Re: Baltimore Print Studios

I think the idea of Baltimore Print Studios is fantastic. I have never been myself, but I have had some friends who have gone to one of their workshops, and I have another friend who uses their letterpress on a regular basis (until she can get hers back up and running). She told me they are very helpful too and the price is just right. One day I will try and make it down there to take a workshop.

Baltimore Print Studios

I’m not sure if all of you are familiar with Baltimore Print Studios, but it’s a letterpress/screen printing public studio run by 2 MICA grads, Kyle Van Horn and Kim Bentley. They wrote their first blog post in 2009 announcing their idea and asking for help, had their grand opening in 2010, and now they’re celebrating their 1 year anniversary this weekend. The studio is on North Ave, a couple blocks from The Charles and right near The Windup Space. The place is uber cool (and super cold in the winter) and they have semi-affordable 1-day classes to get you up to speed on letterpress and/or screen-printing techniques, and then you can rent a press at an hourly rate. They also have Mini-DIY-Magnetic-Poetry workshops, which are super fun, very affordable and kind of “beginner” (the workshops won’t substitute for a class). At the workshop, BPS has pre-made words, phrases and imagery for you to make your own holiday card (Valentines, Christmas, etc) and you letterpress them right there and then take home a pack of 30. I added a photo below from the Valentine workshop I went to. Proving how successful they’ve become in the past year, they are featured in this month’s issue of How magazine.

Find out about classes and workshops: wwwbaltimoreprintstudios.com

Follow them on Twitter: @baltimoreprints

I’ve found that getting off the computer and doing something hands-on and creative motivates and reinvigorates me as a designer. Has anyone else been to Baltimore Print Studios? If not, where have you been that made you get hands-on and in turn got you re-exited about being creative?

RE: Responsive Design

I'm so happy that you blogged about this topic! I'm with everyone else who had been baffled by the technology that goes into formatting a web page for a mobile device. I had been thinking about this very topic all week while I was working on my mobile app for project 2. It's really good to know how things work "behind the scenes", especially when it will help out your (hopeful) career! I have a lot to learn about web design so things like this really help. Thanks for the post!

Re: Responsive Design

This was a great post although I don't know anything about web design, it was nice to see the examples you gave to resize and adapt to the size of the browser. I always wondered, like Anthony, how they were able to resize the websites to fit the screens of smartphones and tablets. I always thought that they had more than 1 design for this website that resize to fit different type of device (thinking about it now it doesn't really make any sense).
Thank for the posts and explaining how some of it works.

RE: Responsive Design

I actually don't have a smart phone (gasp), but my fiance was trying to watch a clip on Hulu on his phone recently, and the phone basically freaked out. It knew he was on a phone and told him to download something, which ended up taking forever and it was a huge mess. I've wondered how phones know the difference, but I have noticed the m.facebook on his phone before... but I don't have to type it in-- it just does it automatically when I try to go to Facebook. I can't wait until all websites work like that-- it will make reading something on a small window at work MUCH more efficient. And Sarah- I have definitely noticed the slow/awful restaurant sites from phones, which is a huge bummer because other than facebook, that is probably what I use the web on a phone for most. Aaron or Jaime-- is this a lot more expensive to design? I feel like whoever mentioned limited resources (Sarah?) was probably right in that it could take some time before smaller businesses, like local restaurants, are willing to pay to jump on board.

RE: Responsive Design

That's really awesome. I've seen it on smart phones where the web address has an "m" in it. Like Facebook would be m.facebook.com. Sometimes the address would include ".com/mobile", and that would be a whole other confusing thing. When I had my old crap phone, I would have to figure out which one I needed to look at a certain website. Sometimes it would automatically sense I was using a phone, but other times I would have to type it in. I'm really glad this is a thing now so that there won't be x amount of pages dedicated to a different browser size.

Re: Responsive Design

This is a great find. I don't know much about designing for apps or mobile media, so its nice that there is something out there that makes it a tad easier to do. I also feel like you could really make some creative websites with this technology.