Letterpress reminders.

"If you don't stop trying so damn hard to be "something". 

You will forget to be anything at all."

A lot of time I make things in the studio and no one ever sees them. They're usually personal projects and experiments, prints that almost never get photographed. However, my roommate and I were there the other day printing price tags for a craft fair he had coming up and we snapped a few shots of some prints I had lying around.

This was a little something I wrote in a notebook almost a year ago. Sometimes we all need a little reminding now and again.

Studio in-betweens.

A lot of times, especially with design work, the process is usually more rewarding than the final outcome. Test prints, happy accidents, and "Ah-hah!" moments are some of the things I look forward to most when working on any sort of project. For some reason that's something I was reminded of today. It's far too easy when you get so busy with meetings and deadlines to forget to enjoy the journey as much as the destination. As a result, here's a few photos at NotDesign of some of the in-betweens I've had going on lately.

I love that there are probably 4 or 5 different prints on top of one another on this one.
The best part? They were probably all printed by someone different, how awesome.

Letterpress demo.

I was lucky enough to be asked by my alma mater AIGA group at Grand Valley to come in and talk to the gang all about letterpress and my involvement with NotDesign last week. This was the first time I've ever really taught anyone anything, especially letterpress, so I won't lie, I was pretty nervous. But after a brief introduction and little history lesson we jumped right in and got our hands dirty. All in all it was a great night and I think everyone was really jazzed afterward! I even got a few guys interested in coming into our space here at ND for a follow-up, more in-depth workshop in the near future which is awesome.

Mainly I love seeing others geek out about typography and creating something with their hands. It feels great that I can spread knowledge about something I care about so much. Also, as the previous AIGA GVSU President it's great seeing everything the students are doing. I hope that love for teaching and learning never changes.

T-Shirt Sunda(y)es

As the newest member of the NotDesign studio I am just now getting really acclimated to the space and all it's wonderful resources. Lately I've been doing my freelance work out of there and although it hasn't been much creative fun it's been great having a space to go to where I feel I can get some serious work done. Also! Drew, Kate, and I started a little something fun called T-Shirt Sundaes where we all go in on Sunday, print t-shirts, and eat ice cream*

Here is a little evidence from our first set of experiments.

T-Shirt Sundaes from Elyse Flynn on Vimeo.

Hopefully many more to come.

*Note: Ice cream is a relative term and so far has consisted of not ice cream, rather danishes and Cherry Deli on various occasions

Letterpress.

Letterpress. Not Design studios, Grand Rapids, MI.

Old photo, one of the first ones taken with my new camera, a Canon EOS 60D. I really need to start experimenting with it more. Oh! And learn some film techniques with it, as my friend Jen and I are planning a short film to create while on our trip to New York (Which I am so excited about! In fact, I have a blog entry I keep edited just for planning purposes!)

No real reason for posting, just loving on letterpress today.