Rif Raf :: The Official Blog of the Rochester Advertising Federation» Printing

Freelance Expo This Thursday

Joseph Mayernik — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:06:13 +0000

RAF Freelance Expo on Thursday, April 22, and the Memorial Art Gallery from 5:30-7:30pm. RSVP to attend.

If you are a freelancer there is still time to exhibit at the event and showcase your work. RSVP to exhibit.

Marketing directors and agency peeps. Do you use freelancers now? Do you feel you may have the need to hire a creative freelance employee? Even if you not have an immediate creative need. I encourage you to come to the Freelance Expo. Our goal is to bring freelancers and decision makers in the marketing profession together. To make a contact. Network. So that when there is creative need, you have someone to contact.

Admission is free. The food is complimentary. So come on over to the MAG, and who knows, you next big idea could come from a freelancer exhibiting at the event. The Freelance Expo. on Thursday, April 22, and the Memorial Art Gallery from 5:30-7:30pm.

Prez Joe

Get Your Freak On.

Joseph Mayernik — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 08:16:53 +0000

Be judgmental. We insist. That’s what I told the 6 judges from various disciplines that judged the work for the 2010 Addy Awards. And well RAF members, we had a very successful first day here in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. They combed through all the print work and were very impressed. We are poised for another solid showing. But our, and their, job is not done. Sunday is the second day where broadcast, interactive, and campaigns will be judged. Pictures from the day one and two festivities will come on Sunday.

Remember to purchase your tickets by March 5th. No tickets will be sold at the door. No matter how much we like you. GYFO!

JOE

Webster, where life is worth printing.

Joseph Mayernik — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:54:30 +0000

This Friday one of the Rochester area’s newest cultural gem’s is having a Grand Opening. Dock 2 Letterpress is a printing company like no other. Specializing in handset typography and printing on antique hand fed printing presses. They celebrate an art form that since the age of computers has gone the way of the 8-track. It’s combing through drawers of wooden typefaces. It’s large iron printing machines powered by feet not electricity. It’s the feel of the deboss, and the smell of the ink that cannot be replaced by Photoshop.

This is not an official RAF event. It’s an event sponsored by the AIGA, and I encourage you to go out and see what the Dock 2 Letterpress is all about. Why? Because our new RAF mission is to strengthen our creative community, to educate, and inspire great work. And this shop is freaking sweet.

The Grand Opening is from 5pm to 9pm, this Friday the 18th.

Dock 2 Letterpress is located across from Webster Thomas High School on 855 Publishers Parkway, DOCK #2 in Webster, NY, 14580

Hope to see you there. I’ll be the one drooling over the Bookman woodblock typefaces in the back of the shop.

JOE

Hyper-targeting is a game-changer.

Michael Chatfield — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:33:29 +0000

Introducing the magazine for the totally selfish.

Ever been reading a magazine and wish you didn’t have to skip through all the crap? You know, the articles that no one with a pulse reads. Mine Magazine, a collabo between Time Inc. and Lexus tailors all the articles in the publication directly to you. Essentially allowing readers to focus in on what they care about and tune out the rest.

Choose 5 of your favorite magazines, answer a few behavioral insight questions, enter your mailing address and you’re done. In 2-4 weeks your custom made magazine will show up on your doorstep piping hot and ready to be read instead of skimmed.

I received my Mine this week. The Lexus ads using variable-data printing are compelling almost to the point of being creepy. But I love that.

Hyper-targeting individual consumers could be a game changer. It’s clearly a more cost-effective way to know exactly who’s listening to your message.

Big ups to p+n intern Dan Taylor from RIT for digging this one up. He rocks.

UPDATED: In response to Scott’s comment, I thought it was only fair that I share one of the other variable-data ads in the same issue of Mine. See below.

EXHIBIT: Thanksgiving High

Kate Sonnick — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:57:32 +0000

Some people see a leaf. Designer/typographer Tony Zanni of Type High saw a unique creative challenge.

“It started about a year ago when I found a huge maple leaf. It was about 13″ across and 10″ tall—it was like a sheet of paper,” Tony says. “It got me thinking, I wonder if it would hold up in my press.”

So Tony collected a bunch of leaves in various sizes and shapes and took them back to his studio to experiment. It worked. But then it snowed, so Tony decided to wait til this fall to try again.

This year, Tony collected about 80 leaves and brought them back home to flatten under some galleys on his kitchen counter.

He hand-set the text using good ol’ fashioned lead type. The type is 12-point Century Gothic, mixed with Copperplate “because there were no capitol c’s in the Century case, and a little Kabel, because I ran out of lower case e’s.”

After setting the type, Tony locked it up on his 1950’s Line-O-Scribe Sign Press, a 14 X 22 flatbed press. Tony says, “The Line-O-Scribe is one of the most inconsistent presses to work with. Not to mention that leaves don’t exactly have a square edge to start with, so the gripper is pretty useless.”

The veins in the leaves added even more impression issues—not to mention the fragility of the leaves themselves. After trial and error, he got it to work.

“I figured out the best impression pressure and figured out that if I used my fingers in spots to press, the missed ink would still transfer to the leaves where the cylinder didn’t make contact,” Tony said.

Tony printed about 60 Thanksgiving greetings out of the 80 leaves he picked. The rest, he said, went “back into the wild.”