etsy | Sweet Dee Design

There are a few ways that I come up with ideas for my letterpress prints. The first is pretty organic, when something just pops into my head and I know that I have to print it. My “Have Your Cake” and “Shark Week” prints both fall into that category. The second requires some discourse with another person, usually my boyfriend or a good friend who says “hey, I love what you did on X print, you should consider doing Y.” And it’s always a completely different and brilliant viewpoint that hadn’t even occurred to me. And the third are custom order requests from a member of the Etsy community. I love these because the customer almost always comes up with better ideas than me, and it feels so good to help their abstract idea become a concrete print.

“Become Who You Are” is one such print. The customer wanted me to create this print that she would be giving as a graduation gift. Isn’t that just perfect? What better message as someone is embarking on a monumental journey into college? Become who you are. There’s hope, certainty and acceptance in those four words.

I used two different typefaces of antique wood type for this print. The font I used for “BECOME” is a beautiful Helvetica-type font that belongs to my studio, and “WHO YOU ARE” is a condensed typeface from my personal collection (ala eBay). I played around with alignment, and liked justified text the best. Once I had the design figured out, I set “BECOME” in the pressbed and did the first run in red ink. Then I reset the pressbed with “WHO YOU ARE” and did the second run in grey.

I’m very happy with the result!