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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

Truth is, Tara did most of the work (like, um, flying across the country to actually deliver the presentation for 600 attendees), and I chipped in with design, layout, and concept support. Together we created an 18-page booklet that her ever-more-productive pupils were able to use during the half-day session.

Tara’s client handled the printing, so we were limited on ink colors and binding. Nevertheless, I think the piece (below) turned out OK.

Thanks for the opportunity to lend a hand, Tara. Remember me when you get all famous and stuff.

TimeBridge isn’t the only meeting scheduler that offers this, so they need to differentiate themselves. Yesterday, TimeBridge launched a movement to change the way we think about meeting length: why not schedule for 45 minutes instead of a full hour? The announcement email noted:

In his book, “The Hamster Revolution for Meetings,” Mike Song reports that meeting attendees claim 43% of meeting time is wasted. When you consider the average professional is in 463 meetings a year we think it’s high time to take action.

To that end, TimeBridge has created a separate website: The 45 Minute Meeting Movement. In the first post, they offer “5 Rules of the 45 Minute Meeting”—rules that are not really new, but good reminders for making our shorter meetings more efficient. Further, TimeBridge has set a new default meeting length of 45 minutes instead of an hour when scheduling a meeting using their online tools.

What are some implications of holding 45 Minute Meetings? When you count the scheduling time and the time it takes to compile and send the notes you may have taken, is it fair to still bill the client for a full hour? Can they only work if they start right on the dot? And more importantly, does this leave enough time for eating cupcakes?

If you have ideas about making meetings efficient, Tweet your tips using the tag #45minmtg. You just might win a free copy of “The Hamster Revolution for Meetings: How to Meet Less and Get More Done” by Mike Song.

We hosted a 4:59 workshop with a few of our favorite 4:59ers and decided to base this year’s display on the Festival poster, designed by a student group through OSU’s 208 Design studio. The original design used plexiglass, hand cut letters and wire. Our translation also uses plexiglass and wire, and then cut vinyl (thanks to our friends at NW Graphic Imaging). Add in a couple of vintage theater seats, courtesy of Truen, and some popcorn tubs from the Darkside Cinema … and, ta-da! Window display complete. Cool thing is that most of the signs can be used again in the future. The Festival staff love that.

If you’re in or around Corvallis, you can check it out in person at Footwise on 3rd and Madison.

A few photos from this year’s workshop and installation.

And if you’re curious, here’s what we did last year.

We saw things like: A ginormous nitrogen tank, DNA samples in a styrofoam ice chest, and a million-dollar magnet thing-a-majiggy. Plus, a small room buzzing with radiation-generating gizmos that we—despite the numerous yellow caution signs—stepped into for a closer look.

Stay tuned for the final product. In a few weeks we’ll return with video camera in hand, as well as a greater appreciation for people who do science for a living. Cool stuff.