Though the word "press" is part of the operation's name, Cricket Press is a far cry from your typical print shop. They don't even have a shop; they work from home.
They aren't a locally based alternative to Kinko's ready to serve any and all of your printing needs. They don't do magnetic signs or banners. No vinyl signs. They definitely don't do gold foil stamping.
"I don't like it when people mistake us for a commercial printer," said Brian Turner, one half of the husband and wife duo that comprises Cricket Press. Sara Turner makes up the other half. "They think that, across the board, we can print all kinds of stuff. It's hard for people to understand what we can and cannot do."
What they can do is deliver hand-printed, hand-made, one of a kind pieces designed and stylized with exceptional artistry using equipment and techniques that date back to the time of Gutenberg, as in Gutenberg's Press-the invention that revolutionized the way in which material was recorded and disseminated around the world. Items they specialize in range from invitations and announcements run through a half-ton letterpress to their own merchandise, like t-shirts sporting a Cricket Press logo, that was screen printed on a table of Brian's own design.
But it was the attraction to their most visible product, the gig poster, that got the Turners interested in fine printing. A gig poster, which is normally associated with concerts, is simply an advertisement for a live event that gets plastered around town, hopefully where a lot of people see it. Because screen printing, the most common technique for creating gig posters, requires a different screen for each color which has to be layered on each individual poster (remember, this is being done by hand), artists try to keep different colors to a minimum. The artists at Cricket Press try to use no more than three, which proves a daunting exercise in minimalism and contrast.
"You really have to make it look like it's not just three colors," Sara said.
The artwork itself, especially attention to intricate design, must be heavily considered.
"If you were an artist who did really fine detail work, or very colorful work, your work may not translate as well into screen print or letterpress," Brian said. "You kind of have to break things down into more bold, striking simplified colors. It's not only challenging, but it also, because you're limited, works for the benefit of the final piece, because being limited like that will make for a stronger visual end result."
Which is the desired outcome, since gig posters are initially advertisements. Artists strive for prominent imagery that will catch the eye of passers-by, and concert halls, coffee shops and other storefront windows become street side art galleries.
Gig posters, especially as a functional art form, have found a Renaissance as of late in the independent music market, where artists leave no stone unturned while trying to creatively distinguish themselves from the mainstream. This is where Cricket Press gets its street cred, and you can see their work locally, regionally and nationally - in galleries and on the street. Later this fall, Cricket Press will be exhibiting at the Downtown Library Art Gallery.
Though their subjects are normally involved in music, Brian and Sara are quick to point out that their work isn't all rock and roll. In fact, they say that people who come watch them work are usually disenchanted in the repetitiveness of the process. A number of screens for each poster are made, one for each color, using an emulsion. The screen is clamped tight over a surface and paint is raked through tiny holes in the screen with a squeegee. After that layer dries, a different screen is clamped over the surface and another color is layered on.
Other artists along with Cricket Press have found notoriety in the music market, where desired artists' work quickly become collectibles for fans of the musicians or the poster artists. One artist's work in particular, Jay Ryan, owner and operator of The Bird Machine in Chicago, got the members of Cricket Press impressed by the idea of creating affordable, high-end art.
"He was selling posters for $30, which is standard. It just blew my mind," Sara said. "You've got this limited-edition piece that was made by hand; art that is readily available."
With this art form pressed into their heads, the two thought they'd apply their artistic talents, both have backgrounds in skills like graphic design and illustration, to this new medium in a colorful baptism by fire. They got a small screen printing kit, got a job doing a poster for a friend's band gratis, got all sorts of inks and paints, and then they got into cursing matches out of sheer frustration.
But they got the job done. And they got a lesson in mixing business with friends, or in this case marriage. Cricket Press, though solely a husband-and-wife team, isn't a sappy amalgamation of romance and ink where Brian and Sara hold hands working by candlelight while one thoughtfully pulls a squeegee over a screen. Like most artistic endeavors, theirs is a solitary pursuit.
"Even at the beginning, we would help each other print, and even though it was his poster but I was helping to print it - we never had fights so bad," Sara said. "And we did that for a year and Brian was finally like, 'We need to learn how to do this by ourselves.' So now we print by ourselves."
Fortunately, it was a lesson learned early. That was five years ago, since then Cricket Press has found its groove while its two parts perform autonomously. They maintain their own clients, and new prospects are divvied up based on what the customer is looking for. They began to take on so many new clients that Brian was eventually able to quit his day job after a few years to focus strictly on Cricket Press.
"As a side thing, as a hobby, it was beginning to take up a lot of time," Brian said. "I was at my desk job working for somebody else trying to work on these posters for somebody else."
Sara, on the other hand, stays on with her job for insurance coverage for the couple, the trials and tribulations any artist faces striving for financial independence. With each balancing over a dozen projects at a time (the artists also do freelance illustrations, comics, album artwork and a whole galaxy of other visual services), the two also enjoy the luxury rarely afforded to artists who maintain their livelihood with their trade: being able to turn down commissions.
It isn't something that they want to do, but when a potential client isn't able to relinquish control over a project and threatens to dilute the reputation Cricket Press has worked hard to establish, it's a respectable inevitability.
"They think you can just create any style, that you can just pull it out of your hat, that you're just a hired hand," Brian said. "And they want you to come up with something that's not your style, and it ends up being a horrid job because we can't come up with what they want. We're fortunate to where most of the people who approach us to do work, they approach us because they like our aesthetic."
But what exactly is the allure of this aesthetic? These images could easily be reproduced with a printer, but they would be missing the texture of something off a screen or letterpress. Invitations, or other items typically produced with the letterpress, have subtle impressions; posters, because of the layers of paint, have a raised surface. These qualities may seem trivial, but they cast a refined characteristic on the entire piece. It's the distinction between digital cameras and film, or vinyl records and digital music - the difference, though hard to pinpoint or enunciate, is all encompassing in the overall rendering.
And each piece in a set, even though it was created using the same screen or lettering or woodblock, has its own characteristic making it unique from others in the batch. Nothing is an exact replica.
"Because it's not a high tech printing process, things aren't so precise," Brian said. "Each one is just a little bit off, or different from the other. Which is good and it looks great, but it's not that dead on precision."
The differences are negligible to somebody who doesn't care, but for somebody seeking authenticity and a thoughtful alternative to the mundane, these differences are all that matters.
"People are starting to appreciate things that are locally made with a personal touch to it," Brian said. "People have put time and an effort into this, for you. There's people who don't care whether their invitations were printed on a copy machine or it was printed by hand."
"Those are the people that don't come to us," Sara said.
To see an example of all the services and products available, or to contact the artists about possible projects, visit www.cricket-press.com.