still-sound 40. Stamp

The new & improved card

Recently my friends from New York Annie Schlechter and Russell Maret visited Los Angeles. It was exciting to meet up and catch up.  Annie is an incredible photographer and her husband Russell makes books.  He's a pro at the old-school printing press which he has set up in a studio in Brooklyn.    He also happens to have a very cool blog: russellmaret.blogspot.com

After receiving the beautiful business cards Russell made for himself and Annie I decided to tweak mine.  I had a bunch made when I redid my website last year.  I found an old print shop in downtown LA called Aardvark and they ran off a very simple design using the Garamond typeface (which has always been my favorite).  When I started this blog in August I wished that my card could somehow reflect it.  Annie and Russell suggested I have a stamp made.

I am no stranger to the rubber stamp.  I always get a strange little thrill finding and using stamps.  I think I inherited this from my dad who also ventured into the world of the Dynamo labelmaker (not so much my thing).  I bought a stamp-making kit from a stationers' in London which I used mostly to print my return address on envelopes.  I've used it for years but never much cared for the typeface.  It's too big and the sans serif design is uninspiring.  I couldn't use it for my for carefully printed cards from Aardvark.

The magic of the internet allowed me to find a company that whips out stamps to your custom design.  I chose a self-inking Trodat number in red using the Palatino font (the closest I could find to Garamond).  It arrived in the post a few days ago.

I was talking to an awesome dude from Calabasas named Jason when the stamp arrived.  He (unexpectedly) shared my enthusiasm for its arrival.  It turns out that Jason is also a 'stamper'.  He admitted that he has a stamp for everything.  I started thinking about my own collection which, although small, contains a few gems.  My favorite is a stamp I found in the Japanese crafts emporium called Tokyu Hands.  It resembles a seal of sorts with a laurel wreath surrounding a message written in Kanji.  My Japanese friends told me that it says something  like "Good Job" and would most likely appear at the top of a schoolkid's homework.