We Love You So – Where The Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze

Night Owl Paper Goods is a small company that produces the prettiest letterpress goods you’ve ever imagined. Their work combines the soothing colors and tactile forms of children’s book illustrations with the simplicity and expressiveness of Swedish and American folk artists. Also involved: lots of adorable animals (otters, whales, see above) and the ingenious methodology of eco-friendly wood cards, which are exactly what they sound like but ten times as cool in real life. Trust.

There are journals and mini-notepads too— we especially love the pocket-sized spiral bound variety, which are perfect for secret missions and impromptu investigating. There are calenders and tote bags, too, for planning and lugging (respectively). Most of all, we love the fact that the Night Owl creators have turned a passion project into a repository of items that are both functional and enchanting. Color us charmed.

We’ve written about the considerable charms of letterpress recently, but we’ve hardly exhausted the field. Witness Smock, a letterpress outfit whose workshop boasts 20 antique presses, 50 tons of equipment and 17 employees, and occupies a former John Deere Factory in post-indusrial Syracuse, New York. Their mission statement is ridiculously appealing and worth quoting at length. Here’s a snippet:

Who are we? We are faithful lovers of historic craft. We have letterpress ink in our veins. We are idealists. This means we believe in things. We are trying to make the world better right now. This affects everything we do. We read Walt Whitman (he was a letterpress printer too, by the way) (Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine). We fall head over heels for heavy cast iron presses. We believe in the creation of beautiful things. And we want, like you, to feel good about where our beautiful things come from.

Kinda makes you want to quit your job and move to Syracuse to dirty your fingers with some of that ink, doesn’t it? Not to mention Smock’s designs, which are amazing. A mixture of whimsy and sheer delicate loveliness, they include things like beetles and reindeer and ducklings and vintage tennis rackets and rocketships, all printed on bamboo paper in the most carefully-chosen hues. We are in love!

We’re suckers for letterpress. There’s something about the old-tymey (15th century!) process that lends a sense of craftsmanship to what otherwise would be produced on shimmering machines in sterile conditions. You can feel the handwork involved, even in something as simple as a notebook or thank-you card.

Brooklyn-based outfit Letters Lubell prints their cards on an antique press, and the teeny imperfections that result lend to the charm of the paper goods. We especially like this card, which exists at the unexpected four-way intersection of Tetris, Navajo textiles, Space Invaders and Rorschach blots.

Simplicity is best. Not sure if that’s a truism or just true, but it’s always a good axiom by which to live. We’re big fans of these notebooks for a few reasons: their clean colors, the artfulness of the letterpressed covers, the animals that look straight out of a Rudyard Kipling book, and the slim but sturdy size of the things.

A good notebook isn’t easy to find, particularly one with a sweet French fold and a couple of built-in ribbon bookmarks. This is one to tuck under your arm next time you go adventuring.

90% of the time, the internet seems like a great idea. Other times, not so much. Not for what it is, precisely, but rather for what it replaces.

Exhibit A: Letter-writing. Much has been made over the decline of formality and care that has accompanied the rise of email. Fine, agreed. But what about the craft of writing itself? And, more importantly, the delightful accessories that made it an artful process rather than just a matter of conveying data?

An insistence on the magic of pen and paper is what gives Enormous Champion’s whale letterpress cards their charm. Six cetaceous buddies are printed on cards ripe for scribbling cheery missives (above left), though any one of the prints is fine enough to frame and hang.

There’s also the San Francisco-based outfit Yellow Owl Workshop, which produces achingly beautiful materials fit for all kinds of correspondence by hand. The Imperial Correspondence Set (above right) looks like something Max might have dreamed up if he’d decided to stay in the land of the Wild Things––a perfectly boyish set on which to dash off notes back home. The kit includes a crest to customize and a cherry-red pencil for mark-making; the comprehensiveness of the set is a sweet homage to the act of writing a letter.

Email can’t touch this!