XOXO = Love Amore Amour

These were some photo cards done in three languages: English, Italian & French. The French Amour edition were for Il Baluardo Ristorante as a special menù take-away concept for clients. Along with a romanic feast, they’re offering Perrier-Jouët Grand Brut on the wine card. Très romantique!

Il mio San Valentino :: portafoto carta

rose photograph by Kate Trafeli

Vintage Style_mini school notebooks

Letterpress Vintage style inspired notebooks. Thought the best way to tie up these notebooks were with a shoelace. We all remember learning to tie them at five and turning pro at seventeen -- focusing on the style of the shoe and having long forgotten the lace.

letterpress vintage inspired notebooks :: quaderni vintage

Adorable Cotton Tape

Stoked! I had recently been to Anthropologie in Austin and bought a brass P to hang my bookmarks and stuff on. They wrapped up my package with some cotton tape with their name printed on top, and I just had to find it... Got some ordered today along with a decorative Japanese Washi tape via Cute Tape and can’t wait for it to get here (hope it doesn’t get stuck in customs).

Rob Roy Kelly /// All American

ATX is where I spent my Christmas holiday with old&new friends and family. Another important point to my visit was to listen to some fine live music, which Austin and Gruene are popular for, and get in touch with some of Austin’s letterpress community. Wow, I think I hit the jack pot! One of the great visits I made was to the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection. Thanks Laura for that:)

It’s pretty amazing to think that only in Texas can you find a trove of comprehensive all American wood type manufactured in the 19th c. The coolest part of this visit, I think, was the private tour given by David Shields associate prof. of the design devision at University of Texas. Another clever endeavor done by the department was to even classify different modes of planing wood by the different early manufactures of wood type like J G Cooley, American Wood Type Co. and Hamilton Holly Wood Type Co.

New American Wood Type_Virgin Wood Type

I also learnt of two gentleman who are keeping the craft alive by producing new American wood type. At Moore Wood Type specialized equipment has been produced to be able to use the finest of maple wood for cutting. Then there’s Virgin Wood Type out of the New York area who purchased crates full of goodies when American Wood Type Co. went out of business in 2001. They are on the exciting pursuit to sort and put names to type bought with the help of the American Wood Type catalog put together by none other Rob Roy Kelly.

Nutrire l’anima.

Nutrire l’anima: A4 Debossed Print

This has been a common theme of mine this holiday season: Feed Your Soul. The trick is to find the right words in Italian. In this case, the translation is practically verbatim. This limited ed. print was created for Christopher+Columbus latest event at “La Meridiana Tempo” local bookstore & cultural arts center in Mondovì.

Christopher+Columbus: ‘Grammatica Cromatica’ at La Meridiana Tempo

I’ve lately been tapping back into my Adobe skills designing posters for Christopher+Columbus, local art shows my photographer friend Kate Trafeli and I have been doing. Mind boggling how fast things are on my Mac compared to my manual press. The satisfaction is comparably good I must say though.

For this show, I’m introducing more stationery products. Art prints are fun, and I think I’ll continue to do ‘one-offs’, but I have a heart of a designer and function is just super sexy to me.