Waco Makers: January Typography Brings Lost Art Back to Life, with Help from YouTube | Local News

Editor’s Note: The Tribune-Herald this holiday season profiles modern craftspeople and how they’re contributing to the growth of Waco’s craft scene.

The paper carries the message for cards, invitations, stationery and notices, but sometimes the medium carries one of its own.

Paper with weight and texture, its surface dimpled by type, color and fonts chosen with a careful eye – these inform the recipient that the message contained is not ordinary or routine.

“You can feel how special it is,” said Jon Mark Buckner, 27, who along with his wife Michelle owns and operates January Letterpress in downtown Waco. “It’s a paper you don’t normally interact with.”

It’s a meaning that impressed Michelle Buckner, 26, when she and Jon Mark had their wedding invitations printed on an Austin letterpress four years ago and it’s a meaning they imbue at their art of making the intangible tangible.

This desire to create something unique and meaningful predated their typography. The two married after graduating from Baylor in May 2016, Michelle with a BA in Church History and minoring in Arts, Jon Mark with a BA in Journalism and Public Relations.

After two years in Colorado where art making was largely graphic design, online and unsatisfying, the two returned to Waco where friends and family lived. So did a 1957 Chandler & Price letterpress that Michelle had acquired from a friend in Kansas City and kept in their garage.

Michelle knew how to use it, having taken a letterpress printing course in Colorado, but also knew she didn’t want to trade a job at a computer for one stuck with a press in a garage.

The Buckners also knew that in an age of desktop publishing and dying mail order habits, they needed more than individual orders of invitations and handcrafted cards for a sustainable business. That’s when they decided to combine their print job with a stationery and stationery store, gathering them in a sunny corner of Franklin Avenue and naming it January, after a month known for new departures and, as their website says, entering new hope.

The two quickly understood that there was a lot to learn.

“There were a lot of failures,” Michelle admitted. Jon Mark said YouTube videos and experience are now replacing education once transferred by learning.

Letterpress presses print by a flat inked plate in contact with the paper rather than jets of ink spraying ink or a rotary press that prints on paper pulled through inked cylinders, much more printing methods fast. They require the creation of an engraved plate, which must be inked by hand with mixed inks for each print.

Only one color can be printed at a time, so parts with multiple colors must go through the press multiple times. This tends to shape the Buckners’ graphic style, which tends towards a clean, minimalist modern style with few but strong colors.

It’s a time-consuming process, although Jon Mark points out that printing is the fastest part of the process: preparation and maintenance are key to minimizing costly errors. “There’s a lot of rags and elbow grease to make sure this process stays clean,” he said.

The lead time from idea to finished product is long enough that the store requires minimum orders of cards and invitations to justify their cost. Holding the finished product in your hand – the tangible sense of effort and quality – makes it interesting for its creator.

“I work with an idea until I hold it in my hand,” said Jon Mark. “The more you do this, the more it attracts you.”

A display case separates the main Chandler & Price printing press from the couple and a new Heidelberg from the paper and stationery part of the store, allowing customers to see the presses in action. Watching their customers take their time choosing the right card from those on the shelves, Michelle knows there is a market for what a handmade card or invitation says to its recipient, even if it is more expensive.

“There’s a lot of hard work in every card. It takes hours to get it right,” she said. “There’s the time and the energy and the quality of our product…but it’s cool. It’s something done here in Waco.”