Through Very Vera, you can order her famous cakes as well as gourmet food to be delivered right to your front door. It’s pretty awesome. The attention to detail she’s known for with the presentation of her food, definitely carries over to their print collateral.

Our mouths were already watering when we saw some of the great designs that Very Vera was printing with us.  In fact we thought the postcards they printed (designed by Leonard Zimmerman Jr.) were so good that we pulled them out of the stack and showcased them on the Jakprints Tumblr.

When a Strawberry Lemonade cake and a Carrot Cake showed up at Jakprints, compliments of Very Vera, the mouth watering continued.  Needless to say they tasted incredible. Thanks Vera!

If you’re unfamiliar, Tunecore is a digital music distributor. Musicians, bands and indie labels can skip the step of going through traditional distribution middlemen and use Tunecore to get their music onto iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and many more online platforms for a flat fee of $50. Since it’s inception, Tunecore has generated over $300 Million in royalties for it’s artists.

Jeff, an avid blogger and speaker, uses these avenues of communication to bluntly speak his mind about the hellish ins and outs of the traditional music industry. With blog titles like Why Everyone But The Artist And The Music Fan Is Doomed and How They Legally Steal Your Money, along with aggressive criticisms of Grooveshark and the industry in general, Jeff definitely fights for the little guy.

In fact, Tunecore partnered with Jakprints a few years ago to create a 70 page booklet called “Music Industry Survival Manual – New Rules For The Music Industry”  that we’ve  helped distribute at events like SXSW.

Head on over to the New York Times site to read an extensive profile of Jeff Price and TuneCore.

Graphic Design Round Table – Typography

One of our favorite posts of the month featured a handful of very talented and accomplished graphic designers sharing their two cents about the current state of typography. Click here to read what Jeff Finley, OKPants, Brian Jasinski and Ted Barnes had to say.

Lake Erie Monster – Horror Comic

We started the month off with a feature about John G and Jake Kelley’s new Cleveland based horror comic The Lake Erie Monster. We were there for their release party at Blue Arrow Records. Check out the video we put together highlighting the creation and release of The Lake Erie Monster and see the original blog post with pics from the event here.

Rock Hall Fever

With all the deserved hype and coverage surrounding the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony earlier this month, we got in on the action and put a slightly different spin on the festivities in Cleveland. Read our Ten Bizarre Things About Rock Hall Induction Week In Cleveland.

We Announced Our Newest Green Initiative

Being environmentally responsible is something we’re quite proud of. To us, being green isn’t just a marketing angle, we’re always looking for new ways to improve our eco-friendly practices. That’s why on Earth Day we announced that we plant a tree for every order placed! Read all the details here - Jakprints Plants One Tree With Every Order.

Building the Animal Builder

Read this cool story about how Jakprints helped author Kate Schrute bring her ideas to life.  The Animal Builder is a colorful, inquisitive book about a giant anteater who creates animals out of things he finds in nature.

Concert and Movie Posters

Two posts this month featured some inspirational designs in both the music and film world. We put together a gallery of minimalist movie posters including Reservoir Dogs, The Usual Suspects and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Check out the original post Design Spotlight – Minimalist Movie Posters. We also found a great collection of concert poster art at the GoMedia blog. View our highlights  - Concert Posters – Text, Fonts and Rock & Roll.

Jakprints at The Green Dream

Jakprints returned to The Green Dream again this year. The Green Dream is Ohio’s largest eco-friendly expo and it’s put on by teens at Beachwood High School! Check it out. 

Jakprints Spotlight – Emma White

And last but certainly not least, we learned a little more about Emma White in Customer Service & Sales for this month’s Jakprints Employee Spotlight.

Well that’s it for this month. Keep checking back for new content, and if there’s anything you’d like to see featured or talked about, please let us know!

Check out the full post in all its glory at GoMediaZine.

The Animal Builder

Kate Schruth and Jakprints build The Animal Builder.

Jeff Finley

Artist, designer and partner at Go Media. Author of Thread’s Not Dead and founder of WMC Fest.

Favorite Font(s): Knockout, DIN, ITC Serif Gothic, Bodoni, Meta Serif, Liberator

Favorite Typography Trends:  Hand-lettered, Americana motifs are tickling my fancy these days, like Jon Contino and Dan Cassaro. Scripty stuff, like, Dana Tanamachi’s chalk lettering is fantastic. These styles don’t need to be hand-lettered, but it provides an earthy, humanistic touch when they are. I’m also a huge fan of Niel Kellerhouse’s hand-lettered scrawl on his House of the Devil film posters. Although, the font he created for the new Dragon Tattoo series is amazing. AJ Dimarucot has really come a long way over the years with his aggressive, hand-lettered, modern calligraphy.

jefffinley.org / gomedia.us / WMCfest.com / twitter.com/jeff_finley 

OKPants

Does: Art direction, illustration and graphic design.
Does not: Take anything else seriously.
Wants: To get better. 

Favorite Font(s): Very easily HTF Knockout: Versatile, clean, not stupid looking. It’s the sriracha of fonts, you can use it on pretty much anything to add bold, off-the-hook flavors — what’s up Karl Welzein. It has no less than 786,564 weights and styles; yet, they are all obviously part of the same awesome font family. Knockout 34 Junior Sumo gets it done. Some other go-to’s of mine: Interstate, Trade Gothic, Ziggurat, Didot, Refrigerator Deluxe — there’s a lot more, but this is what gets used daily.

Favorite Typography Trends: Reid Miles. Aaron Draplin is the closest thing typography has to its very own Paul Bunyan. The Chicago Bears identity and type.  I’m interested in learning more about any movement notrooted in an attempt to produce disposable garbage. Crap trends that are a facepalm to the crap trends before them can take a hike. I get down on my knees and thank God for digital layout programs, but I admire the people that had to make this stuff happen before such things existed… I don’t think that answers the question at all, but that’s what’s on my mind.

okpants.com / twitter.com/okpants / dribbble.com/okpants / blog.okpants.com

Brian Jasinski

Artist and designer behind Grey Cardigan

Favorite fonts: Belizio, Pistilli, Rockwell, Sophia and of course, the tried and true workhorse that is Trade Gothic.

Favorite Typography Trend: I do like seeing a growing resurgence of illustration and original/hand-drawn type being used in design. Clean bold graphics with striking type, often seen in poster design, is a refreshing change after years of the overly-layered, photoshopped and crowded “Raygun” style of the late 90s/early 2000s. Very clean Swiss design has always been an influence on my own work – the use of very intentional shapes, white space, and conscious intersections.

greycardigan.net / twitter.com/grey_cardigan

Ted Barnes

Art Director right here at Jakprints

Favorite Font(s): HF&J Knockout — no other font looks better super condensed or extended, Stretch-Armstrong style. My current font crush is the serified version of Gotham that HF&J did for the Obama 2012 campaign, please sell it to me!

Favorite Typography Trends: Not so much a trend as the way that technology has finally caught up with typography. With the current breed of well-done, Open Type fonts, it’s no longer obvious what’s hand-lettered and what’s a well-chosen font. The fact that it’s allowing production designers — who don’t have the luxury of time when designing — are finally able to crank out carefully typeset work is phenomenal. I see almost everything that comes through the shop, and I feel like I’m seeing more stellar design work than ever before.

Take a look at some great design examples straight out of the portfolios of Jeff Finley, OKPants and Grey Cardigan.

Tell us about your favorite font or design trend in the comments section!

The idea behind The Lake Erie Monster spawned from a series of 70s era fictional movie posters that the two worked on previously and decided to bring to life with a full narrative. The story certainly does come alive on the page. The vibrant 36 page, full-color book features two gruesome stories and a handful of illustrated ads that capture the spirit of the old-school horror comic.

A number of the Jakprints crew were there at the release party, where we mingled with other local art enthusiasts, had punch and snacks, browsed through some choice vinyl and picked up our copies of the debut issue, all while listening to WCSB’s John Neely spin Cleveland/Ohio punk tunes. Jakprints is proud to be a sponsor of this new endeavor and we can’t wait until the next issue arrives. See below for some photos from the event and an exclusive behind the scenes video of the conception and production of The Lake Erie Monster.

The Lake Erie Monster – A Cleveland Horror Comic from Jakprints, Inc on Vimeo.

It was only a month ago that we featured BBP Partners’ fantastic New Years Cards. While we usually shy away from spotlighting the same customer so quickly, their Valentine’s Day promo really set our hearts aflutter.

Designer Dede Vitrano thought of every meticulous detail for these mailers: custom-printed pillow envelopes to hold a die-cut greeting card, custom M&M’s, branded Favicards and all padded with some colorful confetti. She also created mailing labels that utilized our variable data addressing capabilities. She really did think of it all.

“You would never think an absolute, right-brained graphic designer to discover their career led them into the world of accounting,” exclaims Vital Visual owner Dede Vitrano. “Yet, some how, it’s the perfect match.” BBP Partners is, an up-and-coming public accounting and consulting firm with offices in Cleveland, OH, and Washington, D.C.

Vitrano met with Chris Brauser, an original partner at BBP,  to change the way the firm markets and associates with the industry and their clients. BBP was unhappy with the results of traditional marketing, the duo of Vitrano and Brauser developed a new strategy with a strong focus on personalized, mailers with lots of personality. ”It’s a new partnership that has already shaken things up and created a wave with their clients,” says Vitrano.

• Petal Envelopes

• Stock:16 pt. Soft Touch
• Finish Size:6.25 x 6.25
• Inks:4/4
• Sides:2
• Extra: Sealed with a 1.5″ Circle Silver Foil Sticker

• Scratch-Off Cards

• Stock:12 pt. Gloss
• Finish Size:3.5 x 2
• Inks:4/4 + Scratch Off Foil
• Sides: 2

• Custom Favicards

• Stock: 16 pt. Soft Touch
• Finish Size: 2 x 2
• Inks: 4/4
• Sides: 2