Description

File this one in the “Because it’s there” folder. We printed these promotional postcards for Wide Sky Guitars, a boutique lutherie in Taos, NM. And while anything printed letterpress is something of an anachronism in an era of digital memes and mobile phones, these prints are even more so: they’re 4-color-letterpress-process-printed photographs of a signature Wide Sky guitar. Contrary to most contemporary letterpress printing—even our own!— the ink from each run lives primarily on the surface of the paper, rather than in an impression. This is the way it used to be done, folks, and it’s folksy: the color blending feels from another era, giving the entire image an evocative softness. These really exemplify the love-what-you-do maxim, as the printing required meticulous registration and patience. As you’ll see in some of the process photos, it was hard to continue adding successive colors as the duotones and tritones created along the way were intriguing and lovely in their own right.