Felt & Wire Launches New Design
Short of the paper cuts, the blog Felt & Wire captures the experience of all things paper: its endless varieties, uses and innovations, and the close personal associations we have with a material that is often right at our fingertips. The site was launched a year ago by our longtime client Mohawk Fine Papers to help foster a community of designers, artists, printers, papermakers, bookbinders and other craftspeople who are, as the site’s tagline puts it, “paper-obsessed.” The blog initially focused on paper-related topics like letterpress and written correspondence, but is now widening its focus to cover paper, print and design. To curate this expanded scope is newly appointed editor Tom Biederbeck, former editor in chief of STEP Inside Design and Dynamic Graphics magazines.
This week Felt & Wire launched an updated site design created by Michael Bierut and Katie Barcelona, who designed the original site last year. New features include a monthly Q&A column with Sean Adams, a forum for sustainability in design, and a monthly column called Studio Insider presenting the working spaces of leading artists and designers. The homepage now highlights reader comments and the site’s Twitter feed. One of the site’s most popular features is the Felt & Wire Shop, a curated marketplace introduced last fall that offers paper goods produced by designers and artists, including greeting cards, wrapping paper, books, posters and calendars. (Think Etsy for paper.) In addition to designing the site, Barcelona will be periodically contributing to the blog; her first column appears today.
And the name? Felt and wire are two materials used in the final stage of the papermaking process. Felt helps to absorb excess water and wire helps to structure the sheet as it forms. Representing the tactile and the technical, they’re also metaphors for the subjects that the site’s creators will continue to explore.