Ladyfingers NewsLetter Press: Email #2

August 20, 2026

Well, hello again…

it’s me, your friend who followed through (at least once!) on a promise to do something on a weekly basis. Will it see the light of week 3? Only time will tell!

First, thank you to all the folks who reached out after last week’s newsletter, it was great to hear from you! Banging on a laptop keyboard can often feel like you’re just hurling ideas out into the void, so it’s nice to hear that my meteorite* hit a few moons out there and has made crater or two.

Fun Fact: My first job out of college was communications director at an arts non-profit in Providence, Rhode Island. Part of my job was to send out a weekly email informing the public about all the upcoming events such as performances (there was an all-ages, un-juried and un-censored stage), gallery openings, figure drawing sessions, etc. In my first dispatch, I introduced myself and asked for everyone's favorite sweet potato recipe. Some of the people who replied are still among those I keep in touch with today!

So, in keeping with my tradition (because apparently I am a pro at that now), I welcome not only your sweet potato recipes, but because I’ve been on a huge music kick lately (more than usual), I’d love to hear what song you’re absolutely OBSESSED with these days. I’ve spent the last few weeks digging my old CDs out of storage, fixing an old CD player using tiny screwdrivers and super glue, and alphabetizing my vinyl collection. (I tell you, all this free time I have now that the kids are back at school is LIFE CHANGING!) I woke up with the song “Moon” by Björk in my head, so I’ve got my Biophilia CD in the stereo, and the beat is just about to drop in “Crystalline”…** Oh! There it goes! SO GOOD!

Ahem. Anyway.

On to this week’s Ladyfingers NewsLetter Press!

AI: Analog Intelligence

Like many of you, AI plays a large part in our lives. Not because we’ve integrated it into our workflow or are exploring the ways it can help us be Fitter, Happier, More Productive, but because we’re constantly worrying about the next way it’s going to totally screw us over. Here in Colorado Springs, citizens have been fighting against a proposed data center (referred to as Project Taurus) that is slated to be built not only dangerously close to well-established neighborhoods where real humans actually live, but also ungodly close to Garden of the Gods, an earthen pearl whose beauty no human eye can gaze upon without the feeling of peace and wonder (and also, like, one of Colorado Springs’s most popular attractions.) Naturally, we made some posters about it (and even a sticker).

But creating rage-fueled posters was not the focus of our energy this week (at least, not this time!). Instead, we were pondering the effects of AI on CRAFT. We recalled the late aughts where the emergence of “things being made by hand by craftspeople in America” arose as a rebellion against the rising popularity and reliance on digital tech. A few days ago, Morgan shared this reel with me that touched on this concept, and it made me recognize that not only was our business born from this movement of craft and artistry, but here we are again: mired within this tension between the advancement of technology and the importance of things being made by hand belonging to real humans.

If you recall, it wasn’t long before tech-driven startups figured out ways to capitalize on our attraction to the hand-made. Love the idea of a hand-written letter but are just too busy to sit down and do it? Let our robots do it for you! Want your ceramics to have the same idiosyncrasies that can only be formed by the human hand, but want it faster and cheaper? We’ve developed technology that mimics handmade craft! Trying to decipher if we’re talking to a real human who's on the other side of our customer service chat or if a video or photo being presented as real actually is real is now so common that it’s just become a part of our daily lives. But hey, at least we are all fitter, happier, more productive.

I don’t know what form the pendulum will take when it inevitably swings away from our reliance on AI, but hopefully we’ll still be here, chugging along at a nice easy natural human pace, making stuff with our calloused hands and hopefully still writing weekly newsletters.

I am curious if you have any thoughts about how AI will affect the art of craft, the craft of art, or both! Send me a note!

Ladyfingers Letterpress printing ASL poster on the vandercook

This week on press

As per my last email, we have an awful tendency of forgetting to post about things we’re making. I read recently that part of Mamdani’s success of public opinion is that he’s just so good at communicating about the things he’s doing (no matter how small!), and because we have ambitions to someday be the mayor of New York City, we thought we should give that tactic a try. (JK my only ambition is to put on shorts with an elastic waistband later).

This week, some familiar faces emerged from the woodwork! And by faces I mean emails, because so many of our custom clients we’ve never met in person. I got to letter a custom rubber stamp for someone we made custom holiday cards for back in 2012, and reconnected with a couple whose save the dates and wedding invitations we made in 2013. Their anniversary was coming up and wanted a piece of artwork to celebrate their journey since tying the knot.

They’re now a family of five, and one of their kiddos is deaf and uses ASL to communicate. They asked for a print of the ASL alphabet, and I suggested the idea that every illustrated hand would belong to their family. They promptly sent over 26 photographs of everyone in their family signing a different letter of the alphabet (plus letters 1-9!) and I got to work drawing each and every one.

They didn’t need a ton of prints—just a small batch to share with family and friends—so we worked with our old friends in Rhode Island to print a few archival fine art-quality posters. We had the prints shipped back to us, where we hand-fed them through the letterpress to apply an inky layer of their kiddo signing, “I love you”.

We think they turned out lovely.

Let’s give him a hand!

Speaking of handmade… some of the projects we work on around here begin by Ladyfingers and end up in SomeoneElsesFingers! For example, I’ve had the pleasure to work on a few custom hand-lettered typefaces with my good friend Jeremy Mickel, who you may recognize as the designer for the new Instagram logo that was released this week!

A few years ago he asked me if I’d collaborate on some hand-lettered fonts, first for Little Caesars and then for Maker’s Mark. Fonts? Pizza? AND Whiskey? Twist my arm! Through the Little Caesars collaboration, I learned that founder Mike Ilitch had a long history of philanthropy, including secretly paying Rosa Parks’s rent for years in Detroit. Working on the Maker’s Mark project meant creating a lettering style based off of co-founder Margie Samuels’s handwriting. It's not every day that you get to honor a badass whiskey-drinking female entrepreneur by studying images of her letters and notes in an attempt to capture her essence!

I may write more about it later because this newsletter is already long enough, but the process of creating a typeface based on an alphabet lettered by hand was really so interesting!

Footnotes:

* “Anyhow, I sat by your side, by the water

You taught me the names of the stars overhead, that I wrote down in my ledger—

Though all I knew of the rote universe were those Pleiades, loosed in December

I promised you I'd set them to verse so I'd always remember

That the meteorite is the source of the light

And the meteor's just what we see;

And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

And the meteorite’s just what causes the light

And the meteor’s how it’s perceived;

And the meteoroid’s a bone thrown from the void, that lies quiet in offering to thee”

⁃ Joanna Newsom, “Emily”

** I worked for the director of this music video in college!

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