So, what have I been up to in the past few weeks? Well . . .
Firstly, my Golding Pearl O.S. Model 3 has a new owner, and now resides in the beautiful Commonwealth of Virginia. The new owner is Emily.
I've also been doing some stand-in bindery work at Mama's Sauce, holding the fort while a couple of the guys go off, get married and go on their respective honeymoons. Gives me a chance to get up front and personal with their 12 x 18 Kluge. It's been a lot of fun working with Joey, Hogan and the Brookster.
Keep an eye out for a new friend and former student of mine (work-shop student, that is!) Isabel, with 9th Letter Press, of Winter Park. Isabel has a lot of talent, and it will be great to see her work go 'main stream', especially in the Winter Park Rolling College / Park Avenue area. I will be posting a link to her site soon.
I've also been working on my new web site. I have added some flash pages, which are serving as portfolio viewers. The nice thing about these flash sub-programs is that a picture is worth a thousand words. So, what does that make ten pictures? So far, I have my main portfolio page done, with an active link to my business card portfolio page. Soon to be active will be a Wedding Stationery page, a Coaster page, and a general Ephemera page. Check them out, tell me what you think!
Also, what do you think of my sorta-kinda Logo? It reminds me a bit of some of the wood cut stylings of 16th Century Bayern (Bavaria, where I lived as a pre-teen) - so I took the liberty of using a German Blackletter font, and inscribing "Kunsthandwerk", which means Cultural or Artistic or Artisan Hand Work, and "Feindruckerei", or Fine Press / Printing. It's a tip of the hat to my own German heritage. And, after all, it were the Germans who gave the Western World Letterpress. Direct from the Electorate of Mainz, by way of Strasbourg. In a short time, Nuremberg became the Printing Capitol of the Western World.
Besides, I love Blackletter "Textur" and "Fraktur". Reminds me of another place I lived: Valley Forge, not far from the Schwenkfelder and Amish communities.
One last thing: my Dell D620 lost image on it's screen. I think I have it traced to the LCD inverter. Ordered a new one, hopefully that will get me up and going. While I do have a Mac desk-top for CS4, I do a huge bulk of my designing with good ol' FreeHand MX, on a PC. So, since my Lap Top is my PC, it's pretty important that I get it going again. Fortunately, the video card is good, and I can run an external monitor so I can see what I am typing right here and now. But it's a pain being docked to a terminal.
If the inverter does not work, then I'm replacing the LCD and cabling as well. While it's costing me a bit to order new parts, it is still cheaper than having someone else do this - or purchasing a new Lap top!
I have a wedding order coming up soon, and I will post photos as I print it.
That's it for now.
-gary.
