Aper + Pink
Why do you want to work with APW Couples?
Waaaaay back in 2011, I did this crazy experiment where I had people (mostly from right here on APW) name their price for their wedding invitations. For one month. It was insane and beautiful and bad and good and wonderful and idealistic and silly and fun and most of all, it taught me a TON about what you guys want from me and how I can best provide it. (you can read all about it if you search the APW archives for “up up creative”)
The number one lesson I learned was that I do two things well: I’m a designer and I’m also a printer. The number two lesson was that some people want to pay me to be a designer, and some people want to pay me to be a printer, but not everyone wants me to be both.
And the thing is, I believe in creativity. I believe that the cool thing that happens between you and me is that we create something together. It doesn’t matter to me if I’m the designer or the printer, I just like to work with awesome people who want to create cool, meaningful, personal stuff.
So I split my business into two parts: there’s Up Up Creative, the design studio (which now offers PRINTABLE designs – you can find them at shop.upupcreative.com), and there’s Aper + Pink, the short-run, indie-powered, kick-ass print shop catering to DIYers who don’t want to do quite ALL of it themselves. Maybe I could coin the term “do it mostly yourself.”
So the question is, why do I want to work with APWers? Partly because it’s YOU guys who helped me figure out all this stuff, and YOU guys who inspired me to think outside the box a little bit and figure out a way to unify my purpose but split my purpose. That and the fact that APW didn’t exist when I got married, but I am a thousand percent positive that I’d have been a vocal, loyal member of the APW tribe if it had been here.
Describe your artistic approach to weddings?
We are a small print shop located in Rochester, NY, catering to stationery designers, letterpress printers, and home-grown DIY-ers looking for top-notch service and print quality. Started by a stationery designer who was frustrated with the options out there for high-end, small-scale short-run printing, aper + pink is dedicated to providing awesome, high-quality printing on cool, eco-friendly papers (like 100% cotton, sugar cane, bamboo, and even 100% post-consumer).
Everything here is done by hand and with love (okay, everything but the actual giclee printing, which our printers do). We do all our cutting and finishing using hand tools or manual machines. We’re not as quick as some places, but we believe quick is overrated.
We try hard to make things easy for you. Don’t know how to set up your files? We can help. Want to provide your own paper? Great. Need a hard-copy proof before you commit to the full print order? Easy. We can do small runs, art prints, large posters, non-standard stationery sizes – you name it. Best of all, there’s a nifty little instant quote generator on the site so you’ll never be surprised about how much things will cost.
What’s your favorite book?
This is so not an easy question for me since I was about six years and three dissertation chapters into my phd in English before I jumped ship to be a graphic designer (hooray!!), but I can say that my computer’s username is Zora after Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God. I will probably name my next computer Max after Max from Where the Wild Things Are.
If you could have a one minute dance party at your desk, what song would you pick?
My go-to songs for impromptu studio dance parties are Living Room (Tegan & Sara) and Weapon of Choice (Fat Boy Slim), but I can pretty much muster up a dance party to any song that happens to be on. Ask my kids.
