Truen Pence

Behind the screens with Craft Svcs’ Truen Pence

by   |  June 11th, 2010
Collaboration, Design


 

 
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It’s been about two years since Truen and Julia Pence left their Midwest roots in search of greener, wetter pastures in Corvallis, Oregon. He landed a graphic design position at Oregon State University. She now teaches printmaking at Pacific University and Oregon Coast Community College. Together, they discovered tall trees and the Pacific Ocean—as well as a new way of sharing their creative passion. They call it Craft Svcs. Design Co. (pronounced Craft Services), and this week I sat down with Truen to hear more about it.


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JJ:  What inspired you and Julia to start Craft Svcs?

TP: Part of what got us thinking about starting our own business was being inspired by a couple of retail stores we visited years ago. One was called AKAR in Iowa City, the other was SMASH, based in Des Moines. We loved how AKAR married design and architecture. SMASH was a unique T-shirt shop that did custom design work, too.


Then there was the Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago that we attended five or six years ago. Think of young people making awesome screen-printed and hand-sewn crafts. Designed goods. Not your typical craft fair. Lots of tattoos… definitely not your grandma’s type of thing.


Also, there was a tad bit of frustration in submitting our T-shirt designs to Threadless that never got printed. We wanted to see them printed, so we decided to buy a screen printer and do it ourselves.


Beyond that, it really all started with the two of us just enjoying the process of drawing and working together.


How does collaboration between you and Julia work?

We’ve found that it works well for us to collaborate on our designs and patterns. For example, I will draw an axe and Julia will draw the pattern on it. We never work over each other’s shoulder. Instead we hand our work back and forth in order to take the designs in different directions.


When printing, I do most of the dirty work like pulling ink on the screens. Julia will align the paper or shirt. All of our two-color designs are hand-registered.



Speaking of designs, have you always had an interest in tree rings and antlers?

Those designs came out of a fascination with the new natural elements that we’ve been surrounded by since moving to Oregon. It’s a celebration of the Pacific Northwest, but it’s all a little ironic.


We probably have 20 new designs ready for printing, coming soon. Every single one of them seems to have a Pacific Northwest emphasis.


And you do this all from home? Tell me about your studio.

The entire house is pretty much our studio. Our laundry room serves as the print studio, where we’ve got a single-bed screen printer. Then we have a darkroom for exposing screens. Emulsion and stuff like that. We also have a separate drawing studio.


What sort of music inspires you while working?

Mostly roots-folk-rock type stuff. The Seedy Seeds, which is a Midwest indie folk rock band, Devandra Bernhart, Monsters of Folk, Matt the Electrician, who’s from Austin. All pretty relaxed, no Metallica.


Tell me about your online store. I see you’re using Big Cartel. Why did you choose them, and what other shopping cart tools did you consider using?

We considered Etsy, but it’s really too confined for what we wanted to do—not all that much design input is available for the store interface. I wanted a solution that I could shape how I needed it, and with Big Cartel I have full control over the HTML/CSS. Plus, there are fees for everything you sell with Etsy. The better you do, the more you pay.


We also looked at doing a home-grown merchant service, built from scratch, but Big Cartel was so much easier. It’s made for artists, and it ties into Paypal nicely.


Is Craft Svcs doing business apart from the online storefront?

Yes, last month we had a booth at Crafty Wonderland in Portland. Sold out of quite a few of the T-shirts. We also sold prints and some hand-stitched flags. That was sort of a personal thing of mine. You’ve gotta come see us at a show to get those kinds of goods!


We really enjoy the face-to-face conversations with customers, and we’d probably eliminate the online store if we could. At Crafty Wonderland we were able to meet up with lots of friends and others we don’t always get to see, and people we know through Twitter.


What’s next for Craft Svcs?

We’d like to move away from just doing T-shirt design and do more work with other local artists and friends. One idea we have is to collaborate with other husband/wife teams and couples like us, where we’d do a show together around a theme.


And, we’re booked for Crafty Wonderland’s holiday show in December at the Oregon Convention Center.


Taking us full circle, we’re also hoping to have our own booth at the Renegade Craft Show in Chicago this September. But we’re still waiting to hear if they’ll let us in.


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Find Truen and Craft Svcs on the World Wide Web:

» @designiscrafty

» Facebook

» www.truenpence.com

» www.craftsvcs.com



Jeff Jimerson

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Reader comments (5)

 

Hey folks- Here’s a special coupon code on the store for all of you loyal MadCollective readers. Enter “MADAVE” at checkout until July 1st and receive 20% off your t-shirt order. thx

http://store.craftsvcs.com


Truen | June 11, 2010

[...] Read the interview here. [...]


Craft Services Design Blog » Interview with MadCollective blog | June 16, 2010

Hey Truen, here’s a “small world” namedropping item: did you know that Matt the Electrician grew up here? His folks are dedicated supporters of (among other interests) da Vinci Days and (ultra cool) the Darkside Cinema. Yay!

Love the shirts; thanks for the coupon code!!


Lainie Turner | June 18, 2010

Nice interview, Jeff. Always interesting to hear what other creatives in the community are up to. And I’m a big fan of Truen and Julia’s work.

And thanks for the coupon code, Truen! Are you guys thinking about doing kids sizes?


Rebecca | June 18, 2010

Thats awesome I didn’t know about Craft Svcs, I have something to run by those guys!


Ron Sparks | June 25, 2010
 


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