Here are a few moments we captured from the party including an amazingly cheesy family portrait of the Anabliss team AND the awesome Dex One gift basket Brie got. With all those goodies she will definitely be representing down in the southern D-town.

To view more pictures from the party, check out the Anabliss Flickr page.

If you have one of our sweet letterpress calendars, you’ll notice that July features a rooster. Why you might ask. Well Scott, our creative director, may not have always been a morning person…but in the last few years the rooster has crowed early in his household. A little over two years ago, a new addition, Claire, was added to their family shifting Scott into the farmer schedule. He is always just minutes behind Brie getting to the office every morning (and Brie jumps out of bed at 5 a.m. with a giant smile with birds singing around her every morning. I envision every morning at Brie’s house like a pep rally).

I think Scott’s mornings tend to be a little bit more hectic with Claire occasionally bumping her head or forgetting one of her babies in the car when she gets dropped off at daycare. Scott’s sleeping schedule has finally gotten back to “normal” now that Claire is two just in time for them to add another bundle of joy to the family. Claire has lovingly come up with a few quality name options for “new baby” including “Poop” and “Charlie”. She is obviously very excited to have a sister.

So here’s to wishing Scott luck in a few months when the rooster will be crowing very early and most likely…very often.

Those were the words I used to describe it to my friends and coworkers who missed the Friday Afternoon Creative open house at Foils + Dies on Friday, May 21, 2010.

Now, I’ve worked with Rob Barnes at Foils + Dies for quite some time and Anabliss, as a company, much longer. (You may remember our past blogs about our calendar this year? Yep, Foils + Dies did that sweet letterpressing.) So I have been to the shop many times. I went into the evening thinking I would have a cold beer (which always tastes better on a Friday at 5:30 pm), say “hi” to Rob and maybe mingle a little. But I got so much more than I expected.

The best thing about the evening was the impressive “new” (as in really, really old, but new to Foils + Dies) Linotype machine. Laura Francis, the sales and marketing gal for Foils + Dies, explained that it’s the “variable data component for letterpressing.” I love it!

Basically, the machine produces a one-line lead plate that can be used to print or letterpress with. The operator enters the desired text on a keyboard, the machine assembles matrices, which are molds for the letter forms, into a line. This line is then filled with lead and the die is formed. The machine then automatically returns the matrices back to the type magazine where they came from. The whole process takes less than a minute. Check out my video.

The reason Laura referred to it as “variable data printing” is because it is significantly less expensive and much quicker than a traditional letterpress die, so companies can personalize presentation packets or business cards much more affordably. Then the lead can be melted down and reused.

The attendees of the event had the opportunity to come away with their very own type plate. I have to say, that is the best open house giveaway I’ve ever received!

I’m getting married in less than 2 months, so I took the opportunity to set both my current AND my new name in lead. They both sit on my desk now. The “Jami Wolken” plate is a tribute to all of the great years and experiences I lived as a “Wolken,” and the “Mrs. Jami Fassett” plate is a symbol of my exciting future as a “Fassett.”

My soon to be hubby, Scott Fassett, is also a designer in the biz. Actually, we met 4 years ago when he freelanced as a designer here at Anabliss. So it just seems fitting that my new name be set in lead as a letterpress die.

Thank you to Rob and Laura at Foils + Dies for a wonderful experience.

After two full days of keynote speakers and break out sessions, it was time to get out of the hotel and enjoy a bit of San Antonio! The Emerge Conference ended Thursday night with three hours of Texas-themed fun. We put on our boots and cowboy hats and walked over the the historic Sunset Station where we were greeted by some old west characters who gave us a hard time.

Pictured Left to Right: South of the Border Cowboy, Jenn, Doran, Jami (me), Badass Cowboy

We enjoyed some delicious cocktails served by western wenches and ate from the most amazing BBQ buffet. The steak was so tender and juicy! We watched a lasso performer and then tried our own hand at roping a calf. Seriously.

Okay…it was a metal horse with a metal calf on a rail below that shot out, but I tried to rope it just the same! After 3 tries, I was unsuccessful, but the experience was great!

After gaining some confidence on the metal horse, I decided to step it up and mount the real life longhorn bull. When am I going to have that chance again?! I’m not sure how many tranquilizers they gave the poor thing to handle all of these people sitting on him, but I now proudly display the photo on my desk.

After that, we hit up the dance floor. If you don’t know me yet, I do LOVE to dance! Michael Politano, the President of Tewell Warren and my sales rep, didn’t exactly jump at the chance to boogie with me, but he did agree to a photo.

By the time the evening was winding down and the music had stopped, we decided we couldn’t leave San Antonio without first seeing the Alamo!

Here is a photo of the Tewell Warren + Guests crew in front of the Alamo. Pictured left to right: David, Michael, me, Jenn, Doran, Linda and David.

I’ve taken my picture on a longhorn bull and in front of the Alamo…I feel like I’ve experienced Texas…okay, really it was just a tiny taste, but I’ll take that over another regular week in the office any day!

A special thanks goes out to Michael Politano and the rest of the Tewell Warren and Consolidated Graphics team for inviting me to such an amazing conference!

I was invited as a guest of Tewell Warren Printing, here in Denver, who is one of the 70 printers in the Consolidated Graphics (CGX) network. I was just one of the 750+ attendees that pretty much took over the Marriott Rivercenter hotel in San Antonio, Texas on April 21st and 22nd. The guest list was a combination of CGX staff, sales reps from the printers within the CGX network of printers and their clients (for example, me).

This was the most impressive conference that I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending…the speakers, the graphics, the food…were all amazing. Throughout the two day conference, I listened to some inspirational keynote speakers and attended 10 different break out sessions that covered topics from printing and unique coatings to marketing and social media.

Yes, we discussed social media at a printer conference. Consolidated Graphics realizes that times are changing and that printers need to evolve in order to keep up. We discussed that the future of printing (and yes, there is a future) lies in highly personalized campaigns that integrate on demand printing into cross media campaigns.

Actually, all of the conference attendees got a chance to experience a cross media campaign at work through the campaign for the emerge conference. It was an awesome experience. Leading up to the event, I received several personalized mailings that had my name, specific flight information and other details on them with a link to my own personal URL (or PURL) that was customized just for me! Upon landing in San Antonio, I turned my phone back on and found a text message from the emerge staff letting me know that greeters would be waiting for me at baggage claim to direct me to the transportation to the hotel. Once at the hotel, I was presented with a bound booklet that included my specific itinerary of the breakout sessions that I signed up for. It was so great to be the audience for a cross media campaign and has my mind spinning with ideas for how we can recommend something like this for our clients.

Another thing I was extremely impressed with was the overall branding of the emerge conference. As a brand strategy company, this is something that I always pay attention to and boy, did emerge grab my attention! In addition to the 5 or so branded mailings and my branded PURL, the branding at the hotel took my breath away. Check out some of my photos.

Entrance to the hotel

Lobby at the hotel…there were banners EVERYWHERE!

Whether you took the escalator…

or the elevator, you couldn’t help but know what conference was in town!

Even the hotel key cards and sleeves were branded with the emerge conference look and feel!

Stay tuned for another fun blog post about the Texas-themed fun we had after the learning was over. (HINT: I tried my hand at roping a calf. Seriously.)

One of the things that impressed me the most was that even though she has definitely developed a niche of Italian-inspired design, there is so much variety within those designs. Take a look.

I was also extremely inspired by her determination to make her designs tactile. Here, she convinced the owner of the Metro Grill, a restaurant located in the garment district of New York, to create the logo from an actual stitched clothing label.

In this example, the restaurant, Metrazur, was located on the mezzanine of Grand Central Terminal and was named for a railroad line along the French Riviera. The business card was appropriately letterpressed as a luggage tag.

During the Q & A portion of the presentation, someone asked Louise about her relationship with the computer. She started laughing and eventually admitted that she uses the computer for email and internet browsing, but that was about it. I started to think about how that impacts her work. She mentioned that she creates a lot of the typefaces she uses by hand or finds them in old magazines and then fills in the missing letters. She said that she is constantly collecting inspiration from the streets and flea markets on her travels. She even told us about going out and buying a bedazzler for one of her book covers. I would never have thought about doing that.

The biggest, most inspirational nugget of wisdom I took away from Louise Fili’s presentation is that I need to think outside the computer.

To see more of Louise Fili’s work, visit www.louisefili.com.

Jami refers to this time as the best six months of her life. She says that it changed the course of her life. Of course, everyone at Anabliss is glad she went to Australia, because it brought her to Colorado and eventually a part of our team!

Not only did Jami study there, but she took six weeks after her studies to travel up and down the coast jumping on and off busses to sightsee. Jami is our world traveler, so if every once in awhile she slips up and answers the phone with a “g’day mate” or says “cheers” in a funny accent when she hangs up…now you know why.

For those of you that are curious, here are some details about my sweet ride. Last year I attended the Boulder Bike Swap and found the Vista Duchess. She’s a rootbeer colored beauty with chrome fenders and 5 speeds of awesomeness. She has been taken around the Circle of Death a time or two and come out with great success.

The month of November proudly showcases these little rascals. The original design had barking versions of her pups because they are known to be pretty loquacious characters. We toned it down for the final design and gave them more of a regal look. They are treated like royalty at Brie’s house, so it was only fitting.

Each designer at Anabliss had a hand in creating this calendar, and every member of the Anabliss family is represented in one of the patterns. Here is a peak at the designs. Each page has been letterpress printed, and every calendar has a hand-tied hanger.

Check out our facebook page to learn how you could have a chance to win one of these calendars.

Also, stay tuned for insight into which month’s designs represent which Anabliss team members. You might learn a thing or two about us that you never knew!