Yee Haw!

A couple weeks ago I was vacationing in East Tennessee visiting family and sightseeing. Our family makes the effort to visit each other during the big life events: weddings, funerals, graduations,etc. This visit was for my cousin who was graduating from high school. I didn’t want to get to distracted from my type discoveries while on vacation, so I did a little research before I left on a print shop in downtown Knoxville that seemed promising.

Yee Haw Industries certainly did not disappoint. It is a wonderful letterpress print shop, that the kind staff member, BJ, let me and my mom walk around back to look at all the wonderful rows and rows of metal type and presses. He even showed us the new wood type they’ve begun designing with a fancy new machine. Their walls are covered with all their posters they’ve printed over the years and I had a hard time choosing just one to purchase as my “souvenir” of the trip. The owners have become well known for swallowing up all the old letterpresses available in the country and it is a sought after place of employment for those in the field. BJ got his degree in printmaking and while doing his internship at Yee Haw was fortunate to get a full-time position. Here are some of the great pictures I took while in awe of the workshop.










Knoxville also did not disappoint in the museum arena as well. The Knoxville Museum of Art was my favorite of the trip which had a nice showcase of photography from people of East Tennessee and then an upstairs gallery from local impressionist artist. Quite nice.



Now I return to California with a great informational design project blooming in my head on constructing a family tree. On one side of my family we can trace back to the 1700s where one on my ancestors fought for the Confederacy and another shook hands with Abraham Lincoln. I’ve been struggle to find a project that I would like to create to develop my informational design skills and after this trip and all the new bits of information I have discovered this feels like a great direction.