A kid in a candy store.

Recently while on a trip to Nashville, I had the privilege of going to Hatch Show Print, which, if you're not familiar with it, is one of the nation's oldest letterpress print shops known especially for their country music show posters. To a corn-fed graphic designer like me, going to Hatch Show Print was like making a pilgrimage.

The staff at Hatch is very friendly, and I was given a deluxe tour. They showed me drawers of antique type, shelves filled with custom woodblocks, old presses, countless rare posters and two fat orange cats. I felt like a kid in a candy store, dazzled by the smell of ink, the ka-chunk of machinery and the nearly impossible decision as to which poster would serve as my souvenir.

Hatch Show Print's unique style comes in part from their practiced methodology. They still do things like they did in the late 1800s, with manually operated presses and wood-cut type slugs. Graphic design has become a highly computerized field of strict brand codes and PMS color assignments. That's why this aesthetic of purely decorative lettering, no-two-alike color washes, handmade impressions and accompanying sloppy ink splotches serves to be such an inspiration in the craft behind visual communication. — Aggie, Senior Designer