Hatch Show Print: Laura Baisden
Hatch Show Print created two really awesome posters just for us! Here we talk to one of their designers, Laura Baisden, who gives us the lowdown on life at the shop.
My name is Laura Baisden I work at Hatch Show Print, I’m a designer and printer here. Once we have a job, we see it all the way to the end. There are six designers, a couple of folks that work in retail, then Jim our manager.
Tell us about how Hatch Show Print got it's start.
In 1879 the Hatch brothers started this shop up and in that time there wasn’t a lot of country music going on so we were printing showcards and revival posters, or vaudeville and minstrel shows, then later traveling circus posters. Then in the ‘30s and ‘40s, country music started kicking in and that’s what we became known for. We started doing Bill Monroe, Roy Acuff and all of that, which transitioned into what we do now—mainly show posters for artists in all different music genres.
In 1879 the Hatch brothers started this shop up and in that time there wasn’t a lot of country music going on so we were printing showcards and revival posters, or vaudeville and minstrel shows, then later traveling circus posters. Then in the ‘30s and ‘40s, country music started kicking in and that’s what we became known for. We started doing Bill Monroe, Roy Acuff and all of that, which transitioned into what we do now—mainly show posters for artists in all different music genres.
Are those prints long gone?
We still print some of those! We keep our restrikes stocked up so when people come through Nashville and want an old Johnny Cash poster, we’ve got it for them. We’ve kept our tradition of printing custom posters for anyone that wants one. We print an average of 600 new jobs a year.
What is a typical day like for you?
You come in, make a pot of coffee and sit down with whatever jobs you’re working on. You decide what’s most important to work on (you juggle about four jobs at a time) and if you need to trim and count posters, that’s what you start with. Otherwise, you might need to start sketching, typesetting or hop on a press and start printing.
You come in, make a pot of coffee and sit down with whatever jobs you’re working on. You decide what’s most important to work on (you juggle about four jobs at a time) and if you need to trim and count posters, that’s what you start with. Otherwise, you might need to start sketching, typesetting or hop on a press and start printing.
What's the printing process like?
The first thing you do is give the client a call and see what they’re looking for and then, you start to sketch out your ideas for the project. Some people have a lot of needs, you know? Some people need to have a rooster and it needs to be red and black, and so you have parameters.
You made two posters for us, what were our parameters like?
You guys didn’t have any stipulations whatsoever, it was wide open, so it was fun but a little scary. Usually there’s a starting point, but there wasn’t even copy. I had a chance to get really creative and it was pretty nontraditional. We had tons of ideas but then six that were really pitched. Finally we narrowed it down to two and that's we went with.
Tell us about them!
On the Hair of the Dog, there was a sheet of pegboard that we mounted to a background block and just ran through a press. In printmaking, anything that has a texture will print. You can get creative and as long as it's a relatively level surface, it will print. So that’s fun.
For the Wanted poster, all of the colors in the background are pieces of type that are flipped over onto their faces, so I’m printing the backs of letters. It looks like bricks, or stones, but with woodgrain.
Who has been your favorite brands or musicians to work with?
Well I shop at Urban Outfitters so working for you was fun. I’m excited to walk in a store and potentially see it on a shelf while I’m shopping for sweaters, you know? We’re fortunate to work with the Ryman, which is our big music venue in Nashville. I got to do Fleet Foxes a little while ago, and it’s probably one of my personal favorites. But we’ve also done things for the Flaming Lips, Bon Iver, Alison Krauss, Bill Cosby…you name it. We do jobs that are all over the place. Like, we’ll do UO and Fleet Foxes and then we’ll do Chloe’s 16th birthday party. That was actually really incredible! It was like a birthday party invitation but it had three colors and it was really bright and had a circus theme to it. It was such a cool looking poster.
Any crazy print requests?
We get a lot of so-and-so will you marry me, maybe three times a year. Once a year, we do a Blobfest poster for a little town in Pennsylvania that hosts a showing of the cult classic horror film, The Blob. We have a blast trying to come up with new ways to pitch the same movie every year. It’s tongue-in-cheek, and they let us have a lot of freedom.
What's your favorite print of all time?
That’s really hard! There’s a lot of people that I admire whose prints I like more than my own, because that’s the way it goes. Bryce McCloud a long, long time ago did this poster for Gillian Welch. It’s of a big steam ship and all these shoes are floating around in the water. It’s a really beautiful poster. Brad Vetter who works here—he’s my peer but he’s been here a lot longer than I have so I love a lot of the work that he does—his Flaming Lips poster is probably one of my favorites. Of what I’ve printed, I would have to say either the Fleet Foxes or the Gillian Welch (at the Ryman) posters were my favorite.
Last but not least, tell us about the pets at the shop!
None of our animals are very typical. Huey is our really fat cat, we love him but he’s majorly overweight, he’s like 18lbs. He is 12-years-old he’s been in this shop almost as long as we have. We got Maow, who’s a tiny little orange cat, because we thought Huey was lonely. She does not like people—she runs away from everyone. Then we have a dog, a terrier. He’s a rescue, he barks a lot and had kind of a rough puppyhood. When we got him we had to retrain him to like people, so he has to stay back behind the counter but he’s really cute and we’re working with him.
Have you ever made any posters for them?
Yep! We have two posters about the cats. There’s one that Agnes, an illustrator that worked here a while ago, carved of Huey and Maow. The other one is “Cat Has Claws” which we made because people didn’t seem to understand that cats could scratch them if they didn’t leave them alone. Maow’s kind of the reason we made it, because people kept trying to pet her. We’re like, “Sorry! She’s a work cat, she just likes to climb shelves.”
