Nicole Donnely
Hot foil stamped wedding invitation
Hot foil stamped compliment cards
Shadi Ayoub is the founder of @the961collective , a letterpress printing and hot foil stamping studio in Cleveland, Ohio.
He grew up in Beirut, Lebanon where his family owned a modern offset printing press and he was always drawn to the beauty of the old presses that were rarely used at the back of the print shop because they were “outdated”. He became very fond of those timeless machines and over time restored most of them back to functionality and found the quality of the beautiful prints and textures they produced to be incomparable with modern prints.
Shadi majored in Business Administration at the American university of Beirut but print was always his passion. Years after graduating from the business school, he went back to that same university but this time to teach letterpress as part of the printmaking department.
Artist Statement
During my residency I will make prints using traditional typesetting methods however I will also explore the "modern" side of letterpress by printing photographic images on the Heidelberg Windmill press using half tone photopolymer plates. I'm really excited to work on these prints as they will be a good challenge from make ready, to steady inking and most importantly color registration.