Get-To-Know: Jesse Ames of Ames Letterpress, Inc.

Ames Letterpress, Inc., Established in 1981
North Hollywood, CA

When people ask you what you do, how do you describe yourself?
Old fashion letterpress printer

Tell us about your shop. What is your setup? What equipment do you have? Is it just you?
We have three 12 x 18 Kluge foil stampers, one 12 x 18 Kluge die cutter. Two 10 x 15 Kluge with inkers to print from. One 10 x 15 Heidelberg windmill, one 12 x 18 Heidelberg windmill. A 15 x 20.5 Heidelberg Cylinder. A Polar 76EM paper cutter and last but not least a 3 x 5 Pearl hand feed from 1884. I thought it would make a real nice hood ornament.

What originally drew you to letterpress? Who were your mentors along the way?
My junior high and high school teachers. When schools had shops. We must bring them back! My high school teacher got me my first job with a gentleman who had offset and letterpress. For the six years I worked there and all I did was letterpress. When he sold his business, I didn't get along with the new owners so I started looking around for some equipment I could afford. I ended up with a Miehle V50 and a 10 x 15 Kluge. Working out of the back of a friends shop for a year, I thought this just might work.

Tell us about your current business. Who are your main clientele and what are they asking you to design/print?
We first consider our shop to be a trade shop. We do numbering, die cutting, embossing, scoring, perfing and foil stamping for other shops that don't have this equipment. We also do a lot of wedding invites. We've done the Oscar invites for a couple of years now.

How has your business changed over the last few years? How do you expect it to change moving forward?
For 20 years or so we did just fine without offering foil stamping to our customers. What a mistake. It is now one of our biggest selling features we offer. I hope, for the future, that people still like the old look of letterpress.

Tell us about your creative process. What is it like for you to take an idea from concept to production?
People bring us their ideas and we do our best to figure out how it could be done such as foil on acrylic or on velvet.

Who and/or what inspires you? Where do you look for inspiration when you're stuck?
My wife and family of course. I love what I do still I don't want to let them down. So I tell people there is always a way. We make things work. The difficult we do right away, the impossible takes a little longer.

What is your most frequent challenge when printing a job? (eg. registration, impression, coverage, etc)
Trying to decide whether to use a mag die or a copper die. Mag dies WILL NOT work when you foil acrylic and sometimes velvet. Mag dies are fine for everything else. Never had a problem on paper.

Tell us about one of your more challenging print jobs.
We have a customer that wants a press proof for almost every invite we do for them. They start out saying the PMS color is whatever. Then when they show up to proof the color. They bring a digital piece they want to match. That's right, not even close. So I wash up the press and start over. A touch more of this color, a little more of that. It's my language that is the most colorful those days.

Tell us about one of your favorite print jobs.
It's the jobs that come in with full instructions on what to do. What color, how many, a printed P.O. with a image of what it should look like. Cutting instructions and WHEN the need it.

What's one thing you wished you learned faster when you were just getting started?
How to say, You got to be out of you G******* mind. Or something like that.

What other advice do you have for aspiring printers?
The equipment you will be using is old. IT WILL BIT YOU if you are not careful. As those sheets are coming out watch them like a hawk. Your printing could change in a heart beat. Sometimes jobs do get screwed up, It's only paper. Paper can be replaced. Learn from that and move on.

If you could add anything to your shop today, what would it be? Why?
A young person who would want to learn about this trade. To keep it moving through the years. The three of us who work here are all over sixty. I need to start passing the skills down so they don't die.

What is your letterpress superpower?
To make a good impression.

Favorite Press: Kluge
Favorite Typeface: They're all, well most, so beautiful.
Favorite Paper: Flat

My old boss always said, "If it ain't punching, It ain't printing".

Visit Jesse and see more of his work at: amesletterpress.com