We have a nice side trip today from the beautiful letterpress company, Hello Lucky out of San Francisco. Not only are their papergoods beautiful, we were instantly smitten with their studio too (check out that beautiful shelf above)! Here's the interview:

Artist Name: Hello!Lucky (Eunice and Sabrina Moyle, co-founders)
Shop Name and Url: Hello!Lucky (www.hellolucky.com)
Website: (www.hellolucky.com/)
Blog: (www.hellolucky.com/wordpress)
City: San Francisco (and London!) - our studio is in San Francisco, and we have an office in London which is also a great source of creative inspiration!



Where in your home/apartment is your studio located?
We're lucky enough to have a studio space that is completely separate from our homes. It's in an old button factory in the SoMA area of San Francisco. The neighborhood's eclectic (Blue Bottle Coffee + wig store + liquor store + perpetual garage sale store!) but up-and-coming (so they say!) and it's pretty central, so we love it!

The downstairs space is where we do our printing, and then we have a club-house-feeling design loft upstairs, where we hang out, design stuff, come up with greeting card ideas, meet with clients, noodle on ideas, and accumulate flea market ephemera and other bits of inspiration.





What equipment/tools do you use?
Heidelberg Windmills, Challenge cutter, Heidelberg Cylinder press, Vandercook proofing press. Sketchbooks, Stylist pens, bone folders, craft knives, corner rounders, punches, Wacom tablets, Adobe Illustrator, glue sticks (lots of glue sticks!), double-stick tape, ribbon, calligraphy pens, screwdrivers, to name a few!


Do you have an inspiration board, and can you tell us what is inspiring you now?
(see inspiration board)



How do you create best (e.g. do you listen to music while you create and if so what?
The music is going all the time - what we're listening to right now: Pet Shop Boys (Pop Art), Keane, the Beatles, She & Him, Arcade Fire, Old '97s, Hayes Carll, Def Leppard (it really depends on the mood of the moment!)



We do our best work when we brainstorm together. We sit down with members of our studio and throw ideas out there and riff off each other. Usually, it starts with a goal we're working towards - e.g. we need 4 Valentine's Day cards and 2 Father's Day cards - and some basic funny concepts or images, e.g. BBQ grilling tools and foods - hamburgers, buns, ears of corn - with
big personalities; flying squirrels (squirrels are always funny! always.); unicorns and rainbows; bowling; milk maids, etc. This usually ends up in: 1) tears from laughing so hard, 2) WAY more ideas than we could possibly produce, 3) lots of ideas that have no commercial value whatsoever, but that we (and maybe only we!) find charming, amusing, etc.

Once we've narrowed it down to the strongest ideas, we sketch ideas out and do a couple rounds of quick revisions to refine the illustrations, bring out the concept and accentuate funny details (we love adding surprising, humorous details to the backs of our cards!). Finally, we have a silent review with the entire staff (about 10 of us) - we lay all the designs out on a table, and everyone takes turn writing comments about each one. Once everyone is done writing their point of view, we talk about the feedback and decide what final changes to make.



Hello!Lucky (www.hellolucky.com)
Website: (www.hellolucky.com/)
Blog: (www.hellolucky.com/wordpress)

Editors note: Thank you Eunice and Sabrina!