Welcome to Heartfish Press
Hello and thank you for visiting our website! We hope you enjoy your stay. Heartfish Press is a design and letterpress studio located in Brooklyn NY, owned and operated by artist/graphic designer Hijiri K Shepherd. The studio offers a collection of letterpress prints and cards as well as custom design services. And as of recently we also offer floral design by using dried flowers.
Products include wood type prints & posters, note cards, personalized stationery, dried flower bouquets and wreaths and much more. All made by hand with love and attention to detail.
Letterpress
For much of our print work we use an antique letterpress called a 'Golding Pearl'. (Please see the pictures where the heart-shaped pedal is visible!) Some of the bigger prints and posters were printed on a larger press called a 'Vandercook'. If this sounds interesting, we occasionally offer a letterpress workshop with a smaller letterpress called a 'Kelsey' (please contact us if you are interested).
For letterpress prints, we use vintage wood type blocks. (Yes, the ones you often see at antique stores, you can actually print with them!) We love how wood blocks create such a unique texture that is only improved by its small imperfections. For letterpress cards, we design them on a computer or sometimes draw them by hand. Then, we order polymer plates to set up on letterpress to print. Each print goes through the letterpress by hand, one-by-one (multiple times if more than one color is used!).
Heartfish Press is environmentally conscious. We use cotton papers and soy-based ink with envelopes and packages made from recycled material.
Dried Flowers
In our flower arrangement projects we mostly work with dried flowers. Sometimes we buy them fresh and dry them in-house, other times we buy them dried. In addition to these arrangements being very beautiful and make its own atmosphere, we love how they last much longer than a fresh bouquet. Please take a look at our gallery for our floral work and contact us if you are interested in a custom order.
Meet the designer
Hijiri was born and raised in Japan. After graduating from a graphic design school in Tokyo, she came to the United States to explore her creativity. She attended the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, majoring in Art Direction in Advertising Design and minoring in Web Design. During her student life she won several advertising awards including International ANDY awards and CLIO awards.
After university, Hijiri worked for an ad agency in San Francisco where she worked on national ad campaigns for Yahoo, Condé Nast (a home of Vogue and The New Yorker), and many more. After a decade in San Francisco, Hijiri moved to New York City in 2008. There, she started working as a freelance designer which allowed her some space to experiment with other forms of art. This is how Hijiri discovered her love of letterpress.
During this phase of discovery Hijiri blogged her initial printings. In that process she documented the creation of the first “Live What You Love” print. Her readers responded strongly to that design and inquired about purchasing. That was the beginning of Heartfish Press. (Being a proud Pisces, she came up with the name “heartfish” as a creative being that always swims around her heart) She has now sold more than 6000 prints and her work is featured in many design books and blogs. This success led her to discover a similar love of dried flower arrangement, which she occupies much of her creative energy today.
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