We are in McMinnville, about 45 minutes south of Portland. We get a lot of printing out of Portland so we like to go up and scout around to see what new publications are out there.

Last week we took our newest sales team member Mike Franks up to show him how fun prospecting can be on foot. We decided to focus on the Hawthorne area of town. Hawthorne is such a fun area with a lot of eclectic little shops. We have a lot of our printing in record stores, coffee shops and bookstores. So, we thought we would walk around and see what else we could find.

One thing we love about traveling outside of McMinnville is the chance to find a fun new place to eat lunch. We stopped in at the Hawthorne Street Cafe for a nice light lunch.

We love Powell’s Books. Love. We took the opportunity to browse the stacks and bask in all of that printed joy. We love anything printed, notecards, books, posters, magazines, you name it, we want to look at it.

We veered off Hawthorne to visit Scrap. It’s a fun little place selling re-used art and craft materials. There is nothing more fun that a barrel full of one item (rubber bands, zippers, polymer printing plates).

And of course it makes us happy when we see one of our clients. We waved hello as we drove by WL May.

Now, its back to work. We enjoyed our day in the city. See you there soon.

We’re making a lot of changes that we’re really excited about within our company and throughout all of our sister-companies, and decided a facelift to the blog would be a nice addition!

Thanks so much for your patience during the transition over to the new look, and for those of you anxiously awaiting the change, we’re so grateful to have awesome followers like you and hope you like the results!

One of the major pluses of this new layout is the option to follow our RSS feed which wasn’t available before! Follow our feed for posts, photos, industry interviews, giveaways
& contests!

As the new year approaches we’re finding that we can use services we’ve offered forever but separately as sister-companies, and integrate them to make something new and fresh (more on that here). It feels good to be working together to make exciting things we’re proud of and that we can now offer as a service to our customers as well.

One of these things we worked on together is our holiday calendar to ring in the season and the new year! We’re so excited to show you some sneak-peeks here. The photography, conceptualization, copy and layout are by Kelly Searle here at OLI, project management by Chelsey Nichol and Mike Bittle from here as well, and the amazing graphic design by our sister-company, the News-Register. Printing was of course done in-house here at OLI and shipping will be done in-house as well!

The rest of the photos are of Discover Yamhill Valley‘s guide to the region, a mailer for Soter Vineyards, and a local wine guide.

Hope your gearing up for the holiday season is treating you well!

Have a great week!

Went to our historic McMinnville train tracks downtown and took photos of some recent printings…

The always-awesome Cascade A&E, a really cool promotional comic book by Western Oregon Waste, Eleven Magazine and Oregon Wine Press!

Happy 11/11/11!

As we get further into fall, the mornings start darker and darker. But once we get to work, we have an amazing view of the sunrise coming over the trees and fields surrounding the plant. A good thing to start the day with!

Took some pictures of Discover Yamhill Valley’s Meet McMinnville publication, Off-Piste Magazine and High-Lonesome Books’ catalog in the morning light.

Have a good week!

We’re really excited to now be offering in-house design services! If you’re interested you can learn a little more about our new web, online magazine and graphic design services (and of course printing) here. This has been long in the works, and we’re so happy to be able to help people take their cool ideas and turn them into a website, a designed online piece, and a printed one as well. So if you or someone you know might be interested, send them our way! And we’ll pick up your Starbucks and part of your first printing tab of course.

Lately: McMinnville High’s Fall publication & Small Farmer’s Journal (one of our personal favorites here at OLI). If you’re a local, Third Street Books carries the Small Farmer’s Journal and it’s awesome–can’t go wrong with a kraft cover and good design.

Have a great week!

Went to the skate park to take some pictures of some of our new printings–Oregon Coast Today and Discover Yamhill Valley‘s great fall issue.

We have now tested our new novel paper on a few projects for customers and it really looks professional and adds that “paperback novel” feel to things printed with it. You can see some examples here and here. Hope to see more people taking advantage of its classic style in the near future!

In a somewhat unrelated note, our little town, McMinnville, was recently featured on two major media channels: Rachael Ray Everyday magazine, and Hook, Line & Dinner on the Cooking Channel (featuring the Oregonian’s restaurant of the year, Thistle)!

Have a great week!

Some recent printings…
The latest issue of the Cascade A&E, which always has amazing covers, but this one is so beautiful. (Another favorite). A new customer, Sambuka, who we printed a blank book (a first for us!) and activity book for–we think they’re so cool and interesting; can’t wait to see more! Also, the newest issue of Eleven, another new customer, who are a dream to work with!

And then for what everyone has been waiting for…

At the PPI conference this past weekend, we won four awards in an insane competition featuring honestly some of the most creative, awesome things we’ve ever laid eyes on (holographic books, Nike shoe bags made of stitched paper, die-cut architectural dioramas).

We were so honored to have some of our work up against over 200 entries of the best in the (north)west! In an industry that’s going through a rough patch, it was so great to see other people pushing the boundaries of print and keeping the craft alive!

1st Place: Sandtuary, 1,2,3 colors on coated or uncoated paper

2nd Place: Wine Press, 4 or more colors on coated paper

2nd Place: OLI Digest, Business-to-Business Promotions

3rd Place: Alternatives Issue 56, 1,2,3 colors on coated or uncoated paper

Thanks PPI for the great weekend!
Congrats to all the other winners and nominees!

This past weekend Chelsey and I drove to Seattle to represent Oregon Lithoprint at the Pacific Printing Industries Association‘s Print Rocks! awards and Future Focus seminars (the topics were about keeping print alive in the digital age and maintaining environmental sustainability).

We visited Pike Place Market, ate good food, and won a few awards. A pretty good weekend, all in all. Stay tuned on our Facebook page for an announcement of our awards later in the week!

Apologies for the sudden shift in the look of the photos–we just set up an Instagram account and I took all our weekend photos on our phones via the app. Feel free to follow us there too (our username is oregonlitho); we’ll be posting some behind-the-scenes photos that won’t be featured here or anywhere else. And we’d love to follow your feed as well!

Some background on the photos…
1-2. Pike Place Market
3. Chelsey at the Seattle harbor
4. Le Panier, where we had delicious bread with jam, coffee, and ham-filled pastries
5. The original Starbucks!
6. The coolest cats at Pike Place Market
7. Chelsey took a photo of me laughing at the harbor
8. All the nominees’ pieces
9. Our OLI digest!
10. Chelsey accepting one of our awards…

Have a great week!

Getting excited for the start of fall!

Top ten fall things in McMinnville:

1. Pumpkin and other fall-flavored coffees at Union Block.
2. Yogurt and granola at Community Plate.
3. Seeing the leaves turn in the oak grove on the Linfield campus.
4. Curling up with a book from Third Street Books.
5. Lighting fall-scented candles from La Bella Casa.
6. Thanksgiving!
7. Walking down 3rd street in the crisp fall air.
8. Warming up with dinner at Thai Country.
9. Walking through Wortman Park.
10. Riding bikes through McMinnville.

It’s in the high 90′s all week here in McMinnville, but the mornings are so crisp and pretty.

Some niche publications as of late: gearing up for PPI’s annual conference at the end of the month where we’re finalists in their Print Rocks! competition for some pieces we printed last year. Reading through their catalog and crossing our fingers for a win! Oregon Wine Press’s new issue all about local vineyards and wine blogs, and a piece on the 1/2 marathon through Oregon Wine Country.