This Saturday, the 12th of May from 10am–4pm we’re having Black Coffee over for a cup of joe. If you like any of the following, you should join us:

Prints on the wall

Printers on display

Prints & goods for sale

Prince on the stereo

This week we’re helping christen the newly opened Hungry Workshop space, home of some of the finest design and analogue print work in Melbourne. Saturday is their second day of sporadic trade since opening last week with an amazing exhibition of artfully produced local illustrators’ prints entitled ‘Trophy Lives’.

With new offerings coming in from Central America and Kenya, now is a good time get the new stuff while it’s fresh and say goodbye to old favourites.

The Hungry Workshop will be selling prints from their exhibition as well as other bits and bobs that they’ve been known to print including some products that aren’t available on the webstore.

Speaking of webstores, ours is coming soon!

If you are particularly keen on a particular Trophy Lives print (or any other item for that matter), you can order them in our online shop and use the code ‘pickup’ when checking out and we’ll hold onto it for you until you can come by and grab it.

The Hungry Workshop - Modern letterpress & design in Melbourne, Australia.

A big thank you to all the people who came by on Friday night to see the Trophy Lives letterpress exhibition. The turnout exceeded all our expectations and we are so absolutely amazed at the incredible response. So, thank you!

If you would like to take a closer look, or you couldn’t make it on the night, there are some images of the prints below. Better yet – come and visit on Saturday 12 May or Saturday 19 May to see them in the flesh. Also, this Saturday, the 12th of May, we’ll be having Black Coffee in the workshop serving up a very fine drop. Sounds good, no? We’ll be open from 11am–4pm, so do drop in.

If you just can’t wait until Saturday, or don’t want to miss out on a certain print, you can order online and use the code ‘pickup’ when checking out and we’ll hold the print for you until you can pop by.

‘Flora Australis’ by Eamo Donnelly

Flora Australis by Eamo Donnelly is available to purchase here.

‘All’s Super’ By Letitia Buchan

All’s Super by Letitia Buchan is available to purchase here.

‘Victory Club’ by Eirian Chapman

Victory Club by Eirian Chapman is available to purchase here.

‘The Living Sea’ by Tin & Ed

The Living Sea by Tin & Ed is available to purchase here.

‘Shelf Life’ by Drunk Park

Shelf Life by Drunk Park is available to purchase here.

The Hungry Workshop - Modern letterpress & design in Melbourne, Australia.

We’ll be open to the public from 11am–4pm on Saturdays (the 5th, 12th and 19th of May to begin with), so you can come in and check out the Trophy Lives exhibition if you can’t make it tomorrow night. We’ll be selling our cards and other prints, including a few things that aren’t available in the online shop. Think of it like a pop-up shop, but in our own shop. Maybe it’s a pop-in shop?

The Hungry Workshop - Modern letterpress & design in Melbourne, Australia.

Hi Mum & Mom,

We knew we couldn’t be with you this Mother’s Day so we made these cards for you. They’re being sold in Mag Nation stores so other people can give them to their mums as well. We’ve popped one in the post already, so keep your eye out for the postman!

Much love,
Simon and Jenna

Our Mother’s Day cards are letterpress printed in two colours on Stephen Scrambled White 330gsm, a 100% carbon neutral stock, and come with a kraft envelope. They’re available exclusively at Mag Nation, both online at Nation State and in stores in Melbourne and Sydney.

The Hungry Workshop - Modern letterpress & design in Melbourne, Australia.

We’re very pleased to announce the full line up for the show. It’s a collection of some very cool folks that we’ve met since moving to Melbourne. We bumped into Tin & Ed in the park – they’re friends of good friends. Eamo Donelly dropped by one day to say hello. Drunk Park did the same with his extremely talented lady friend, and they’ve become our excellent pals. Eirian Chapman lives just around the corner from our new workshop. And Letitia Buchan was one of the very, very first people to get in touch with us before we even moved down here.

All are super fantastic talents and we are so delighted that they’re involved. We hope you can make it – it’s going to be quite a show. And don’t forget, to RSVP on Facebook.

Finishing our studio space is a huge milestone for us, and it’s certainly not something we could have done without the support and enthusiasm from you. Yes, you. If it wasn’t for the energy of awesome clients, collaborators, the friends we’ve met along the way, Facebook peeps, Tweeps and Instagram followers (not to mention every little click on our website) that has spurred us on we wouldn’t have made it this far. You’ve all played a huge part in making The Hungry Workshop what it is today and you deserve some recognition.

So, we’re putting together an exhibition and throwing a bit of a party in your honour (and to warm up the studio in the process). It’s the least we could do.

The Trophy Lives exhibition will feature the work of some fantastic Melbourne illustrators that we’ve been hanging out to collaborate with. We’ll be hand printing their works in large format on our Asbern Proof Press – but more details will follow soon. For now, block out Friday 4 May in your diary and RSVP on Facebook.

The Hungry Workshop - Modern letterpress & design in Melbourne, Australia.

The Aerogram is the latest addition to our letterpress stationery range. For those too young to remember (or those that are bit older and prone to forget), an aerogram is a letter and envelope in one. With our design, there’s no glue or tape needed, so simply write your message, stick a stamp on, tuck the tabs in and off it goes. Aerograms were quite popular back in the day, but they officially went the way of the dodo. We thought we’d bring them back with a bit of gusto.

Each aerogram has the same wild pattern, a neon Native American inspired motif that is just as much fun to send, as it is to receive. We printed a common, fluorescent pink plate across all three, then mixed up the run by switching the ink colours on the second plate from an electric blue to fluorescent purple to bright orange.

The aerograms are available individually, or you can grab them all together at our online shop in the Take Flight Three Pack.

Every aerogram is letterpress printed in two fluorescent colours on Stephen Scrambled White 330gsm, an Australian-made, 100% carbon neutral stock. (And technically, for the trainspotters out there, they are in fact formular aerograms.)

The Hungry Workshop - Modern letterpress & design in Melbourne, Australia.

Designed by Adam Gower, the branding for Brisbane’s first serious laneway bar, Super Whatnot, is more than retro. It’s legitimately nostalgic.

We worked with Adam to print the coasters and business cards for the project. With large swathes of colour, the ink has what is called a ‘salty’ (or cloudy) texture creating an old world, weathered aesthetic. The business cards were printed with the same effect, at the same time, on the same sheet of Beer Matt Board 390gsm, making the job more economical for the client.

The rest of the stationery was printed to match the vintage feel coasters and cards. The menus were bound into an entire volume of antique novels and the letterheads are printed on matching uncoated stock.

From Mr. Gower’s perspective:

The branding plays on the modern world’s affinity for nostalgia. Drawing upon inspiration from established old-world men’s clubs and vintage American sporting Motifs, the monogram execution seems to perfectly befit the heritage of the space.

Dating back to the 1900’s, with exposed brick, reclaimed timber flooring and expansive high ceilings, the bar is simultaneously raw, industrial and steeped in antiquity. Playing on these contradictory factors, the established design aesthetic of the logo sits in stark contrast to the whimsical randomness of the name ‘Super Whatnot’. This juxtaposition was paramount to the design process.

Again drawing upon this steeped in history’ visual style, it was a natural decision to print the cards and coasters using letterpress. My greatest joy was in seeing my client react to his new cards like he had just unveiled a secret box of branding from the 40’s.

The Hungry Workshop - Modern letterpress & design in Melbourne, Australia.

We think print is special. It’s a direct and personal way of communication. Unlike the text you are reading now, it is tangible and real. You can hold a printed page in your hand and it can engage you in a way nothing else can. The paper has texture, it is audible, and the tacky ink has odour. It’s a powerful way of distributing information and should be reserved for important and meaningful communication. Print should not be wasted.

The Yellow Pages is the very antithesis of that idea. It’s the remnants of an outdated business model, cheaply printed and full of junk ads and redundant information. So, when it landed on our doorstep, we lopped off the spine and ran it through our press, with the simple message ‘You can count me out’.  The transparent Pantone Red 032 ink overprinted the black text on over a thousand cheap, thin pages.

Have you met Tim Cruickshank? He’s been helping us out in the studio for the last few weeks and we collaborated with him on this project from the design, through to the print production.

It’s not widely advertised, but you can unsubscribe to the printed version of the Yellow Pages and White Pages at directoryselect.com.au. If you would like one of the prints, they are available for one cent, here. All you need to do is take care of packaging and postage.

And, if you want to mess about with the pattern we created, you can download the pattern here.

Count Me Out Smog Pattern by The Hungry Workshop is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.
Based on a work at thehungryworkshop.com.au.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/.

The Hungry Workshop - Modern letterpress & design in Melbourne, Australia.

Despite what you might imagine, it’s not that rare for us to dabble in the digital realm. We spend a lot of time there amongst the cloud. At some stage, every one of our projects passes through the ether – either off to clients or beamed between the computers in the studio, so being adept at digital presentation and communication is key for us. Ultimately though, we do prefer to finish our projects on the ground, we like to have something to hold in our hand at the end of the day.

However, when my Aunt Susan came to us late last year to build her an online portfolio for her artistic endeavours we felt compelled to do our best – and not just because she is family. Escaping hot Brisbane summers to join Susan in Sydney on her exotic photo shoots where she would art direct catalogues for some of Australia’s high end department stores with some of Australia’s leading photographers was the absolute highlight of my teenage years.

My endless daydreaming and doodling was legitimised. It was she that proved to me that pursuing a creative career was not only possible, but rewarding. It was in her footsteps that I headed off to art college to chase the dream of working in the advertising industry and it was she (amongst many other friends and family) that have encouraged me down the path that I am on today with Jenna.

So together we built this simple, but elegant portfolio for her on the WordPress platform. If you have a moment, I really encourage you to have a look at her incredibly detailed and inspiring work.

The Hungry Workshop - Modern letterpress & design in Melbourne, Australia.

If you’ve been following along with us on The Design Files guest blog you may have seen the work in progress for our latest letterpress greeting card. An ode to The Design Files, this card is a big thank you for all the awesome inspiration that we see there, and everywhere. Perhaps you’ve got someone to thank for being awesome? If so, you can pick one up in our online letterpress shop.

Our newest ‘Thank you very much’ card was crafted from hand-drawn type and carefully letterpress printed in The Design Files’ yellow and a beautiful aqua blue. All of our letterpress greeting cards are printed on Stephen Smart White 330gsm, an Australian-made and 100% carbon neutral stock.

The Hungry Workshop - Modern letterpress & design in Melbourne, Australia.