About Inkello
Inkello® is the work of illustrator and graphic designer Christine M. Schneider. She designs and prints paper goods using a vintage letterpress, combining interesting colors, textures and materials with unique ideas. They are lovingly printed in small editions, and individually assembled.
Paper Goods with Personality
To print calendars, invitations, stationery, business cards and other items, Christy uses several vintage letterpresses:
a J.M. Jones Lightning Jobber, circa 1897, which is person-powered with a foot treadle and a beautiful, big flywheel,
a Heidelberg Windmill press from 1954 which is a motorized press that can print larger pieces much faster, and
a table-top Craftsmen Machinery Co. 6" x 10" press with a hand lever from the 1950s that was handed down in her family.
When printing a design, type is either set by hand, using old-fashioned individual metal letters from a growing collection of different fonts and sizes, or it's custom-created digitally and then output in the form of a metal die.
Each ink color is another run through the press, meaning the piece of paper has to be inserted and pressed each time a different color is added. One greeting card or business card may run through the press five or six times before it's complete. To catch more glimpses of the studio and what Christy's been working on lately, follow @inkello on Instagram or Twitter.
Home-grown in the Midwest
Christy is a fourth-generation letterpress printer, picking up bits and pieces of the trade during childhood in her grandfather's letterpress shop in Denver, Colorado. She attended the University of Kansas, earning a BFA in Visual Communications with an emphasis in Illustration. After working in the advertising and corporate design world, she set off on her own and opened her letterpress business as The Petite Press, in Lawrence, Kansas in 2006. As her small business grew, it became Inkello® in 2009.
Christy is also a children's illustrator and author. You can see more of her work at her Yellow Pencil Studio, Inc. website. She lives and works in beautiful Lawrence, Kansas with her husband and daughter.