Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

I’m so excited to introduce our first hand-carved woodblock designer that we’re featuring on the Behind the Stationery column! Rachel from Heartell Press is here to take us through her processes – from the intricacies of designing and carving each block, to growing her business, to ensuring her team is self-sufficient enough for her to take some time to adjust to being a new mom. She started Heartell Press in Brooklyn, but has since moved to Indiana with her husband and into a beautiful spacious studio. Here’s Rachel! —Megan Soh

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

From Rachel: Heartell Press cards are printed from hand-carved woodblocks. Woodcut was always my favorite of the printmaking processes, and the folksy look of the carved images and the organic textures created by the woodgrain are a good fit for our warm, sincere designs and messages. There are great designers who use linoleum blocks (Katharine Watson, Ghost Academy, and Kaibelle Designs are my favorites), but as far as I know we are the only line printed from wood. It has taken lots of trial and error to learn to print our blocks consistently and at scale using letterpress equipment, but I think our customers appreciate that each card is truly handmade on every level.

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

The carving is time-consuming, especially because each color we add to a design means carving a separate block. I’m always working on ways to preserve the look and feel of what we make while streamlining the process for producing our products. For the new spring collection we’re working on now, I’m carving the key block — the part of the image that has the most detail and information — and experimenting with photopolymer plates to add lots of additional color. I’m excited because if it works we’ll be able to release new cards with lots of color and add new types of products to our line more frequently while still offering cards and prints that are true to the Heartell aesthetic and unique in our industry.

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

My path to stationery was long and winding. It took doing a lot of the wrong things to find the right thing. I went to grad school twice, first to earn an academic degree in religion and art history from Yale Divinity School and then an MFA in printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After I finished school in 2009, I moved to New York and cobbled together a living with multiple part-time jobs. I worked in a church, as a nanny, and eventually ran a non-profit. All the while I was renting a (super expensive and tiny) art studio in Gowanus, Brooklyn, and trying to squeeze in as many hours per week there as possible making paintings and prints. I had a few shows in Brooklyn and Manhattan, but it was tough trying to build an art career and pay rent in New York.

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

In 2012 my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and that experience made me question the chaotic existence I was living and inspired me to find a way to do the creative work I love full time. Since I was having a hard time finding sympathy cards that I liked enough to send to my mom between visits, I started having ideas for making my own cards. People in my life and my community in Brooklyn were responding to them in a way that made me think there might be something there.

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

I began to look more closely at the stationery industry, and when I discovered that there was a wholesale market for handmade stationery, especially at the National Stationery Show (through the OSBP blog!), the idea for Heartell Press was born. I did research and worked on developing my line and launched the website in 2014. I exhibited for the first time at NSS in 2016 and that is when the wholesale part of Heartell took off and I was able to leave my day jobs and focus on the business full time.

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

In 2016, my husband and I decided to leave Brooklyn and move to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he grew up. The move has been great for us and for Heartell, giving me lots more time and space to devote to it. In November 2017, we moved the business into a new studio space here in Fort Wayne. It is two-thirds less expensive than the space I rented in Brooklyn and eight times bigger! We have room for our presses, including a new (to us) 10×15 Chandler and Price that we added to our shop when we moved, as well as inventory, a shipping and fulfillment space, office space for me to do my designing and carving, and plenty of storage. The building has a beautiful atrium full of tropical plants that is like a greenhouse, and I love being able to walk around it when I need to think or stretch after lots of drawing or carving.

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

Heartell designs start with bits of text or images that I collect in lists for each card and product category (I use Trello for organizing all my lists, plans and tasks). My best cards are inspired by experiences I’m having in my own life and relationships. The earliest Heartell cards are all sympathy, love, and encouragement cards that I made when my mom first got sick. It will be pretty obvious when the new collection comes out that many of the designs I’m working on now have been inspired by the experience of being pregnant (and also watching friends and family members who have had children).

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

I try to make cards that I would genuinely want to give or receive. There are lots of funny cards right now about all the (sometimes unwelcome) changes that come when you have a baby, like having to deal with tons of poo, and those definitely serve an important purpose in the process of preparing to be a parent. Funny isn’t really my forte though, and I tend to swing toward more sincere, emotional messages. When I do retail markets I almost always have a customer tear up at my booth at some point during the event. I’m not sure if making people cry is something I should be proud of but I’m glad that I’ve found a way to put all my feelings to good use!

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

When I’m ready to design a new collection, I go through our current catalog to see which parts of our line could use fleshing out or freshening up. Then I comb through my stockpile of ideas and draw thumbnails with colored pencils to begin mapping out new designs. Once I have an idea of the collection as a whole, I use my Wacom tablet and Photoshop and Illustrator to draw the full scale images and lay out the text. I used to do this with pencils and markers on vellum, doing lots of tracing and scanning to come up with the final designs, but the tablet has made the process much faster and more fun.

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

When the designs have been edited and vetted by as many people as I can get to look at them and I’m satisfied with my plans, I print guides using a laser printer and transfer them to blocks of Shina plywood (a wood that is both soft for easy carving and strong enough to hold detail that is harvested sustainably in Japan specifically for printmaking). I use Japanese carving tools to carve the blocks, and then we mount them in the presses for printing.

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

Since there is a separate block for each color, including the scoring run, some cards pass through the press up to four times! I love seeing the new designs printed for the first time. It is always a thrill to see something I’ve dreamed up become a finished product.

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

Like many of the business owners I’ve read about in this column, I spend a lot of my time these days running the business end of things. Fortunately I’ve discovered that I enjoy communicating with customers, managing cash flow, looking at numbers and planning for growth. But now that I have help with fulfillment and printing, I am finding lots more time for drawing and designing and carving blocks for new products, which are my favorite parts of my job. I love working on marketing projects too, and I do all our product photography, design our catalogs, and prepare for trade shows.

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

I set different goals for each year, and my big one for 2018 is to get Heartell ready to run without my constant attention for a few months while I take some time to welcome our new baby and adjust to being a parent. I feel grateful to have lots of inspiration from other business owners in our field (Nole included!) who have families, and while I’m sure it will be a big transition I feel confident that we’ll be able to find a good equilibrium over time.

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

I’ve come to find that stationery is a better fit for me than fine art for a lot of reasons, but one of the things I love most about this industry is how generous and open people are. The fine art world in New York has a deeply competitive culture, and it has been a gift for me to connect with other designers and retailers who are willing to share information, encouragement and support. The more variety there is in terms of design, the more letters people will write and the more connected they’ll be to each other. It feels like we are all part of something that is bigger than any one company or store individually and I love looking at things that way.

Behind the Stationery: Heartell Press

Photo Credits: Product photos by Heartell Press // Studio photos by Ruth Yaro.

Want to be featured in the Behind the Stationery column? Reach out to Megan at megan [at] ohsobeautifulpaper [dot] com for more details.

Behind the Stationery: Dahlia Press

Our next installment of Behind the Stationery bring us to Seattle, Washington to chat with Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press. Stephanie shares about how she transitioned from moonlighting as an entrepreneur to investing full-time in Dahlia Press, how sketching on an iPad has expedited her overall process, and how her custom client workflow differs from designing a wholesale line. Here’s Stephanie! —Megan Soh

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

From Stephanie: I first fell in love with letterpress in a typography class. My instructor was a printer and would make all of the students letterpress flashcards of the typefaces we should all know by heart. Fast forward a couple years and by day I was a Graphic Designer for a retail branding firm designing everything from logos and interior environments to websites and packaging, and by night I was printing on a 1912 Golding Pearl platen press in my basement.

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

For 6 years, Dahlia Press was a side hustle. Named after the flowers in my front yard, I spent my evenings printing wedding invitations and custom stationery. To say that I started with a formal business plan and a vision for what Dahlia Press would eventually become wouldn’t be entirely correct. I knew that the entrepreneur in me wanted my own business, but I also knew that it was best for me to grow slowly and carefully, trying not to grow too fast to where I couldn’t sustain my full-time job (which I loved), and not too slow that the business wasn’t gaining momentum.

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

Eventually with hard work and late nights, Dahlia Press grew to a size where I could no longer sustain both jobs. Knowing Dahlia Press needed my full attention, I left my day job to focus on it entirely. It was at this time that we expanded our offerings to include a line of letterpress greeting cards for the retail and wholesale market.

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

Shortly after we started our wholesale line and prepared to debut at the National Stationery Show, we outgrew the basement area. We were lucky enough to find an amazing brick and mortar space in Seattle’s Portage Bay neighborhood, where we have worked for the past 3 years. Our bright, sun-filled studio houses our three letterpress printing presses, a small retail area with a meeting counter for consultations with custom clients, work desks and a stock/shipping room in the back.

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

A typical work day starts with coffee and packing up the shop-dog Chloe to head to the studio. Once I arrive, normally around 9:30am, a second cup of coffee is poured and I check in with George (our press operator who also happens to be my older brother) to see what’s on our print list for the day. Emails are answered and I work with our team to fill orders in the back. I try to reserve the afternoon for tackling custom projects or writing quotes and sending invoices.

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

There’s always an ongoing list of items to do that normally consists of social media photos, mocking up new designs, editing art files, ordering supplies or packaging products. Around 6pm, I close up shop and pack up the dog to head home. Evenings are typically spent tackling whatever administrative tasks didn’t get done throughout the day, but occasionally I’ll use that time to sketch new concepts and ideas. It’s a labor of love, to say the least.

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

Depending on what I’m working on, the design and production process really varies. The process of designing our greeting card line always starts in a notebook. I’m an avid list maker, so I always have an ongoing list of phrases, ideas, sayings, and concepts jotted down. As much as I try to draw every day, there isn’t always time. If I have an initial idea, I’ll create a quick doodle or sketch in my notebook so I can come back to it later. For years, all of my lettering and illustrations were done on stacks and stacks of tracing paper using my favorite Micron or Tombow brush pens. Once the design was fine-tuned, I would scan it into Illustrator and prepare it for platemaking.

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

This past year my process changed slightly as I started experimenting with drawing software on my iPad Pro. Today I rarely use pens (although for finer details, it’s still preferred), and the majority of my drawings are done directly on the iPad. I then AirDrop the file to my computer and prep the file for the plate-making process. This change has shaved off hours of time, not to mention ink and paper! Once the plates arrive from the platemakers, we mix ink by hand and prep Ruby (our 1926 Chandler and Price press) for printing. My favorite moment is when that first print comes off the press. It’s so satisfying to see a design come to life and to feel that one of a kind impression.

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

The process of working with our custom clients is a little more extensive. It always starts with a consultation (hopefully in person, but often over the phone too) where I get the all the details of their event and their overall vision. After the administrative details are worked out (quotes and contracts), we pull samples and swatches and start initial sketches of the design concept. Those sketches turn into a digitally mocked-up design, which we send to the client for review. We’ll go through a series of revisions and once the final design is approved, we finalize the art files and prep them for printing.

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

As we print all of our greetings in house, we’ve relied on a list of trusted vendors to help us when it comes to printing our custom projects. They offer additional services such as foil stamping and die cutting, which allows us to expand our list of offerings and frees up our schedule to work on more projects.

Behind the Stationery: Stephanie Clarke of Dahlia Press

Studio images are by Krista Welch Creative. All other photos are by Dahlia Press.

Want to be featured in the Behind the Stationery column? Reach out to Megan at megan [at] ohsobeautifulpaper [dot] com for more details.

Behind the Stationery: Blushing Confetti

We’re going to the land down under in our next installment of Behind the Stationery featuring Ellen of Blushing Confetti! Located in Brisbane, Australia, Ellen’s stationery business – full of confetti and foil – started when she was a graphic designer in the publishing industry. Taking us through her team’s daily routine and her design process, here’s Ellen! —Megan Soh

Behind the Stationery: Blushing Confetti

From Ellen: Before I entered into the crazy world of stationery, I was a graphic designer working away in the print industry. After studying four years at University across design and advertising, I moved to big old London town and was super lucky to land my dream job at IPC Media (now Time, Inc). For anyone that watched The Devil Wears Prada, it was like a scene out of that – only not as mean. I worked with magazine brands like Marie Claire, InStyle, and Look while simultaneously working for clients like IKEA, Westfield, and Puma. It was probably the coolest job I ever had, aside from running my own business of course. When I came back home I kept on with the publishing work until I found my love for wedding stationery. That’s where it all began! Fast forward through a hell of a lot of blood, sweat, and tears and a ready-made line of stationery (and no more bespoke wedding stationery), I slowly reduced my days at the agency until another business and business partner came along. Believe it or not, my jump was made by introducing another business into the mix!

Behind the Stationery: Blushing Confetti

Blushing Confetti is a tongue-in-cheek brand that is serious about providing stunning stationery and aspires to deliver the unexpected to our customers. We offer a whole range of cheeky stationery and are increasingly expanding into gifts. Our agendas have been super popular and we can’t wait to reveal next year’s choices (eeeep!). Most of our stationery goods have a foiled element to it because, if you can’t tell, we are into pretty and shiny things! I have always had a passion for beautiful printing techniques and the business started off with a strong focus in foil. I don’t see that going anywhere anytime soon!

Behind the Stationery: Blushing Confetti

Our HQ is located in the sunshine state of Australia: Queensland. Tucked away in modest Brisbane, we work away in our warehouse and office right by the river. We really do have it pretty good! You will always find confetti in every nook and cranny and lots of random cat and pug references. We’re all about the animals in our office, and if you don’t already follow us on Instagram stories you’re missing out on all the cute dog and cat pics.

Behind the Stationery: Blushing Confetti

A typical day in Blushing HQ always starts with coffee (always!) and music is automatically popped on! #TBT is a popular playlist choice. We generally catch up in the morning and talk through everyone’s priorities and see if anyone needs any help in a certain area. Then we are on our way with our individual tasks, whether that is packing orders, illustrating patterns, designing an e-newsletter…the list goes on! Lots of laughs and food are generally had throughout the day and we don’t take ourselves too seriously unless it’s deadline time!

Behind the Stationery: Blushing Confetti

I spend the bulk of my time these days working on product development. Whether that is hand lettering funny words for cards or figuring out what paper stocks we will use, it sure does keep me busy! I think I am pretty lucky in the way of not having many daily business struggles, however come deadline time for a product run or a trade show things can get tough, especially internationally. Lots of planning goes into our yearly activity of traveling across the world to New York, whilst we totally love it and wouldn’t change it for the world. When something goes wrong, it feels a thousand times worse when you are in a place you don’t know. Luckily I get to call on some great local industry friends if I ever am in a bind!

Behind the Stationery: Blushing Confetti

Our design process is a little different depending on the product type, but we seem to have it downbeat (albeit somewhat chaotic at times). Our cards are usually thought up anytime throughout the year and have usually come from experiences we have had with a partner, friend or ex-boyfriend. Our experiences come into these card themes and we just start lettering until we have the perfect combination of words. The team normally all have a say in what the end result is.

Behind the Stationery: Blushing Confetti

When it comes to designing an agenda for instance, we decide what formats we want to do based on what people previously have ordered from us (big, small, medium sized, spiral, etc). Then we work with both local artists and our internal design team to design some creative based on the theme we have all decided on for that season. After design time and many, many rounds of proofing, our agendas are off to be turned into samples. From there we decide if we want to change anything or sometimes we even scrap that design if we think it turned out differently than we hoped. Once all those decisions have been made we are on our way to final production and everyone’s goodies are shipped across the world (that’s the best part!).

Behind the Stationery: Blushing Confetti

And, finally, a special video from Blushing Confetti: A day in the life of… from Lemon Tree Film House.

All photos courtesy of Blushing Confetti.

Want to be featured in the Behind the Stationery column? Reach out to Megan at megan [at] ohsobeautifulpaper [dot] com for more details.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

Today’s installment of Behind the Stationery takes us to Michigan with Kristen Drozdowski of Worthwhile Paper! The beginnings of Worthwhile Paper started by happenstance when they had some extra space screen printing a poster. I’m excited for Kristen to share her unique story about how she dreamt of her business name (and it stuck!), details into her screen printing design process, what inspires her art, and her goals for 2018. Take it away, Kristen! —Megan Soh

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

From Kristen: Starting Worthwhile Paper happened organically for me like a story of cause and effect. I first discovered my passion for making cards and smaller prints almost by accident — by using the extra space on a screen when printing a poster. There were a few inches left in the layout of a poster my husband and I were screen printing so I squeezed some little positive sayings on the side and we cut them into postcards. We took them to one of our first local craft fairs and the little positive cards went over well, but more importantly I found myself connecting with the shoppers more over the positive cards than anything else. It made me feel happy and human to make connections like that, which sparked my idea of making more cards.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

Shortly after, I had this dream that I had my own card line and was telling someone in my dream that it was called Worthwhile Paper. I woke up thinking it was such a dorky name, but a little later when I sat down to name my business it just held on. There is this very real idea that sometimes the things that require more thought or work are the most worthwhile things, like climbing a mountain and getting to the top, doing a really long yoga practice to get to the other side of your sense of self, or going through all of the work it takes to screen print cards! It continues to fuel my work. One of my favorite things about Worthwhile Paper is that it is a business that I get to do with my husband. It has been such an adventure for us, a designer and printer love story, and he has been supportive in so many ways along the journey – always encouraging me and helping me feel empowered as a business owner.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

Worthwhile Paper is a collection of lively screen printed paper goods for lovers of nature, magic and meaningful design. We are a wife + husband team who love to create beautiful print work to share with others. Everything we make is drawn and lettered by hand and screen printed with earth-friendly papers and inks. Featuring a unique blend of nature and minimalism, our designs carry a goal to truly bring some positivity and love into the world through meaningful connections – whether that is a personal reconnection to nature or a connection between two people.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

My love for the design and print world feels like it was always here, but really took root for me in college. I was always incorporating hand drawn lettering and designs into my work and I learned how to screen print. Finding this path was more of a process of elimination and discovery than anything else – I had so many interests when it came to what I wanted to do with my design background and I tried to explore them all. At one point, I had two part-time jobs (both in the design industry) and on the side I was taking on freelance design jobs, doing calligraphy for wedding invitations, designing gig posters, and exploring more with personal side projects. But as my schedule shifted after becoming a mom I became stressed in keeping up with everything and I slowly and intentionally started dropping away from the types of work I was offering starting from my least favorite, and eventually dedicated myself to pursue Worthwhile passionately and fully.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

Last summer I made the exciting jump to move Worthwhile out of our house and into its own separate space. I found this amazing building nestled in between houses hiding behind pine trees and a wooden fence — so, not quite a store front but not totally hidden either. I walked inside this place and immediately felt at home. Sprinkled with windows with natural light pouring in and the perfect shade of warm white paint on the walls, it was practically made for us, and at this point I am still in denial that I actually get to work here. Inside lives my drawing studio, office, our wholesale inventory and shipping area, and a large area in the middle that during non-working hours we call “The Guest Room” – our workshop space.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

We have been hosting a variety of creative workshops here including my own design and lettering workshops as well as other crafty events for beginners like weaving, macrame, and terrariums. We’ve been having open shop events and appointment based shopping hangouts with local customers too, and it has been so fun to be able to have a physical space to bring people together. It excites me! Where we print is not a far trek — just down the road is VGKids, the screen printing shop my husband co-owns. They screen print a variety of wonderful things but their specialty is large scale art posters and tee shirts. We print all of our own things there when a press opens up or on the weekends.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

During the day at the studio I am usually either drawing, finishing designs on my computer, making layouts, attending to emails, bookkeeping, taking styled photos for social media, and making tea (and then forgetting about it until it’s too cold). I have a few super amazing women working for me too, to help with managing our wholesale accounts, updating spread sheets, pulling orders and packaging our items. I am so grateful to have a team, I couldn’t keep up at this point without them.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

I am always thinking of ideas. Sometimes when I start a design, it feels like the end of a process instead of a beginning because the idea may have been living in my head for a whole year or so! If you spied on my phone and went through the notes app, you would find hundreds of one line ideas or phrases that pop into my head that I jot down there. (I’m guilty as ever for using my phone instead of a notebook, don’t send the paper police). Once I’ve reached the point where I want to start bringing some ideas to life, I will start with small, very fast thumbnail sketches. This allows me to get the ideas of how I want a design layout to be quickly without judgement about details.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

Then, I work up toward a more finalized design in pencil, using a light tablet to trace over and make revised copies until I get to an original that I draw either with black ink or a combination of black and colored gouache paint. Sometimes if I am working with multiple colors I like to make separate layers because that is how my screen printing brain works, and then I scan everything in, make the final layouts and choose ink colors via the Photoshop Pantone matching system, which is how we determine our screen printing inks.

My design process is usually a very fun and fulfilling challenge. Lately, bringing a collection together has become more slow and organic rather than strategic. For the collection of art prints that will come out soon for spring, I started by simply sitting down and drawing what I liked and wanted to explore. After I had a substantial amount of work, I laid it all out in front of me and chose what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to make out of it. To start, I usually draw from multiple points of inspiration. This ranges from inspiration from nature to deep inspiration that stems from feelings, or sometimes it’s more obvious inspiration from my existing work (maybe I tried something once and want to expand upon it, or there is a certain color palette I want to use more, or a theme/direction I want to pursue further). All in all, the inspiration that I find the most meaningful are my day to day interactions and emotions.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

Phrases in my cards may have started as something I said out loud, wrote in a note once to someone, or something I wrote in my journal. It is really important to me that my approach as an artist who makes material things for sale isn’t centered around what I think will make me the most money or based on the most popular on-trend thing. When I am designing, I want it to feel real, so I always ask myself things like, “Who in my life would I send this card to right now? Where in my house would I hang this print? What would I use this notebook for?”. If the answer is nothing or nobody, than I scrap the idea. If I don’t want to use it, how can I assume anyone else will? It’s an easy game of “do I like this or do I not?”.

If I am being honest, the fact that anything I make resonates with anyone and makes them smile or feel happy truly feels like a gift. Sometimes I can’t believe that this is what I get to do for a living, and I am excited to continue growing and learning.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

The business end of this is fun and all, but I live for the times I am able to turn away from my computer and phone and just zone into the creative abyss in my plant-filled studio where engaging with technology is not allowed (unless you count my light tablet for tracing). I almost never even have a light on because the window light is my best friend. One of my struggles is wishing I had more time to just make art for art’s sake and explore creativity. It is so hard to break away from the mindset of making art that gets turned into a product. I have this deep desire to just make to simply make, to explore and use making as a way to learn things about myself and dig deep, but part of me feels this fear of not even knowing how to anymore.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

I know that even if I lived in a cave in the middle of nowhere I would find a way to make something and share it with someone. Maybe the desire to share is just something we have as humans, and it’s not all that bad. Nevertheless, I am really feeling a nudge to create more space for exploration and fun in the new year. I’ve been getting back into painting and I just installed a mini screen printing setup in the corner of my drawing studio. (Since we print in larger quantities of our products right now with legitimate professional equipment, I haven’t printed something by myself in years). In 2018, I’m looking forward to getting messy, and reuniting myself with the roots of my love for screen printing, and of course continuing to find inspiration for my card and print designs.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

Photos by Heather Nash Photography.

Want to be featured in the Behind the Stationery column? Reach out to Megan at megan [at] ohsobeautifulpaper [dot] com for more details.

Behind the Stationery: Baltic Club

Happy 2018! We’re kicking off the new year with the duo Baltic Club based in one of my favorite neighborhoods in Montreal, Canada! Melanie and Brice transitioned from advertising into the stationery world and, since they began in 2014, they’re now to be the only fully vertically integrated stationery design studio in Eastern Canada. Their colorful studio is split into 3 areas: a workshop, retail shop, and back studio. Here to share their behind the stationery story is Brice! — Megan Soh

Behind the Stationery: Baltic Club

From Brice: Melanie and I met in 2013 in Montreal, Canada, in an advertising agency where she was Art Director and me, the Production Manager. We instantly connected because we share the exact same universe deep in our souls, plus Melanie is the funniest and talented person I’ve ever met in my life. Even in the first few weeks, we already shared about creating something but at this time, it was a more around a puff cream specialty gourmet bakery. A couple of months later, I had to quit my job and left Canada for personal reasons and, in a total upsurge of YOLO, Melanie quit her job too in order to join me and travel across Europe.

Behind the Stationery: Baltic Club

Behind the Stationery: Baltic Club

When we came back in Montreal, we had no job and no money so we founded our own design agency named Glasgow Studio, in which we had a lot of fun. Baltic Club was only a side project at this time but we enjoyed the freedom it brought us compared to the branding deadlined projects of the agency. We gave ourselves 12 months to turn Baltic Club into our main activity and stop all the rest. We succeeded in a bit less than 12 months and learned so much along the way.

Behind the Stationery: Baltic Club

We’re based in Montreal — a beautiful laid back metropole of Eastern Canada and our workshop is located in the heart of a very trendy area named the “Mile-End”. Since the time when we worked from the living room table of our apartment, we’ve moved 5 times in 3 years until we found the beautiful space where we are today. A vast back-store allows us to stock paper and host our homemade photoshoot studio.

Behind the Stationery: Baltic Club

The front part is divided into 2 open spaces: the workshop itself and the shop where the public can visit and interact with us and purchase our freshest products 7 days a week. We chose to sell our products almost exclusively with complementary items like pens or paper clips. The selection is made in a way that we have a unique selection of items that you can’t see anywhere else in town. Of course, Melanie did all the setup and the decoration, making this place gorgeous and so pleasant to work in.

Behind the Stationery: Baltic Club

Our approach has always been to grow by ourselves so we began to buy our own equipment early on in our history. For instance, we recently had the opportunity to acquire a Risograph to explore new countries in terms of printing processes along with inkjet, numeric or offset printing we already use on a daily basis. “Charlene”, our hot foil stamping machine, “Billy” the corner cutter, or “Gordon”, our industrial blades are fantastic additions that allow us to create with even more fun, inspiration and flexibility. Oh, yes, we give names to our machines because we believe that they all have their own personality. Some of them even have eyes drawn on. Today, a lot of design companies, even stationery ones, come and see us in order to make their production. We are proud to be the the only stationery company in Eastern Canada capable of designing, printing, binding, packaging, selling our own products…at the same place!

Behind the Stationery: Baltic Club

Melanie and I are both as much into production methods as we are in design, hence we just can’t prevent ourselves from trying new printing or binding techniques as well as design orientations with the care of keeping an harmonious unicity.

Behind the Stationery: Baltic Club

We work a lot. We don’t feel like it’s really “working”, but we work from early in the morning to late at night. It’s more like living the life we always wanted to dream, enjoying each moment with excitement and dedication. In the morning, we concentrate more on the global picture and marketing moves before we reach the workshop for the opening to take care of our employees and support them in their tasks. We also pretend to be productive (ha!) but we need to be a bit more isolated for that. Phone calls, emails, basic design tasks, production follow ups are our 9 to 5 occupations. When everything turns calmer at the end of the day, we dive into administrative work and the most important design matters, sometimes until 10 or 11 without even noticing it. And, as a “mind purifier,” we fantasize about new projects we could invest our passion in, all along the way.

Behind the Stationery: Baltic Club

Nature documentaries are an infinite source of inspiration. We find them so interesting and always mind blowing! We also found out that when we add a touch of edginess and humour to the roughness and sincerity of what surrounds us, we usually obtain poetry, softness and strength at the same time. Our creative process often begins with a concept, emerged from this massive source of wonder that Melanie turns into something magical in just a couple of hours.

Behind the Stationery: Baltic Club

It is very rare that we come back on a design because we don’t like it and, for the vast majority of them, we use them on multiple supports. The most complicated things we face today is definitely the lack of focus due to multitasking and the cash flow management to support our self-generated growth. Having employees is a huge challenge too but since last summer, we are lucky to have a legendary team with us, relieving us from a significant pain.

If we had to sum up the meaning of Baltic Club’s sprit, we could say that our plan is to create even more each day and try to inspire with the willingness to becoming better humans at the same time.

Behind the Stationery: Baltic Club

All photos courtesy of Baltic Club.

Want to be featured in the Behind the Stationery column? Reach out to Megan at megan [at] ohsobeautifulpaper [dot] com for more details.