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Printing with a Higher Purpose: Women’s Press Collective

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In the Bronx, an all-volunteer organization demonstrates why print remains foremost among the media as a force for social good.

Volunteers celebrate the completion of the first project printed on Women’s Press Collective’s donated Ryobi 3202 offset press. From left: press operator and board member Tim Dalton; Columbia University student Adam Cheguer; Columbia University PhD candidate Himanshu Singh; Operations Manager Lisa Danielle; and veteran press operator João Silva, who provided on-the-job training to all the participants.

Printers tend to think about printing in a mercantile way, and there is nothing wrong with that. Print is what they manufacture and sell to sustain their businesses. If they are commercial printers, the bulk of their output will be used to promote and advertise profit-making businesses of all kinds.

But print is also humanity’s first mass medium for speaking truth to power, exposing injustice, and driving social change. A New York City-based organization called Women’s Press Collective (WPC) is upholding print in that historic role by putting it into the hands of people who don’t do it for a living, but who have embraced it as a means of making their lives and those of other people better.

WPC recently received a cash grant from the Graphic Communications Scholarship Foundation (GCSF) in recognition of the training it offers to those who want to learn how to print in support of the causes they advocate. This is no small distinction for the group, which is staffed entirely by unpaid volunteers working with donated equipment and supplies. 

In fact, WPC’s pressroom in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx may be the only remaining place in the New York City metro area where people who don’t work for printing companies can go to learn what an offset lithographic press is and how to operate one.

WPC’s other principal activity is making printing available to those who have worthy causes to advance, but who lack access to mainstream media – a mission that goes to the heart of WPC’s quest for social and economic justice.

Beyond Raising Consciousness

“That’s what we mean by printed materials,” explains Lisa Daniell, WPC’s Operations Manager. “Not just to raise consciousness about issues, but as organizing tools to help pull people together and begin to build solutions that come from the community working together.”

 Print helps people succeed at this in ways that corporately owned electronic and digital media don’t, according to Daniell. “We advocate for print because it’s independent. Another reason is that print encourages face-to-face organizing, where people meet each other in real life (and) have the chance to talk, to debate, to determine together how we can work together to address issues.”

These are issues of fairness, representation, community well-being, and other grassroots concerns that gather strength when printed material draws people together on their behalf. 

Examples include a petition to shield public housing in New York City from intrusion by private developers. A brochure to encourage neighborhood organizing by members of the Garífuna, a Central American ethnic group living in the Bronx. A “shopper’s guide” of local businesses trying to survive in a rust-belt region of Western Massachusetts. Each was produced by the group or the individual behind it under the tutelage of WPC volunteers.

“Those projects come to us through our doing extensive community outreach in neighborhoods all over New York City” and elsewhere, Daniell says. The training, which includes presswork, graphic design, and writing for publication, is free of charge, courtesy of experts in the fields who donate their services as instructors.

Last Bastion of Learning

With the disappearance of academic programs, union training facilities, and commercial trade schools for print production, WPC is, as far as it knows, the metro area’s only provider of hands-on learning in the subject for nonprofessionals. It follows a train-the-trainer model that expects learners not just to acquire these skills personally, but to share them with others as well.

“We are training people in rudimentary, basic press operation, and in some cases it’s their first time learning,” Daniell says. “We break down the specific skills of operating the press into a list of about 40 specific tasks that a press operator must know how to do. As soon as a trainee learns how to do a specific skill, then their job is to teach another trainee. This solidifies their knowledge, because they then have to explain it and demonstrate it and help someone else learn how.”

The method prepares people to handle presswork on their own in two to three months, according to Daniell. It is a two-stage learning curve. Trainees who have mastered the list of skills for themselves are deemed “certifiable” as press operators. Those who have helped others reach the same level of proficiency are considered fully certified.

Structuring the training in this way “makes us a stronger organization because it creates a process where there’s the ability to have continuous, independent community press operation,” Daniell observes.

Training and production take place in a shop that always strives to make the best use of the modest resources it has. Currently, its sole printing machine is a small-format, two-color Ryobi 3202 offset press supplemented by a POLAR 55 paper cutter and an assortment of tabletop bindery equipment. A flip-top plate exposure unit supports the shop’s film-based prepress workflow.

Generosity in Action

The film negatives for platemaking are donated, as is almost everything else that the WPC pressroom uses.

A recent issue of Collective Endeavor, the group’s quarterly magazine, thanks a list of benefactors who include Garry and Eli Koppel of Positive Print Litho Offset, principals of the Varick Street trade shop that contributed the Ryobi 3202 (along with a plate punch and 80 cans of ink). Jay Passarella donated the POLAR cutter and other postpress equipment from In-House Graphics, his shop in Queens.

Industry generosity also helps WPC maintain an inventory of printing stocks even as the paper market continues to be plagued by supply-chain shortages. 

“Most of the paper that we use is donated,” Daniell says. “In some cases, it’s donated by shops that have paper left over from a job. Larger shops buy a lot of paper to cover their jobs from regular clients, and then there may be something left over. So, they make that available to us.” The donor of three skids of paper graciously cut the sheets down to the 11″ x 17″ size needed for the Ryobi 3202.

The cash grant that WPC received from GCSF in June of this year is “already used,” according to Daniell, who notes that it helped to fund the purchase of pressroom furnishings such as industrial-quality paper shelving, a rollable work table, a safety cabinet for chemicals, and anti-fatigue mats for the floor. “We deeply appreciate it, and the pressroom looks great,” she says.

The Indispensable Medium

WPC’s belief in print as a lever for social justice and human rights goes back to its founding in 1982 by a group of women with backgrounds as labor organizers. Daniell says that some of the founders learnedprinting in order to produce the flyers and other materials they needed to generate support for the organizing efforts of some of the area’s lowest-paid workers: farm hands, domestics, and home care providers.

Originally from Palo Alto, Calif., Daniell joined WPC as a full-time volunteer in 1994 after stints in New York City’s finance and publishing industries. She says that at the time, “I had essentially no exposure to actual press production.” What she did have was a keen sense of society’s pervasive injustices and inequities – and an equally clear understanding of print’s hallowed role in combating them.

“Printing has a long history in movements in the United States that needed an independent voice,” she says, citing the American Revolution, the fight to end slavery, and the rise of labor unions as examples of watershed events that rallied people to their sides with the help of printing. 

“Print has always been a means to get these stories out,” Daniell says. It is a tradition that WPC works to perpetuate. “Look at our place here. We have the machines, we have people with the skills, we have the paper, we have the ink. That means we can print.”

But, Daniell emphasizes that it isn’t merely for the sake of putting ink on paper. “We need a way where we can meet face to face with each other, to have the difficult conversations, and determine how we can work together. At WPC, we teach a method of organizing that utilizes the production and distribution of printed materials for that purpose as well.”

She counsels that teaching people to print for themselves serves these objectives better than seeking attention from the mainstream media, which have a track record of either ignoring grassroots issues or misreporting them. She also expresses reservations about social media as tools for positive change, despite their ubiquity. 

“We’re not trying to say it’s not something people should use, but it is important to realize that its technological infrastructure is owned and controlled by some of the very wealthiest and most powerful corporations in the world,” Daniell observes. “We can put things up there, but we don’t control the algorithms as to what gets amplified or not.”

The Only Way to Do It

These sentiments ring true to community organizers who have turned to WPC for help in spreading the word. One of them is Cesar Yoc, a co-founder of Save Section 9, a movement aimed at blocking a plan to turn over the management and repairs of New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) properties to commercial developers. Save Section 9 asserts that the plan, know as Blueprint for Change (BFC), could lead to the privatization and sale of the city’s already dwindling stock of public housing units.

Yoc, who lives in NYCHA housing, wanted to alert fellow tenants to the threat posed by BFC and enlist their support in opposing the plan. For this, he says, digital media wouldn’t suffice. Many NYCHA residents didn’t have “smart” devices, and for those who did, “Zoom was a little impersonal” as a means of bringing them together.

“The only way that could be done was through printing,” Yoc says. He obtained it in the form of 1,000 petitions that he printed for Save Section 9 after joining WPC. Now he could “go out and knock on doors” and use the printed piece as a starting point for urgent discussions about the implications of Blueprint for Change. Distributing the petitions at “family day” events in NYCHA housing developments gained further recognition for Save Section 9.

Daniell sees Yoc’s story and others like it as emblematic of what the Women’s Press Collective exists to do.

“We’ve provided publication support for scores of community based organizations in New York City that are really on the front lines of economic, social, and justice issues like comprehensive healthcare, climate justice, and access to legal recourse,” she says. “WPC is a place where community organizations can produce their own media, get their own stories out, and produce printed materials to reach people in the community affected by these issues.”

A Worthy Wish List

The group’s growing number of projects along these lines keeps it fully committed to its mission. What WPC needs now, according to Daniell, is a redoubling of the support that has enabled it to become the force for good it aspires to be.

“We need volunteers to help with community outreach,” she says. “We need volunteers to help with our training sessions for presswork, design, and writing. Our ability to grow and do more projects and more training is very much directly linked to the number of people who are volunteering and supporting the effort.”

WPC also would like to augment its pressroom with a computer-to-plate unit and a small-format digital press. Those with expertise, equipment, or other resources to offer may contact the Women’s Press Collective at 718-543-5100 or by e-mail at womenspresscollective@yahoo.com.

Daniell credits her own development in printing to the guidance and encouragement she has received from people in the industry over the years.

“You walk into a shop, and people are proud of the work they do,” she says. “They’re proud of their craft. They want to show it to you. They want to teach it to you. They want you to know it and appreciate it also. And I found that really beautiful.”

“I really feel privileged to have met so many graphic arts professionals who have taught me about printing and taught me about the industry. The graphics arts industry has people in it who are just so generous with their knowledge.”

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Call Goes Forth for Entries into Neographics 2022, the Industry’s Largest Regional Print Competition

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Print is an industry. Print is a business. Print is a profession. But, print also is a craft that deserves to be showcased as the art form that it often succeeds in becoming.

This year, Neographics offers that opportunity to practitioners of the craft in what has become the industry’s largest regional competition for excellence in print. Two trade groups – the Graphic Arts Association (GAA) and Printing Industries Alliance – have extended the invitation to 4,000 potential entrants who have until July 29 to submit samples of their finest work for judging. The winners will be hailed at a banquet ceremony in Philadelphia on October 6.

The Neographics competition has been staged for more than 50 years by GAA, which represents printing businesses in Pennsylvania, central and southern New Jersey, and Delaware. Melissa Jones, president of GAA, notes that the tradition also salutes printers for being the providers of “one of the most longstanding parts of communication for humanity.”

The theme of this year’s event is “Celebrate Print,” a tribute to the industry’s richness and resilience in difficult times. As Jones says, “We’re here, we’ve made it, we’ve made it through COVID, and now we’re making it through the paper shortage, so we’re celebrating.”

A Good Neighbor Comes on Board

Joining in the celebration is Printing Industries Alliance, an association with a membership base in New York, northern New Jersey, and northwestern Pennsylvania. Both groups are encouraging their members to enter, although the competition also is open to nonmember printing businesses in their respective regions.

A joint effort makes sense because the territories “are so symbiotic” in their interests and outlook, according to Jones. “Even culturally we come together.” The print market “is so ingrained” across the regions that making the competition available to everyone in in it was a natural step forward for Neographics, Jones adds.

“We’re delighted that GAA has opened Neographics to participation by our members, who include some of the finest printers in the Northeast,” says Tim Freeman, president of Printing Industries Alliance. “Their entries are going to make this year’s competition a memorable one.”

Thirty-three judging categories are open to printing and printing-related businesses that submit work produced in the United States (a requirement) between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021.

There are three tiers of recognition: Franklin Awards for Excellence, given to pieces selected on their own merits; Best of Category, in which Franklin Award winners compete against each other for a unanimous vote by the panel of judges; and Power of Print, a best-of-the-best honor that also requires unanimous agreement.

A Bar Set High

These distinctions are not easy to win. The Neographics judges – veteran producers and buyers of print whom Jones describes as “really tough” – rate the pieces before them according to a list of stringent quality criteria. Emphasized, for instance, is color consistency: entrants must submit three copies of each piece in order to demonstrate it.

Entries are identified only by numbers – not their submitters’ names – during judging. Judges can move a piece from the category in which it was entered into a different category if they think it will get a more proper evaluation there. That way, says Jones, “we are being fair, and we give people more of an opportunity to really show off their work.”

“As print has evolved, the competition has also evolved,” she observes. Spanning all production processes, the judging categories include all of the major types of products in commercial and publication printing. The most heavily entered category is Books and Booklets, for hardcover and softcover examples above and below 32 pages. Annual reports, packaging, wide-format graphics, and finishing also are attracting strong shares of entries this year, according to Jones.

The most esoteric part of Neographics takes place in the category aptly named, “They Said It Couldn’t Be Done.” Entries here represent the kinds of jobs that can strike fear into the hearts of printers, involving what Jones describes as “just really unique, very difficult challenging print processes.”

For example, the category winner in a previous competition was a real estate piece with extra-heavy ink coverage and complicated crossovers that the customer wanted the printer to run on lightweight (40-lb.) offset stock in the form of a newspaper with nested signatures. “But they did it, and the agency and the client were absolutely delighted,” Jones says.

Members of the two sponsoring organizations can enter one piece for free and submit additional entries for $65 each; nonmembers pay $75 per entry. High school, tech school, and college students are welcome to compete in Neographics at just $15 per entry. Students as well as professional designers donate their services in creating the Neographics poster, entry form, and marketing materials.

National Competition to Follow

Everything will culminate in the gala Neographics Exhibition Awards Ceremony at Philadelphia’s Cescaphe Ballroom on October 6. From there, the top five winning entries – the Power of Print winner and four runners-up – will seek industrywide recognition in the 2023 Americas Print Awards, a new national competition organized by a coalition of 15 regional trade groups operating as Americas Printing Association Network (APAN). The national winners will be showcased at America’s Print Show 2023. (Dates and location TBD; America’s Print Show 2022 takes place in Columbus, Ohio, August 17-19.)

While everyone enjoys acclaim and accolades, bestowing them isn’t the sole purpose of Neographics. It’s just as important, says Jones, to see honorees “using this win to get the word out, to show what excellence you can display if you’ve done something amazing.” One of the judging categories is Printer’s Self-Promotion, and GAA helps award recipients to do just that with a “winner’s kit” of press releases that can be used to spread the good news.

Companies that have earned Neographics honors appreciate the marketing potential that comes with the prestige of capturing the awards. PDC Graphics of Southampton, PA has been entering the competition since 1997 and is one of its most prolific winners, including the Power of Print it took in 2020. Jim Rosenthal, president, can testify to the impression that success in Neographics makes on clients.

“There are certain types of customers that want to know how good you are,” he says. “It really adds legitimacy when we can say that there are a lot of printing companies out there, but not a lot that are as good as we are. If the requirement is something amazing, that’s why you want to talk to us, because we can do that.”

‘Now Do That for Me’

For customers, the quality of Neographics-caliber work can be a deal-clincher, according to Rosenthal. As he puts it, “when someone sees these pieces, they say, if you can do that for someone else, you can do that for me.”

Jeff Pintof, a senior account executive with The Standard Group in Reading, PA, has taken part in Neographics for nearly 20 years, serving frequently as chairman of the event. Standard is a two-time Power of Print winner, one of which was the “They Said It Couldn’t Be Done” job noted above.

Participating in Neographics over the years “gave independent reviews of the quality of our work and enabled me to develop business that I wanted,” Pintof says, noting that the entries his team put together focused on high-end, niche work. “By entering the competition and sharing the awards with those clients, it helped me to bring a lot more business in.”

Pintof promotes Standard’s winning entries through social media and encourages customers to do the same by taking them to lunch and presenting them with copies of the award. Prospects get samples of the winning pieces along with job specs and handwritten notes of introduction. By leveraging Standard’s Neographics track record in this way, Pintof says, “I’ve developed a lot of clients.”

Done Well Can Win

He thinks that every printing company eligible to enter Neographics should take its own best shot at the honors. “Everybody has a chance,” he says, pointing out that submitted pieces don’t necessarily have to be fancy or complicated in order to win. “A lot of the jobs are just done well. You never know what the judges are looking for.”

Pintof also recommends entering as a gesture of solidarity with the sponsoring trade associations, and with other printers – a sentiment that Rosenthal shares.

Supporting Neographics “is very good for our industry,” Rosenthal says. “If other companies are doing well, that probably means we are doing well also. It proves out the kind of work we can all do. It’s bragging rights for all of us, but it’s bragging rights for us as a whole. You get to give everyone an ‘attaboy’ for our hard work.”

Those spurred to action by these words should remember that the entry deadline for Neographics is firm – all entries and fees must be received no later than July 29. Download the entry form here. For additional information, contact Pat Rose at GAA: (215) 396-2300; prose@gaaonline.org.

A Challenging Checklist

Neographics judges use poker chips to tag the entries they believe should move to the next round of the process. Those chips do not fall randomly. To earn one, a piece will have to measure up under any or all of the following criteria:

• Register, clarity, and neatness of impressions
• Sharpness of halftones and line drawings
• Definition in material requiring detail
• Attention to symmetry of margins and columns
• Richness and tonal qualities of color
• Effective contrast or softness as required by design or purpose of piece
• Quality of binding, stitching, punching, die-cutting, inserting, and folding
• Unusual spacing, size, shape
• Construction and format
• Clarity and readability
• Effective execution of color
• Overall visual impact
• Lineups and crossovers
• Consistency of color

The judges examine the finished products as well as how the job was performed. The number of colors, press size and printing process are used in determining the winners.

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TANY, Trieste, the Museum of Printing, and a Fond Look Back at the Metro Area’s Typographic Trade

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john_trieste-1Once upon a time, the printing industry was full of small, craft-specific trade associations and fraternal groups that gave it a soulful center of gravity it doesn’t have today.

Operating on shoestrings, these grass-roots guilds lacked the extended organizational structures and the revenue-focused business objectives that give national trade associations their heft. What they had going for them, mostly, were the warm feelings of good fellowship they inspired and the genuine pleasure their members always took in one another’s company.

When these groups and clubs thrived, it was for two reasons: the engagement of the members and the quality of the professional leadership. The former wasn’t possible without the latter. The key to everything was the guidance of executive directors who could rally the troops, plan the activities, sweat the small details, and keep all their members mindful of why they enjoyed being with one another as much as they did.

No circle of friends or person-in-charge ever made the small-group model work more winningly than the Typographers Association of New York (TANY) and John Trieste, the association executive who shepherded it for more than 30 years. TANY is no longer active as an association, but there are still plenty of former members who remember the good times they had when it was. Something else they can’t forget is how much of the joy of their shared experience they owe to Trieste.

And so came more than 50 people to the Museum of Printing in Haverhill, MA, on September 17 to celebrate what they said was but probably wasn’t their “last reunion.” They joined the Museum in dedicating a library to Trieste in recognition of his exceptional record of service to TANY and the other New York metro area trade associations he oversaw. The guests, numbering more than 50, included 22 members of the honoree’s extended family. Everyone shared in the pride of seeing him receive the permanent tribute that the designation of the space in his name represents.

john_trieste-2Friends of TANY and fans and family of Trieste at the Museum of Printing

Fittingly, the John Trieste Library will serve as the Museum’s learning center for the study of the art and the science of typography. The Museum’s chief curator and principal organizer, Frank J. Romano, is a leading expert on typography and a former member of TANY himself. A guest lecturer at many TANY functions, Romano officiated at the library dedication ceremony and hosted a banquet in Trieste’s honor in another part of the Museum.

The event also was an occasion for Trieste to talk about his years with TANY and the trajectory that industry groups followed during and after that time.

He wasn’t always a trade association executive, having worked as a letterpress pressman and a mapmaker for 10 years before being hired by the New York Employing Printers Association (NYEPA) in 1960.Within five years, NYEPA, a network of groups representing the owners of 1,500 printing firms and trade shops, had asked him to take over the management of a number of the groups including the Brooklyn Printers Association, the Printing Estimators and Production Men’s Club, and the typographers’ section that became TANY.

Later, on behalf of other umbrella organizations for the metro area, Trieste would also run the Sales Association of the Graphic Arts, the Long Island Graphic Arts Association, and the Binders and Finishers Association. Mavis Da Costa, a career administrator who is as revered by TANY for her contributions as Trieste is for his, assisted him in many of these assignments.

The keynote of his management style for all of these groups, and particularly for TANY, was camaraderie. “Our mission was to change the owners’ perception of each other from rivals to colleagues,” he says. “If we were colleagues instead of competitors, we would be stronger as an industry.”

Trieste knit TANY together with regular meetings in which expert speakers briefed the group on best business practices, technological developments, and other essential topics for providers of typographic services. A regular presenter at these gatherings was Jack Powers, a consulting technologist who was one of the first industry observers to perceive the impact that desktop publishing and digitization would have on graphics firms of all kinds in the metro area.

john_trieste-3Titans of TANY, from left: Mavis Da Costa, Frank Romano, Bob Wislocky, and Mark Darlow

TANY members bonded personally through social gatherings and excursions to resort areas like Atlantic City and the Poconos—all courtesy of Trieste, who also photographed every event he emceed. Many of these images took attendees at the tribute on a stroll down memory lane in a pair of nostalgic slide shows that were among the high points of the program.

At its peak, TANY had an office on Eighth Avenue at 34th Street and 180 companies, union and non-union, on its member roster. However, times and technologies were changing, and the group’s fortunes changed along with them.

Trieste recalls membership dropping sharply in 1991 and 1992 as in-house typesetting and composition chipped steadily away at customers’ need to obtain these services from trade shops. Many typographic firms closed, merged, or morphed into other kinds of businesses. By 1997, there weren’t enough dues-paying members left to cover TANY’s expenses, and Trieste reluctantly suspended operations the following year.

He then retired to Florida—but “retired,” in the case of someone with Trieste’s full-time organizational instincts, is a highly relative term. He engaged with causes related to Alzheimer’s Disease and was active with his local chapter of AARP. Ever the event planner, he inaugurated a reunion of other industry members who had retired to the Sunshine State and kept the annual snowbird get-together going for 12 years.

He currently is a contributing writer for Senior Life of Florida, which publishes his monthly column on affordable, educational, and family-friendly tourist destinations in the central part of the state.

Frank Romano said that because of Trieste’s affectionate stewardship of the group, “TANY was my family” during the 10 years in which he commuted between his home in New Hampshire and the meetings he attended in New York City. Trieste hinted that although the gathering in his honor had been billed as the “last” assembly of the metro typographers, the term perhaps shouldn’t be taken too literally.

The group may not exist any longer in the formal sense, but the camaraderie of its members lives on. As long as this continues to be true, there’s no reason to dispute his claim that the event in Haverhill was “the first of the last reunions” that TANY can look forward to celebrating.

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Museum of Printing to Expand to a New Home; New Building Also Will House Romano Graphics Arts Library

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071715.museum_of_printingThe Museum of Printing, formerly based in North Andover, MA, has announced that it has secured a new site and will soon begin moving its contents there. After 13 years at its current location the museum is moving to Haverhill, MA, along Route 495, north of Boston in the Merrimack Valley.

The new building better suits the museum’s evolving mission of education, preservation, and exhibition of graphics arts materials and equipment. The new facility is also on a single floor and is fully handicapped accessible, with dedicated areas for workshops and lectures. The Museum will also expand its role of hosting educational events

“The relocated facility will house a world-class printing and graphic arts library and museum,” said Frank Romano, president. “There will be more dedicated space for exhibits, events, and workshops, plus stores for letterpress and related equipment. It will also offer more interactive exhibits.”

Two Libraries in One

A unique feature of the museum will be that it will house two libraries. One, for general reference, includes typographic books, type specimen books, and specialty publications. The second will be the Romano Graphics Arts Library for scholars and researchers. This collection consists of over 5,000 books, many rare, plus extensive graphic arts ephemera. Part of the Museum’s collections includes the original type drawings used to create US Linotype fonts.

“The Museum of Printing has existed for 37 years with no endowment. A passionate group of members and volunteers has made this possible,” said Kim Packard, founder and executive director. “Expanded exhibit space will make the Museum/Library the largest printing and graphics arts museum in the world and the only one with a collection of phototypesetting machines and documentation.”

The museum will remain open at its current location in North Andover throughout the summer and fall of 2015. The new facility will open in the early summer of 2016. Currently on exhibit is the Lance Hidy retrospective, the Anna Hogan wood cuts, and a collection of Mark Fowler prints. A major fundraising program will be inaugurated to upgrade the new facility and tailor it to the Museum’s needs.

About the Museum

The Museum of Printing preserves the past of printing for future generations to understand the impact of printing on today’s world. Showcasing a large collection of letterpress tools and presses, the museum is also the proud home to the only collection of historic phototypesetting systems in the world. The 25,000-sq.-ft. museum is also home to one of the largest collections of print-related books, ephemera, and typeface art.

The museum contains two 90′ galleries, a large lobby, a library, and access to the library’s four floors of archival stacks, making it an ideal educational field-trip destination for local school systems. For more information, visit www.museumofprinting.org.

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Fitch Group Proudly Celebrates Its Longevity in NYC

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fitchgroup.073013This late 19th-century photo shows Fitch Group employees gathering for a company outing. Baseball (note the bats) clearly was going to be part of the day’s recreation.

“Times have changed dramatically since Fitch Group opened for business back in the 1800s. As one of New York’s longest-operating printers, we’ve been through the evolution of multiple technologies in the industry. Through it all, we’ve managed to not only survive, but also to thrive through four generations— due in large part to our ability to adapt to an ever-changing landscape, according to John Fitch III, President of Fitch Group.”

So begins an engaging post from the Fitch Group blog that goes on to sketch the company’s 127-year history and its track record as an early adopter of game-changing graphic technologies. Today Fitch Group, located at 229 West 28th Street in Manhattan, is a full-service commercial printer that continues to have strong ties to New York City’s financial services industry.

Those ties—along with the company’s very existence—were gravely threatened after the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001. That day, Fitch Group’s corporate headquarters and production plant, located less than 75 yards from the South Tower, were completely destroyed. Within a year, however, the company had completely rebuilt its facilities to emerge from the disaster with its staff and client base intact.

Hats off to Fitch Group for its resilience and its honored place in the history of the printing industry in the New York metro area. And, on an even sweeter note, congratulations to the company for landing some of the promotional printing associated with the relaunch of Hostess Twinkies. Read about it here.

 

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