Meet Shelley Barandes of Albertine Press in Somerville

Today we’d like to introduce you to Shelley Barandes.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I studied architecture in college and then moved to Paris where I worked in an international architecture firm for nearly two years before returning to New York City. While back in NYC I picked back up with printmaking, which I’d done a bit of in school, and was quickly turned onto the Center for Book Arts where I learned the finer points of typesetting and printing on the beautiful antique presses. It wasn’t long after that I moved with my now-husband to Cambridge, I started doing more and more printing, and less and less architecture. Eventually I had an opportunity to buy my first presses (three machines, each over half a ton). I needed a proper studio space and thus Albertine Press was born.

Early work was a one-woman show – designing and printing wedding invitations for friends and personal stationery projects. That soon grew, and I added a wholesale line of greeting cards for sale at stores across the country. Two presses became nine, interns became employees, and here we are today, many craft fairs, trade shows, and hundreds of thousands of prints later.

Has it been a smooth road?
There are always challenges in starting and growing any kind of business.

Finding my voice as a designer and learning how to curate a collection of work for sale was an early and still ongoing challenge. Often designs that are personal favorites don’t find the same audience out in the world, which is always disappointing.

In the beginning, I did everything – design, printing, packaging, marketing, sales, billing, accounting. There were definite growing pains in finding people who I could share or pass along these responsibilities to.

The biggest challenge of all, though, was balancing having two young children with growing the business. There were (and are) times when my focus is elsewhere, and at these times the business didn’t grow at the rate or scale I may have hoped. But at the same time, running my own studio meant having the flexibility to raise my girls in a creative environment and be the involved parent I want to be.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Albertine Press story. Tell us more about the business.
Albertine Press is a letterpress print and design shop that is really three businesses in one. First, we have a wholesale collection of greeting cards, decorative note sets, journals, postcards, prints, and more with a heavy focus on cityscape illustration (the architecture background coming out).

Next, we are a custom design and print business with a focus on wedding invitations, though we have done everything from broadsides to business cards, chocolate wrappers to birth announcements, and everything in between. Weddings are our bread and butter, though, and the projects I love most. Much like our wholesale collection, our designs heavily feature custom illustrations of cities, wedding venues, architectural details – though we’re just as enamored with an elegantly typeset classic invitation. The key piece that connects it all is a keen eye for detail and the artisanal process that sets letterpress apart from all other print techniques.

Lastly, we serve as a printer-for-hire for other designers looking for letterpress production and other print coordination.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
We’ve already seen enormous shifts in the stationery industry over the past decade. With the proliferation of email, texting, and social media, fewer folks rely on hand-written correspondence. Industry trade shows that once featured thousands of exhibiting companies now number in the hundreds.

What this means, however, is that the cards that people still send (celebrating birthdays, weddings, babies, and other life events) are bought with more thoughtfulness and appreciation for quality. More and more of the cards you do see are created by artisanal techniques – like letterpress – and finding an audience looking for cards that make an impression – figuratively and literally.

Wedding invitations also play as important a role as ever. As the definition of the “typical” wedding has grown to encompass such a wide variety of celebrations (barns, urban lofts, campgrounds, museums, libraries, wildlife refuges) there is more room for different styles of invitation designs to reflect this very variety. As a company that specializes in custom illustrations and design, we revel in the creativity and individuality in the wedding industry these days.

Contact Info:

• Address: Albertine Press
  561 Windsor Street, #B203
  Somerville, MA 02143
• Website: www.albertinepress.com
• Phone: 6176667395
• Email: info@albertinepress.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/albertinepress
• Facebook: facebook.com/albertinepress
• Twitter: twitter.com/albertinepress

Image Credit:
Shelley Barandes

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