Mentoring Monday: A Pair of Pears
Posted by admin on August 27th, 2012
Hello! I’m very excited to be back and have some fun new fresh people to introduce you to! I hope you enjoy the series once again!
Hometown: We were both born in different parts of Michigan but now we live in Los Angeles
Turn Ons: A good typeface, french press coffee, weekend projects, awesome vintage finds
Turn Offs: Bad Typography 
Favorite Color Jake: I get asked that a lot and honestly I don’t have a Favorite color Jamie: Blue, more specifically Pantone 19-4056
Favorite place you have traveled to: London, that’s where we fell in love.
Favorite Albums: Abbey Road, MuteMath’s Odd Soul, also loving Of Monsters and Men’s My Head is an Animal album.
What Inspires You: Maybe this sounds silly but we really get a lot of inspiration from each other. We are able to bounce ideas off each other, collaborate, and in the end hopefully produce something beautiful that we are both proud of. We also love old things. They have great colors, textures and history. And of course good music is a given.
How did you get your start: The blog started as a way to keep our family updated on our life. Then we just enjoyed sharing our lives and work with people so we just kept writing. The design and letterpress part came later. In college we both studied design but their was one class in particular that really impacted us. We took a printmaking class where we learned a bunch of different printing proceses. We got our hands dirty, made fun art pieces, and loved every minute of it. I think that’s when we knew what we wanted to do. That class was the first and only class in our college carrer where the professor just let us create whatever we wanted. At that point it was more about the process than the actual art, but that freedom to be creative and create what we wanted was like a breath of fresh air. We never wanted it to end. So naturally we bought a letterpress and started printing.
What is your favorite design you had created? Even though it’s been two years, we still love our wedding invitations. They are really special to us so they will probably we our favorite thing we’ve done for a while.
Who do you want to work with: Hands down Brady Vest from Hammerpress. We just can’t get enough of his work. He has mastered what he does so learning a few tricks of the trade from him would be a dream.
What part of your job do you find most challenging? Letterpress is a hand done process so finding the balance between producing quality work and still allowing the imperfections of letterpress to show through can be challenging. It’s a process that calls for patience.
Any Advice for anyone who is just starting out in a career path similar to yours? If you can financially–just go for it. It is so rewarding when you get to wake up everyday and do what makes you happy. Even if you can’t quit your day job you can still make time to grow whatever business you’re wanting to start. Also I think writing a blog is a good way to share your work and have an online presence everyday. If blogging is not your thing, try submitting your work to different blogs that post the same type and style of work. There are tons of blogs that even ask for submissions. The worst thing they can say is no.
To see more on A Pair of Pears head on over to their site!
