Love Letters

Perfect for your favorite typophile, our new Love Letters valentine postcard sets are available for purchase in the Felt & Wire Shop. We paired a wood heart with 12 point News Gothic from our type collection to create these candy heart inspired greetings. More images of the project can be seen in the shop.

Sunday Crafternoon

Stop by the Craft Sabbath Holiday Boutique this Sunday from 1–5pm at Salt Lake City Library for all your local, handmade gift shopping. Smart & Wiley will have lots of letterpress prints, cards, notebooks, and holiday goodies for sale. Hope to see you there!

Type Trip Part I: Chicago

During the first weekend of November we attended the 2011 Wayzgoose event at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin and spent time in Chicago before and after the event. Our trip was filled with sights, sounds, and discussion of historic and contemporary letterpress printing. Here are some Chicago highlights:

• Quality time with our good friend and host Andy Rogers of Joslin Lake Design.
• Visit to Lillstreet Art Center. Saw Celene Aubry in action teaching letterpress and met master printer Tom Lucas.

• Visit with Jen Farrell at her fabulous Starshaped Press letterpress studio.
• Lunch with Jen Mayer and Chris Jennings (of kitemath design) to hear about their exciting projects and ventures.
• Stop at Columbia College’s Center for Book and Paper Arts to see the print studio and check out the Wood Type Evolved show.

• David’s lecture and demo at Northeastern Illinois University for the design students of our talented Indiana University colleague Vida Sačić (and dinner/drinks with Vida and her husband John afterwards).
• And of course, Chicago food.

Stay tuned for Part II with photos from the Hamilton Wood Type Museum!

>>Post Update: See David’s site, Letterpress Daily, for his posts on the Wood Type Museum part of our trip.

Old Tools New Shop

Things have been a little quiet in terms of news and new work for Smart & Wiley. With our move into a new home (well, old house / new homeownership) this summer and transition into a new studio space, we’re slowly getting back to work. Here are a few photos from around the new shop…

Smart & Wiley in Uppercase Magazine

Smart & Wiley was asked to contribute a piece to the Uppercase Magazine Issue 8 Letterpress Sampler. Each copy of the magazine has one letterpress printed sample from a contributing printer (48 participated). You can see the entire collection of samples here.

A Won

Here’s the makeready notebook we put together to reward Andrew Shaw for his winning comments on our Feedback Loop Notebook. Yes, that is Balloon Extra Bold wood type in extra orange. The arrow on the cover pointing to the capital A for Andrew was completely serendipitous.

Detail of inside front cover (we like arrows)

We bound an A2 envelope pocket in just for the fun of it. What’s inside the envelope? Write a winning comment next time and you’ll find out. Or maybe if you ask Andrew very nicely he’ll show you.

We Love Felt & Wire

photo: Mary Toscano

We’re so excited (we’re smiling terminal to terminal) to be featured on Felt & Wire!