904-1905 with whom my rep, one Joseph Wagner, shares a certain uncanny bald-guy-with-bushy-moustache resemblance. Joe, and his moustache, have been in the industry for 30+ years. Talk about expertise. And in case you don’ t know, printing experts are truly an endangered species of sorts. Which is why we value the partnership with the few and the proud, like Mr. Wagner. And his moustache.

Not to get all sentimental or anything, but there is a definite price–and I’m not talking just monetary–to all of these present and futuristic advances in what was once a vibrant outgrowth of industrial-revolution America. If you are of a certain age (who me?), as you are escorted through the pristine plant, you remember a time when instead of the muted hum of enormous and enormously sophisticated machines, there was a constant deafening noise… and there were people (wearing ear plugs). Lots and lots and lots of people. Whole huge shifts worth of apprentice and master pressmen, plate-makers and strippers (NOT THAT KIND)… to name a few of the profession’s occupational casualties. So although this blogging queen loves watching technology march on, I acknowledge that there are losses. And it does make me sad.

But let’s end on a cheery note. Thank goodness we can still smell that ink in the air. Because baby, when that goes, I am SO outta here.

File this post under Great design never goes out of style, but more importantly, under How a seemingly unrelated object from the world we live in makes its way into our professional design lives. A perfect example of how cultural phenomena in sports, fashion, music and yes, even graphic design, can converge in an effective and meaningful way.

But first, some back story. Waaaay back.

The history of the shoe pictured above (my red hightops) is a history of 20th century America; too long to document in this post.

Briefly, Converse rubber-soled All-Stars basketball shoe was first produced in 1917 and quickly made famous by the brand’s namesake, Hoosier player Charles Taylor who became the shoe’s best salesman/evangelist. Other highlights on the shoe’s resumé include: 1939 | The fist NCAA championship basketball tournament was held. Both teams wore Converse All Stars, 1950’s | The shoe becomes popular with rockabilly fans and other music subculture types, 1970’s | The Ramones popularize the shoe for punk rockers and teenage girls wear them in high school hallways all over America (back then mine cost under $20 and my daughter Molly age 10 just bought her first pair), 1990’s | Another music-related resurgence of the retro style within Seattle’s grunge culture and, 2000’s | Spotted on fashion models, hipsters, in music videos, and all over the streets of most major cities worldwide. You just can’t keep this shoe down!

So. When we located the image pictured left for a Friends of the Library membership development brochure design, I rewrote the publication’s title in order to employ the image most effectively. As can happen, the combination of a great image and a great headline is often too tempting to resist. This became the winning comp in the series.

I’m happy to announce that the brochure delivered yesterday and they are gorgeous. From the client: “Our brochures are phenomenal, and I mean phenomenal! From me: YAY!!!! And, HOW FUN!

While I may always favor some version of the classic black and white…

I will also occasionally fall hard for something as utterly silly as those pictured above. I love ‘em but something tells me that glittery unicorns is not quite what hoops-star Charles Taylor had in mind back in 1917. Do you have a favorite pair of Chucks? Send us a photo and we’ll do a recap of this post.

Want to join the club? Visit zappos.com to find pages and pages of styles in many fabrics, colors, and prints, including collaborations with major designers such as Ed Hardy and John Varvatos. Jodi’s shopping tip for you women out there… raid the kids department for $AVING$.

Sometimes color enters my life in waves; the colors of the natural and manmade environments, colors I’m wearing, and the colors that work their way into designfarm’s projects. It’s fall here in the Mid-Atlantic region and although our trees and gardens still show lots of green, the olivine shades feel older — perhaps more sophisticated — than the saturated new-birth greens of spring. Leaves are turning orange, red, and yellow. The sunlight is warm and really does (despite the seemingly trite nature of this sentiment) cast a golden glow. Gray shadows are long, the sky is clear and blue.

The brochure above (3-panels pictured flat), designed for Friends of the Library, Montgomery County unconsciously brought just these colors into a print context.

A pair of earrings I designed for a client’s fall wedding a year ago reflect the same delicious tones.

A new logo for VisArts was presented in gray + yellow/green. Other solutions featured gray + orange. The client chose orange as the second color. Which do you respond to?

My favorite addition to a more obvious fall palette are certain shades of blue. Offering, like the sky at this time of year, a crisp counterpoint to all of that lush warmth. Earrings above purchased last weekend.

All of these colors — blue, gray, orange, yellow — came together in the branding for an exhibit at The Phillips Collection. Watch the DC Metro for the diorama pictured above.

This time of year always finds me knitting. It’s probably a nesting urge, but also satisfies my ever-present need to have busy hands that are making things. Most of the yarn I use is handspun; sometimes using wool collected from the artisan’s own sheep. I love watching the colors interact and since my skills don’t go much beyond easy-peasy scarves, I favor fussy, textural yarns with lots of thicks and thins. This skein, purchased from Folktale Fibers, came with pom-poms attached.

What’s your palette this season? Once you start noticing, it will suddenly appear everywhere you look.

It’s that time again for you to be the judge! But first, let us reveal the answer from the previous post for Contemporary Cases in U.S. Foreign Policy. THE CORRECT ANSWER IS: b

Concept of cover: Typography emphasizes the Case Study nature of the material, with a powerful 4-color image of a ball of tangled colored wire. Image suggests the complexity of the material and suggests that the course addresses Foreign Policy in all of it’s multi-faceted, intertwining dimensions.

ONTO THE NEXT COVER PROJECT FROM THIS ONGOING SERIES: Just in case you missed the first one, here is a recap on participation. Please pick the book cover that you think the client selected for publishing. We are showing you six directions for a book cover design, including the one the client chose. We’ll include a short blurb on the project to help you contextualize and understand the problem and our solutions. Let us know which cover you like and why you think it is effective. In a few weeks we will reveal the answer! Want to think like a designer? Then yes, your visceral reaction counts… which cover do you simply like best? But while the winning solution must certainly look good (whatever that means), it must also be most effective in communicating content and (duh) selling books.

Here’s the info for the image pictured above:

Title: Engines of Democracy

Subtitle: Politics and Policymaking in State Legislatures

Publisher: CQ Press An independent publisher advancing democracy by informing citizens.

Synopsis: This is a book that could work as a supplement in both state politics and legislative process courses. We also plan on selling to state legislators for training and educational programs. Rosenthal describes state legislatures as the “engines of democracy” because they (and not the executive or the judiciary) tug and pull a heavy load, uphill much of the way. Like the children’s story of the little engine that could, the legislature usually delivers the goods—a mixed bag, depending largely on one’s tastes. The legislature, however, upon its arrival is far more likely to be greeted by jeers than by cheers. The cover should reflect Alan’s hands-on approach and it can be a bit whimsicaL

Everyone who knows me knows I love clothes. Never completely content with the work of (most) other designers, I’ve been creating my own clothes for a long time. Sadly, I can’t sew worth a dang! But that, my friends, has not stopped my creativity… oh, noooooo. This little hurdle only means that my designs must be constructed from found bits and pieces, embellished, recycled, deconstructed, reconstructed.

Now that this kind of patched-together DIY fashion is all the trend, I’m happy to be able to make things not just for myself, but for other people too. The dear monsters from designfarm’s little sister company, myright2right.com were chosen to grace our fun, recycled-wallpaper altered composition book journals. But in my mind they were always begging–in their text-message kinda way–to be printed onto clothing!

Now, anyone who knows me also knows that I can thrift like nobody’s business. So off to Value Village we went (on a Thursday… 25% off!) to snag some adorable, gently used clothing that fit within the MR2W design aesthetic. Bright-colored tees…

Pink-striped drawstring pajama’s…

And super fun kid-friendly gear.

Each one-of-a-kind article of clothing is bundled with a mismatched (but adorably so!) journal and for each combo sold, we’ll donate TWO composition books to our recipient school, Piney Branch Elementary, located just 2 blocks from the studio here in Takoma Park. We’re doing a small range of these and they are selling quick!

To see the clothing up close and personal, visit us later this month at Washington DC City Paper’s brand new Silver Spring CRAFTY BASTARDS crafts show at Pyramid Atlantic, Saturday June 28. We are proud to have been one of a small group of 50 vendors selected out of hundreds of applicants!

When bandleader/singer Roddy Frantz got in touch last week to discuss the design of a poster for the Urban Verbs‘ upcoming gig, May 24 at the 930 Club, I knew my life in this profession had come full circle. The poster above, featuring the iconic photo of Chris Morse by Peter Muise and updated New-Wave-for-the-21st-century-logo by Bill Harvey, will be for sale at the show.

If, like me, you are of a certain age (ie, you graduated highschool in the 70’s), and you were living here in the Metro Area toward the end of that very decade, then you know about the legendary Urban Verbs… and you know that back then the now world-famous 930 Club was just a dank hole-in-the-wall called the Atlantis Club… located in the Atlantis Building at (you guessed it) 930 F Street. There were but a handful of bands at first, until the scene gained momentum.

And now, 30 years later, many of those bands are back in town and rockin’ hard. I’ve heard them jokingly refer to themselves as Geezer Rockers, but having attended some of the shows, I’m not buying that tag. Lest this turn into a 4-mile-long post on the early days of punk & New Wave in the Nation’s Capitol, suffice to say that my relationship to the bands of this era was as a member of a close-knit circle of co-conspirateurs and bona fide club kids. We ruled the nights, and the Urban Verbs + a few others wrote and played the soundtrack.

To get back to the point of this post, I also created some of the earliest Verbs gig flyers to paste around town. With photos we took ourselves AND printed in our home darkrooms. With xerox machines, press type, xacto knives and an ancient device called a waxer (don’t ask). Some efforts were better than others. The specimen above? NOT one of my best! To my credit, at the time I was studying photography and fine art at UMD, not design. And really, I just wanted a sulky, artsy self-portrait plastered around town.

A scant few years later I discovered my fine arts degree to be about as valuable in the job market as today’s real estate, so I began to actually learn the craft of design & production, on the job. I created the flyer pictured above for a little vintage clothing business called Flip Flop that I ran out of my big old house in Takoma DC. What you are seeing is the “mechanical,” a tissue-overlayed paste-up to be supplied to the printer. Photo of the beautifully iconic Dot Steck by husband/photographer/bass player Charles Steck.

Despite a hideous first job creating mechanicals for a Civil War reenactment magazine (!), I continued making photographs and printing them in a closet darkroom at home. Flip Flop moved to an antiques Emporium in historic downtown Frederick MD and was renamed That Girl! Photo by yours truly of the amazing Melissa Flipski, then a young teenager in a cool vintage dress.

Ahh, those really WERE the days. But, so are these. We’re still rockin’. Still wearin’ vintage. Still making photos. Life is good.

Ever need to reach your audience with important info, but your budget simply won’t stretch to cover fancy-schmancy print materials? Postage alone could cost a small fortune these days! We’ve got the answer. Below is a sampling from designfarm’s portfolio of E-announcements, E-vites, and E-newsletters. Small and efficient, these mini-posters—delivered via email—pack a lot of visual-messaging punch, without incurring print or postage fees. Don’t get us wrong, we LOVE the smell of fresh ink on paper, but in a time of a budget-crunch our clients agree; this is a great alternative.

Above: New Year’s and Holiday E-vites as well as an E-announcement for the AIA.

Above: E-announcement for Arlington County Government.

Above: E-vite for The Phillips Collection.

Above: E-newsletter for the World Wildlife Fund.

Above: E-vite for So Charmed.

Press is so cool! An article in BizBash Washington about the Phillips Collection 2008 Annual Spring Gala gave props to designfarm (that’s us, aka The Design Farm!). We were honored to design the invitation and program for this major fundraising event.

The challenge: How to newly contextualize the museum’s most famous painting, the iconic Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880–81) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The solution: By placing the painting into the center of an intimate scrapbook-collage (with found objects from our personal collections and photographed here at our studio), we helped The Phillips to charm 350 patrons into attending a very memorable evening. Dining in the museum’s rooms, surrounded by great works of art. The invitation itself references late-nineteenth century Paris, particularly the bal des canotiers (boater’s ball) which was held on Sundays at Bougival near Chatou and was Renoir’s subject for the painting.

Below are photos from the Gala:

You know the old saying: You can’t judge a book by its cover.

PHOOEY. You sure can.

In this ongoing series of posts, we’re showing you six directions for a book cover design, including the one the client selected for publishing. We’ll include a short blurb on the project to help you contextualize and understand the problem and our solutions, and we’re asking you to pick out the one the client chose. If that’s not the one you also think is most effective, tell us which one you’d choose. In a few weeks, we’ll let you know the answer, as well as put out another exciting judging opportunity.

Want to think like a designer? Then yes, your visceral reaction counts… which cover do you simply like best? But while the winning solution must certainly look good (whatever that means), it must also be most effective in communicating content and (duh) selling books.

Here’s the info for the image pictured above:

Title: Contemporary Cases in U.S. Foreign Policy

Subtitle: From Terrorism to Trade

Publisher: CQ Press An independent publisher advancing democracy by informing citizens.

Synopsis: This book is a contributed volume for the American foreign policy course, an upper level undergrad course at most universities. It’s very popular due to its current, real world cases and consistent structure and pedagogy across chapters. The book is divided into four sections: intervention policy, national security and defense policy, trade policy, and multilateral policy.