I managed to snag one of Ligature, Loop, and Stem’s Ampersand broadsides. (Broadside is just another word for poster. It’s a letterpress printing thing.) The Ampersand print was a limited edition of 25, with ampersands (the ligature of the characters e and t, like in et cetera. It means ‘and’.) from different fonts, showcasing the different styles of the character.
Overall, the quality of the print is very good. Entire print is debossed, and the registration of the ink and the debossment is perfect — meaning that either the inking and the debossment was done at the same time, or that the printer was very very good. Either way, very good quality. It also has a very nice wax seal on the bottom, and the number 6 of 25 written in pencil.
One of the top edges of the print was mangled in the shipping process just a little bit, but some smoothing out made it much less noticeable. I wish that it was signed, however. The wax seal is a good addition, but for a print, it doesn’t replace a printer’s (or artist’s) signature.
The whole shebang:
Close up of the Ampersand text
The wax and number
Detail of some of the ampersands:
The corner that got mucked up. The damage is in the top right corner. It’s not too bad, and is actually prett hard to see in this photo.
Anyone know what Butter Label is? Their site was not terribly descriptive…
3 responses
Dec 22, 2009 at 3:24pm, Luke Dorny says
Glad you received it in one piece, Dave! Scott Boms is the one most responsible for the site, the print, the buttons, the design and nearly everything about the project Ligature Loop & Stem. He’s quite talented and I’m happy to have him helping out on Butter Label projects. In response to your query, Butter Label is the company website of my company based in Long Beach, California. I do many design-related tasks, and mostly in a subcontract capacity. Ligature Loop & Stem is one of the projects that we undertake to fill a design need in ourselves. The value of a fun side project is fulfilling and can never be underestimated in its self-rewarding capacity.
We hope you enjoy the print and the care that went into its creation. There will be more from Butter Label soon, even a full site.
Thanks for posting, and appreciating!
Dec 22, 2009 at 3:25pm, Luke Dorny says
Also: NUMBER SIX!
Dec 22, 2009 at 5:18pm, Dave says
Hey Luke-
Very true about projects being self satisfying. I think that every designer does that to some degree, or at least they should
I really appreciate the poster, and I’ll be on the look out for your projects in the future.
~dave
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