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Mark Goss

Ask and you shall receive. We asked for submissions while we were on vacation, and we got a great one. Mark Goss is an illustrator and graphic designer from Antwerp. His fantastic portfolio has a little bit of everything: tattoo inspired illustrations, paintings, graffiti, hand lettering and zines.

Most recently, Mark was part of a show called Dirty Fingers that just opened at Artspace Leguit in Antwerp. Behind the cut, you can check out a video of his step by step installation of one of the pieces for that show.
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Strawberry Luna

I love the simple, yet cleverly designed prints from Pittsburgh’s Strawberry Luna. She hand prints all of her posters, which she chronicles meticulously on her blog. Here are a few of my recent favorites. Many more can be viewed and purchased in her Etsy shop.

Design Process: Two Hungry Dudes

One of our very first commissions was to design business cards for Two Hungry Dudes. Joe and Henry are two Detroit food bloggers who have written about everything from humble homemade cornbread to foie gras. They were wonderful to work with, and simply asked us to “design something you’re proud of.” So we did!

photo credit: @Wattyz

I thought you guys might like to see a peek behind the curtain at what it was like to design something for a client for the first time. Behind the cut, you’ll see the whole process from initial sketches, to the finished design, to smiles from happy customers.

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Letterpress Demo at Interfaces 2010

This past weekend, Dennis and I carefully packed up our little Kelsey press and hit the road. We were graciously invited to speak and do a letterpress demonstration at Interfaces, a conference that’s put on by the International Academy of Design and Technology. At the end of our talk, attendees got to print their very own postcard.

We designed a two color postcard so we could demonstrate two different methods of printing. Ahead of time, we printed a yellow background layer using the wood type lockup on the left. By using less ink, we achieved a weathered texture that made a nice soft backdrop. We wanted to show that letterpress is more versatile at creating other textures besides a deep impression. Then, the chase on the right holds a photopolymer plate that our audience printed with black ink as a second layer.

We used French Muscletone in Kraft, because we like its industrial look and feel. Plus we knew there was no way that every audience member would have the muscles to get a good impression on our Kelsey, so we chose more interesting paper than the stereotypical cotton rag.

We were asked quite a few questions, and I thought I’d share some of them on the blog. It was awesome to have everyone engaged in the discussion. It was really flattering, because some of these students are crazy talented. (They had a little gallery of work set up and we were pretty impressed.) Overall, it was a great experience, and we’re grateful to have been invited.

Read our letterpress FAQs and see more pictures from Interfaces…

Starred #30

This picture captures my FAVORITE part of screenprinting. RageHaus mixing colors.

Silhouette by Joe Bagley (via Oh So Beautiful Paper)

Poster by 1982 (Nate Duval + Jon Smith collabo)

Picture #62 of Make Something‘s 365 Project

Juliana Swaney print (via Art Hound)

Named after the Add Star feature in Google Reader, “Starred” is a column about things that catch my eye as I peruse the blogs I subscribe to. If you’d like to subscribe to Perfect Laughter, here’s a link to our RSS Feed.

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