happy new year!

happy new year's eve, everyone! thank you to everyone who helped make 2009 such a great year for us. see you in 2010!

(photo taken by the bartender at woodberry kitchen where we have our annual happy hour to celebrate the year)

BINGE was awesome

this year's BINGE was bigger, better, and even more successful than last year's! we had almost twenty vendors join us, so we decided to split the event between our studio and spur design's studio next door. below are just a few of the vendors that were present at BINGE:

us, of course:


almanac bindery:


erin fitzpatrick (on the left) and tv vida:


motobus:


lauren silberman's papercuts:


spur design:


in addition to all of the great stuff our vendors were offering, whitney took a break from her almanac bindery table and gave a letterpress demonstration to all of our interested guests:


there was no shortage of wine, drinks or snacks for our vendors and guests, either. here's adam manning bar:


and we couldn't resist cutting into a gigantic apple covered in candy to serve to our vendors. this picture does no justice to the size of this thing. isn't it the craziest--yet yummiest--thing you've ever seen?

holiday party 2009

last friday was the annual gilah press + design holiday party. and, like last year, soup's on did a fantastic job catering the event. the food, drinks, and laughs were aplenty and a fun time was had by all.





after the dinner most of us headed over to kat's house where we kept the party going by nibbling on decadent desserts and indulging in a few more drinks. we even invited a few extra friends over to join in on the fun. several games of bananagrams were played late into the night, and adam, kat's husband, would not stop dominating. he was crazy!



kat got everyone a pantone mug as a party favor, but since a few were left behind we decided to make them at home in our studio. aren't they lookin' beautiful in our dish rack?



yay for the holidays!

thank you!

happy thanksgiving eve, everyone! with the holidays being just around the corner, gilah has been super busy letterpress printing, diecutting, and getting down and dirty with some delicate handwork...not to mention all of the "normal" graphic design jobs that need to get done on top of all that! none of it would be possible without the help of all of the interns and printers that have recently come through the doors of gilah to help us gals out, so we want to give a great big "THANKS!" to...

ally



birthplace: boston, ma
college: maryland institute college of art
what you could be found doing on a friday night: swing dancing!
if you were a font, you would be: museo

lauren



birthplace: boston, ma
college: maryland institute college of art
what you could be found doing on a friday night: beers with peers
if you were a font, you would be: gotham

chris



birthplace: bel air, md
college: towson university, maryland institute college of art
what you could be found doing on a friday night: watching a movie in an apartment or at a show
if you were a font, you would be: univers

jayce



birthplace: damascus, md
college: stevenson university
what you could be found doing on a friday night: working at grand cru or seeing live music and lovin' life
if you were a font, you would be: garamond. old style for life

ahnhee



birthplace: south korea
college: university of delaware
what you could be found doing on a friday night: cooking dinner and watching a movie
if you were a font, you would be: eurostile

organization is awesome

our basement got the best of us just a few months ago. the basement holds the bulk of our product and it used to be difficult to go down there and grab exactly what we needed without tripping over boxes and searching through random bags and dark corners. what should have been a five minute trip to the basement would turn into a half-hour hunt for samples and cards. it had gotten way out of hand and it was time to take action!

sadly, i managed to miss the bulk of the basement organization because i was on my honeymoon (mwahaha!), but kat, whit and anyone else they could get their hands on transformed what was once a scary dark dungeon of doom into a space we were no longer afraid to step into. we even show it off to our clients that come visit the studio.

i searched around for some "before" photos but didn't come up with anything, but here are the impressive "after" photos...

this is what you see once you get to the bottom of the stairs: row after beautiful row of box and tin samples, business cards, wedding invitations, whatever. everything is clearly labeled and within reach. it's seriously amazing:



when you turn to your right you'll notice gorgeously organized shelves of paper and envelopes, organized by size and color:



and here are all the envelopes and sleeves we use to package our greeting cards. the cork surface is perfect for putting together card shipments. it's actually pretty fun to work down in the basement now:



in addition to the basement, we decided to create a job board to keep everyone on track with the tasks for the next week, month, etc. it's very helpful knowing that we're all on the same page:



and before all of this, whitney had put together her own job board to keep the print jobs organized:



breathe in. breathe out. ahhh. our minds are much clearer and i think we feel more at peace with the space now. can't beat that.

new presses!

we recently acquired two new presses on a total whim since they were such a deal. in order to make space for the new presses, all new electrical wiring and a lot of rearranging had to be done. it was nuts around here for a while, but then it was finally time to welcome home our new babies.

here are our old presses in their new location:


and this is the big empty hole the old presses used to live in that will soon be filled with pretty machines:


here's a shot of one of the new presses coming into our space. the guys who helped us were very sweet and worked surprisingly well together, even when faced with the difficult task of moving such heavy machinery. now that's patience:


our old chandler in press is in it's usual spot on the left, but now it has friends:


the first new press we got. see all that rust? eventually someone's gonna hafta clean it up, and it's probably gonna be me (it's actually a nice change from being on the computer all day):


it even has a cute little bell! it makes a very satisfying ding sound:


this is the second press. i like to call it our mystery press. we're not quite sure what it is. we've researched like crazy and even looked for help on professional letterpress forums, but we still have no idea. now we're thinking it's some kind of franken-press, pieced together from other machines to create one crazy scary press. spooky!

the velvet chocolatier

last week we launched the velvet chocolatier's website. we've been working with ruthie, the proprietor of the company, to make sure everything was in tip-top shape from start to finish. shooting photos of chocolate proved to be no easy task, but after making some mistakes and learning new techniques, we managed to pull it off. here's a shot of whitney and beth taking a photo of one of the tray options:



ruthie's chocolates are absolutely delicious and we never complained when she brought in fresh, new chocolates for us to shoot (we got to eat them after the photos were approved!) so check out how the site turned out and order some chocolate!

national stationery show 2009

so we're only a few weeks late with our national stationery show recap. that's not too bad, right? okay, okay, sorry about that. let's be civil and get on with it...

here's the nice mess we made before we left for new york. whitney took a lot of time to make sure every single sample was flawless. good job.



and here they are at the javitz center putting together the walls of the booth. for some reason they seem to be ENJOYING themselves. smiles are usually never seen on set-up day. be thankful i was there to capture this rare moment. and that drill right there? pretend you don't see that. tools aren't allowed at the javitz center but we trust you won't tell on us...





kat specifically asked me to take this photo to show you all how perfectly these boxes fit into the cabinets we brought with us. aren't we just so organized? we were very proud of ourselves!



more finalization of the set up. when samples started getting hung on the walls we got super excited. it's really fun seeing everything come together in just a few hours.







check this out. we got this awesome little ladder thing to lean against one of the walls to display our new notebooks! and of course, we had to letterpress the "new" sign on the top. consistency is key.



and this is how the booth looked when it all finally came together. ah, gorgeous.



woohoo! it was a lot of fun seeing old friends and meeting new people as usual.

PCB paper show / open house

here's my favorite image from the production club of baltimore paper show we were at about a month ago:



oh, hey! we've got an open house coming up!



the details: it's happening thursday, april 20th from 6:30 - 9:30 pm. this time around, you have to RSVP to get in. please send your RSVPs to info at gilahpress dot com by april 24th. (that's only two days away!) see you there.

aiga student tour / PCB 15th annual paper show

you poor little blog. i'm so sorry that i've neglected you. here, i'll make up for it with some lovely photos i took of an aiga student tour that came through here back in mid-february:









tomorrow is the production club of baltimore's 15th annual paper show. we're gonna be there rockin' our usual booth. it's happening at martins west (6817 dogwood road) and will last from 5:30 pm - 8:30 pm. if you're already a PCB member admission is free; otherwise, you'll have to pay $25 at the door. we've got some nifty new posters to pass out that advertise an upcoming open house we're having at the end of april, so come by our booth, grab a poster and remember to say hi!

c&j graphics / the owls go

two weeks ago the production club of baltimore invited ron heddinger of c&j graphics to the admiral fell inn to give a talk about various finishing methods.



we were all amazed at what could be accomplished since we're pretty used to our letterpressing ways. we learned about holograms, foil stamping, embossing, uv coating (you can put glitter in it! and it comes in tons of colors!) and lots of other finishing services. we even got to handle some of the dies they use:



after the talk we headed to the ottobar and watched the owls go perform. our intern chris plays drums in the band so we couldn't pass up the opportunity to see him perform. they were so great that we decided to buy their cd! here they are being awesome:



tomorrow we will be opening our doors for a student studio tour put on by aiga baltimore. time to get everything cleaned up and ready to go!