Text Message transcript betwixt the younger brother Mateo and myself.

ME: Have you seen Wes Anderson's latest? MATEO: The Mr. Fox One? No not yet is it good? ME: It's very good. As good as his others. You really should check it out. MATEO: Will do thanks.

O ye of the doomed relationship past or present...

Found this anonymous blog about a writer who is making motions towards a separation with his wife that may lead to a divorce-- the fact that its written so well and that it's documented in real time makes it very compelling. It's like reality TV that doesn't suck. Not only are you getting all the juicy developments, but you are actually made to thoughtfully reflect on the joys/sucks of romantic life. If you've ever been through anything remotely close to this experience, this blog is for you.

Excerpt:
I know that one of the reasons relationships fail is purely chemical. The routine of the everyday becomes boring and we go into dopamine withdrawal. We take each other for granted, we stop flirting, courting, trying new things together. The addict in our skull cries out for a hit and finds none forthcoming. We go into deep funks and start looking around for a cause. And what are we likely to see? The person we spend the most time with. Oh, must be their fault. Surely, it couldn’t be me. I hang out with other people and I feel great (i.e. I get plenty of dopamine.) Even the scientific method absolves me and convicts you.

The blog is called Chapter After.

James Clarke´s Gran is dead.

My friend from Northern Ireland reports the details of the funeral via email:

The Funeral & all that was a nightmare. The hearse crashed into the church, creating a fireball. Gran never wanted to be cremated, but sure, easy come, easy go. Then, the ashes & smoke were blown across the street, causing a 10 car pile up... lets just say there'll be a couple more funerals next week. I drank too much & ambushed the priest before the ceremony... tying him up & stealing his robes, I then took control of the funeral & recalled stories of how such a wicked woman my gran was, & how she used to beat me & lock me in a cage in the basement with nothing but a bucket of fish heads to eat. It didn't go down too well, as you can imagine. This was followed by my hijacking of the choir, & then forcing them to play as I sung a swing version of the Sex Pistols "God Save The Queen" & Nine Inch Nails "Closer"... the line: "I wanna fuck you like an animal" went down exceedingly well.

Oh ye who knows not what cans of worms ye've opened. Process: Going from hand drawn art to Negative + Color mockup

The original drawing was done on a piece of scrap paper. Krystan hadn't intended on letterpressing this when she started.

So I walked into the shop today and our apprentice Krystan was scanning an image she wanted to letterpress. I asked her a few questions to make sure she was doing it right, and chuckled internally what I learned what she wanted to do with it, because I didn't think she really knew how much work it would take to pull it off. Below are various stages of pulling off her vision. One, she wanted the line work on the feet to be white, two, she wanted to have a lighter white fill inside the line work on the feet. Here's how the process went.





This 3-color separation for the negative took a couple of hours and some technically creative techniques not worth going into. Krystan got a head full of Photoshop and Illustrator functions she will more than likely not remember next week.


This is a low res color mockup we made to be sure what the final product would look like. Pretty f'n sweet.

Krystan Bruce's work will be featured in my book Adventures in Letterpress, and is one of many writers that have been compelled to join the ranks of BBH. She has a blog called Company for Dinner.

Card I started printing at 4 am sometime last week.

I mean, c'mon already. Seriously. Buy it here.

Adventures in Letterpress: Prelim sketch for Commemorative Poster

Preliminary poster sketch by Asheville print maker Andy Farkas. The poster will be inset into Adventures in Letterpress and printed by Boxcar Press. There are many details of this concept we have yet to fill in, but I love the roller gauge staff and the turned over type the figures are standing on. This will eventually be carved into a wood block.