About a year and a half ago my colleague at the University of Illinois, Steve Kostell and I found ourselves drinking beer and admiring the design of the labels. It wasn't necessarily a scene from "The Great White North", but instead a revelation. It isn't necessarily unique for an artist and a designer to become giddy over a nice beer label and discuss it's aesthetic connection to WWII posters, however our conversation about local growing seasons (similar to a micro-brewery) helped jumpstart a furious grant writing session which led to the successful funding of Fresh Press (Agri-fiber papermaking laboratory).
Recently thanks to the hard work of two of our students Olivia LaFaire and Lucas Albrecht, we put together a quick snapshot of what Fresh Press currently does and its future in the hopeful revitalization for American manufacturing, sustainable paper, and a better world.
Watch the video on Vimeo.
About Fresh Press:
Fresh Press is an educational agri-fiber papermaking and design studio providing systemic design solutions to East Central Illinois. Our goal is to develop markets for sustainable paper made from locally produced agri-fiber and indigenous plant material. Our intent is to function as a model for regional sustainable paper materials that collaborates across multiple academic disciplines, reviving a local agrarian economy based on entrepreneurship and sustainable professional practice, while reducing the environmental impact of paper consumption at the sizable university, as well as surrounding urban and rural communities.
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