Working Copy: Why I Am Starting a Small Press
For most of my career, publishing meant someone else's name on the spine. I designed the reports, the brochures, the case studies. This year I decided to start a small imprint under Studio Uphoff for the projects that are mine. It is called Working Copy Press.
The name comes from the drafts every designer keeps. The working copy is the version still being marked up, never quite final. That is how I want the press to feel: honest about process and comfortable putting things out before they are perfect.
Three projects will live there first:
Depth of Field, a series of small photo books, one place and one idea per volume. Ephemeral, from Japan, is first.
Our Family Table, a cookbook I made with my mom. 204 recipes and 126 of her original watercolor paintings.
Cowtown, a twice-yearly magazine about Denver.
I took a lot of inspiration from designers who publish. Dexter Sinister, the studio and press David Reinfurt runs with Stuart Bailey, and Bailey's journal Dot Dot Dot showed that a design studio can also be a publisher and that the two make each other better. Closer to home, Actual Source in Provo, run in part by my college friend Davis Ngarupe, has built a press, a shop and a design practice in one, and is publishing work for Nike alongside independent artists.
Why designers should publish:
You learn the whole chain. Paper, printing, binding, distribution and pricing. Every one of those makes you better at client work.
You own the decisions. No committee. If the type is wrong, that is on me.
The work outlasts the feed. A printed book sits on a shelf for decades.
I plan to print in small runs of about 500 to 1000 copies. Small enough to be careful, big enough to get into a few good bookstores. I will share the process here, mistakes included.
