We were lucky to catch up with Elizabeth Herrmann recently and have shared our conversation below.
Elizabeth, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about one of the craziest things you’ve experienced in your journey so far.
For starters, I am a graphic designer and letterpress printer and manage the bespoke letterpress studio, Humanity Letterpress in Tampa, FL. This all started thanks to a creative research grant that I had received from the University of South Florida, where I am an Associate Professor of Graphic Design. I used the grant to purchase my first tabletop letterpress, guillotine, paper, and printing plates! My project was to learn the craft by designing and printing custom business cards for fifty local artists and craftsman pro bono. In return, they were asked to return the favor by helping promote my little letterpress studio. Through word of mouth, my clientele and project purview expanded to include custom wedding invitations, product packaging, and even bookmaking. As my needs grew, so did my equipment. Over time, I ended up purchasing four larger platen printing presses. I have been manually printing everything using Chandler & Price platen presses with a foot treadle and flywheel. Recently, I purchased my first Original Heidelberg, which is capable of letterpress and hot foil printing large scale projects without manual operation. This press was the pinnacle of letterpress printmaking, and I happened to find one about an hour away from my studio! The crazy story starts here…
I purchased this operable antique printing press in perfect condition this past December. It approx. weighs 3,500lbs and is ~6’X6’X6′. I needed the press moved from Inverness to Tampa. 12/5/23: I called TIA Towing and spoke with Mr. Santos Luis Garcia-Cruz inquiring his assistance to move the press with a flatbed truck. I informed him that I would need help moving the press from its current location inside of the seller’s office to the front door and then onto his flatbed truck. I described the situation in detail via phone, text, and email with photos of the space and press so that he had an understanding of the situation. Mr. Garcia-Cruz confirmed that he would be able to move the press from its location inside of the space to his truck and then to Tampa. 12/9/23: We met in Inverness to conduct the move. Mr. Garcia-Cruz arrived alone. Due to his lack of experience, tools, and manpower he ended up tipping the press over onto its side, causing thousands of dollars of damage to multiple key components that need repair. I was devastated. Immediately at the scene, I asked Mr. Garcia-Cruz for his insurance information. He would not tell me. Mr. Garcia-Cruz fled the scene and would not respond. I have since learned that TIA is not rated to move equipment and his license plate is invalid.
I have since filed a complaint with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Department of Transportation, Hillsborough County Consumer Protection Services, the Better Business Bureau, and a claims adjuster at Progressive to no avail. Nobody can get in touch with this moving company. My final Hail Mary, I ended up contacting my local TV broadcast news company, ABC Action News, to see if their investigative journalist could help me out. Jackie Callaway composed a sincere segment documenting my situation and trying to track down TIA Towing herself. The segment aired on February 16th and can be viewed here: https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/region-hillsborough/tampa-woman-hired-towing-company-to-move-3-500-pound-printing-press-and-it-broke. Although I have yet to get in touch with TIA Towing, over the past few weeks I have had several people contact me to try and help amend the situation. Many of the people who have reached out are retired printers with years of experience handling Heidelberg printing presses. I am eternally grateful for their expertise and generosity, and for Jackie’s assistance to publish my story. I am hopeful that I will be able to get this press fully repaired and back up and running over the next few months. This is one of the craziest things that has happened to me and has taught me quite a few lessons in vetting reputable tradesmen as well as how to braze cast iron!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Elizabeth Herrmann. I am the founder, graphic designer, and printmaker of Humanity Letterpress (humanityletterpress.com), IG: @humanityletterpress. I know how to translate a client’s needs and desires into memorable rhetoric, brilliant typography, and savvy imagery. I am excited by wood type, embossed cotton rag paper, the sound of my guillotine, and seeing the look on client’s faces when they’re pleased with the work. My mantra goes something like this: If you’re tired of the generic template-restricting options for wedding invitations, the digital UV coating blistering off of a wallet-chapped business card, the stale over-priced stationary from online publishing companies, the fact that your frenemy Jessica has better wedding invitations or business cards than you, or the frustration of working with an automated system with a broken interface— then Humanity Letterpress is the right decision for you! Humanity Letterpress specializes in one-on-one collaboration and custom design and illustration that outputs through affordable letterpress wedding invitations, business cards, and product packaging. Just because it’s “handmade” doesn’t make it good. I guide my clients through the design process to produce exactly what they want and ensure high quality letterpress printing.
Because my presses average 5′ in height, width, and length, and average 3000 pounds, I currently have one press in my shed, one press in a friend’s brewery, one press in my office at school, and one press in a storage unit— all spanning a 45 mile radius in the Tampa Bay area. This has been very challenging in terms of work processes and efficiency. However, last year I bought a piece of land and am currently in the midst of building my dream 2000sf studio space. I am excited about the potential this integrated space will provide.
I am proud of my clients for providing me the opportunities to design and print truly special items for them! I am thankful that there is a niche in this world for keeping letterpress printmaking alive and relevant. Although it is no longer a mass-market medium, letterpress still has its place as a valued commodity. I am thankful that I can spend my time maintaining and operating these 150+ year old machines and that I can pass these skills along to the next generation as well!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I am a professionally trained graphic designer, with my MFA from MICA. Graduate school is a rigorous and beautiful period of time where creative exploration and a dedicated work regiment can be nourished and prevail. I am highly passionate about graphic design and printmaking and have not only focused my career on letterpress through my business and teaching practice, but often spend the majority of my spare time nurturing my insatiable desire to improve the equipment, materials, processes, and marketing that enables me to make beautiful print design. Anyone who knows me, knows I am, through and through, a textbook work-a-holic.
Passion and dedication are all you need to be creative, but this not always the recipe for a successful career. I have identified one very difficult lesson for me to learn. I believe many creatives approach their careers and livelihood with their primary objective as gaining fulfillment in their work. The compromise is that they often spend less time focusing on practical matters of their business: such as how to actually make a decent profitable living, how to increase efficiency, sales, client retention etc., and how make decisions that afford a healthy work/life balance. Likewise, as a professor of graphic design and printmaking, I was never taught how to teach and effectively communicate with students. These open ended creative professional practices were assimilated over years of experience and immersion by fire.
It is important to learn how to effectively reach and communicate with your clients. Without them, your creativity is financially futile. I believe it is advantageous to start any new business endeavor with a healthy dose of naiveté and humility, otherwise knowing too much can deter the ambition to nourish your creative passion as a professional career. However, I have been learning over time, how to effectively combat the tunnel vision that passionate creativity can instill. This means spending less time on the creative product and investing in the aspects of your business that afford you to capitalize on those opportunities in the first place. I am constantly observing and learning from the successes and failures of comparable design studios and print shops. There is nothing more sad to me than seeing a creative business owner having to work a dead-end job on the side in order to make ends meet. Continually engaging with people and being strategic about numbers and processes are as equally important to nourish as your creative passion.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
The best source of new clients is good ol’ word of mouth. I design and print a lot of custom work. The nature of my one-on-one collaboration with clients means that I often make friends with my clients. My clients range from brides to restaurant owners. Happy brides tell their engaged girlfriends who they should to go to for quality wedding invitations. Establishing a good working relationship with my clients is what has led to future work and a progressively sustainable income. This has taken years to build, but in the long run has been more lucrative than advertising on Google and Instagram. The second best source of clients has been by way of Google web searches. The fact that there are very few people who specifically do what I do, allows me to rank higher up on Google searches.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.humanityletterpress.com
- Instagram: @humanityletterpress
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/letterpresstampa
- Linkedin: Humanity Letterpress
- Other: USF (Faculty Profile): https://www.usf.edu/arts/art/about-us/contact/elizabeth-herrmann.aspx Co-Lab: Collaborative Design Survey (Book I Designed and Co-Authored): https://issuu.com/bis_publishers/docs/co_lab ABC Action News Story: https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/region-hillsborough/tampa-woman-hired-towing-company-to-move-3-500-pound-printing-press-and-it-broke
Image Credits
All photos please credit Humanity Letterpress, Elizabeth Herrmann