Brady Vest and Lindsay Laricks are the creative
team behind Hammerpress, a Kansas City printing and design outfit whose unique sensibility
is rooted in their dedication to the traditional technology of letterpress printing. While the nature
of the medium might summon up associations with the American Wild West, the Hammerpress lines of concert
posters, art prints and stationary are anything but “retro.”
INMYX:
Brady, before starting Hammerpress you studied printmaking at the Kansas City Art Institute. Did you
discover letterpress printing there or was it a personal discovery?
Brady Vest:
I was lucky to be at the Kansas City Art Institute at the time a print tech named Matt McClintock was
there. He wrangled the letterpress equipment from the basement of the design building (where it was
collecting serious dust) and moved it to the printmaking building. So, I learned a bit from him, and
the rest was self-taught.
INMYX: Could you tell us a bit
about how you print? Do you have your own letterpress and types? To what extent is it a “hands on” form
of production?
Vest: We have a large collection of wood type, lead type, rules
and ornaments, as well as hundreds of old image plates that we've collected. This is the basis of our
designs, but we are always creating new plates by either hand carving linoleum plates or having new
metal plates produced. A large part of what we do happens on press. We’ll put together a sketch or a
few sketches for a client. Once the sketch has been approved, the designing and pre-press work is really
part of the same process. We’ll start laying out type and borders until it makes sense and then begin
locking it up in order to get it ready to print. On a multi-colored piece, each layer informs what the
next layer will be.
INMYX: Hammerpress is a flourishing
business. What do you think attracts customers most about the retro style of the letterpress?
Vest:
I’m not sure what attracts people to our work. I think we have a nice mix of elements that seems pretty
organic. I really don’t like to call it “retro” at all. I feel it is definitely tied to history, but
we don’t operate with a sense of nostalgia for “the olden days.” We try to look at it with fresh eyes
and in context with contemporary design.
INMYX: Your concert
posters have a really distinct, vibrant style. How did you start doing concert posters? Could you tell
us about how you developed one or two of your favorite posters?
Vest: Posters and
music packaging is what I first started doing with Hammerpress. I had a lot of friends who were in bands,
and we just started doing the printing for the records and posters. I think my favorite set of posters
are still the Cat Power, Sea and Cake, and Rocket from the Crypt posters. These
three posters were done sequentially on press and each one sort of bled into the next – creating a series
and a subtle underlying narrative within the posters that, truth be told, is very tangential to the
posters as advertisements. If you look at all three of them next to each other, you can see that
they function almost like a triptych.
Link:
www.hammerpress.net
