I've been meaning to do this since forever, and it took me a long time. Sometimes when I do something new I have a little bit of a block. This video tutorial is faar from perfect, because in the end I just wanted to force myself to just produce something, but I think they will become much more polished as I go on. Feel free to provide any feedback in the YouTube comments, or shoot me a mail with questions. Part 2 completing the instructions (the whole thing was just a little longer than 10 minutes) should be up soon.

This tutorial is based on what I've done with my own Save the Dates, by the way.

I've been remiss about posting, but I have a good reason! I've been working with my Dad to get our (California) wedding invitations printed and out the door.

I've mentioned that my dad is a letterpress printer, otherwise I would definitely not have had the budget to have invitations done letterpress - twice. I'm not only lucky to get them done for free, but usually my dad refuses to do wedding invitations because according to him people getting married are the 'worst clients in the world.' In spite of this, I've spent the last week sitting with him in his shop, going over my Illustrator files, creating color separations and finally working with him (or more accurately observing him) while he printed all 3 pieces of the invitation suite. While this was going on Armin documented it, taking pictures and video. I hope to make a little montage of the whole process but for now, I've just uploaded the pictures from the day in the print shop to the e.m.papers Flickr page.

I designed a 3-color invitation suite including an invite, RSVP card and map. The design used white ink on chip board, which I thought would be really easy. When my dad took a look at it he sighed and muttered something about 'designers always wanting something impossible...' I thought he was being melodramatic. What I didn't appreciate was how difficult it is to work with white ink, and white ink on dark chip board no less. We had to do a 'double bump' (run the white ink twice) to get it to read enough, and with letterpress getting everything to register (align) isn't as precise as with offset or digital printing. To make matters worse chipboard is heavy and more uneven in weight than normal paper, so it was tricky to get it to feed consistently on the printer.

It was a long 2 days in the shop. Although Armin and I were both surprised by how much we enjoyed it, I remarked to my dad "Wow. This is a lot of work" without missing a beat he responded "Yeah! that's what I wanted you to see!" At the end of it all, we have really beautiful invitations and a new found appreciation for what my Dad does (you think I would've paid more attention over the years.) The best thing about these invites though, is that they are permeated with the  love, laugh and happiness that Armin, my dad and I spent during over the couple of days in his shop getting these printed.

P.S. If you like the design I offer a similar DIY downloadable template here , here and here.

I'm back, unpacked and ready to attack. I guess, technically, I'm not really 'back' - that would mean back home in Munich. We are, however, finished with the major travel portion of our trip and are parked in the guest house at my parent's place in northern California for the next few months. As you can see I've set myself up a corner office (har har) and as soon as the color printer I ordered arrives I'll be back into business mode.

This last week has been mostly about getting settled, figuring out what we still need to get done for wedding part deux, and slowly reconnecting with friends and family here.

Last week we went to the San Francisco Center for the Book where my dad was part of a panel discussion on how to run a Letterpress business. It was a great evening with a pretty impressive crowd. It really whetted my appetite to get back to work (even though e.m.papers is, ironically, the antithesis of letterpress!) you can read more about it at Felt and Wire. I'll also be doing a studio tour of my Dad's print shop and a Father's Day interview in the upcoming weeks. Stay tuned for a lot of letterpress and wedding stuff.

I read a lot. Lately I've been reading a lot of books about start-ups and how to market small businesses. Many of them say the same few things in a lot of different ways. One book that does not do this is Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37 signals. I have been a fan of theirs for awhile now. A lot of what they talked about in their first book, Getting Real had to do with what I do for my day job. I found their philosophy honest and straightforward, and I appreciated that it flew in the face of conventional wisdom.

Rework goes beyond the realm of web app development and talks about starting and running a business. The book is a series of simple, short essays that are really a collection of  rules that could apply to any business from a corporation to a small indie craft business. What appealed to me most is that they succinctly articulate everything I’ve intuitively felt about work and business, and their success with products like Basecamp gives them the street-cred to back up what they’re saying.

The book is short, I inhaled it in about 3 hours. I like that it was originally twice as long, but they stripped it down to it’s essence and stripped it of fat. This typifies what the 37 signals crew is all about: simplicity, elegance, efficiency. However, what strikes me most about their approach is it’s humanity. Fried and Hansson cut through all of the noise and nonsense that is a standard part of corporate ‘culture’ and get down to what matters. Some of their ideas that especially resonated with me:

Why Grow? - They challenge the accepted wisdom that growth is always good, this is in line with Jim Collins’ thinking in Good to Great (another wonderful business book)

Scratch your own itch - The best business ideas are ones that you create in order to solve a problem/meet a need  you are struggling with yourself.

Launch Now - I constantly find people saying this and it is reassuring. Your site/product/business will NEVER be as perfect as you imagine it to be - just get it out the door and you can fine tune it as you go. Seth Godin says this in Linchpin (‘Ship Often’)

Don’t be a hero - I loved this one, especially considering my corporate consulting background. In most companies there is a dysfunctional pride in working insane hours and ‘taking one for the team’. I can’t tell you how annoyed I get when emails go out congratulating teams for consistently working late hours and weekends to get projects over the line. All this tells me is that the project was poorly sold or they can’t plan or effectively communicate with their clients and/or don’t work efficiently. The unspoken expectation that people should sacrifice a holistic and well-balanced life to be team heroes makes me seethe with resentment. Why should anyone do this? For the glory? For the paycheck? Why? The anti-workaholism sentiment in the book is brilliant, especially the way the authors make a direct connection between being balanced and rested as a means to producing quality, valuable and meaningful work.

Don’t write it down - Any problems your customers have will be so repetitive and constant that you won’t be able to forget what they are. If you have to write it down to remember it, it really isn’t a priority.

Welcome obscurity - I’ve been welcoming this for awhile now. The idea that not having a massive audience is a perfect time to experiment and make mistakes. This factor alone has helped me be relatively fearless when it comes to launching products or posting on my blog. No one wants to be watched when you’re still riding around with training wheels on. Of course I hope I won’t be obscure for too long, but for now it’s a comfort.

If you have a small business or are getting something started, this book is worth it’s weight in gold.