Behind-the-Scenes at Hello!Lucky
Tuesday, July 19, 2011 at 5:00AM 
Hello!Lucky is a San Francisco-based design studio and that makes us extra happy! Eunice and Sabrina are the lovely sisters behind the line of custom letterpress stationery, wedding invitations and paper ephemera. They have received a lot of love and recognition in the design world this year with their book Handmade Weddings by Chronicle Books. We personally reference those pretty pages for inspiration in our studio! Creative Director Eunice and her husband Daniel's wildly fun wedding was featured in the spring 2010 Martha Stewart Weddings, to our delight. Those gorgeous party shots convinced us of their fun-loving spirit and originality. We scored an invite into the Hello!Lucky studio and brought photographer Julie Bullock along to capture every detail. She did an amazing job! Enjoy!
Tell us a little bit about how Hello!Lucky came to be. What inspired the business and who's involved. On some deep, subconscious level, Hello!Lucky started because Eunice and I have always loved working together, being creative and making people happy! We started the business on a whim. Eunice fell in love with letterpress printing at the same time that I graduated from business school {my goal was, and still is, to help talented artists realize sustainable careers doing what they love}. I talked Eunice into letting me help her make her hobby into a business. Soon, we were having so much fun making letterpress cards and designing custom invitations that we decided to create an online presence and slowly built up a team of amazingly creative and dedicated staff. Today we have about 18 employees in San Francisco and London. We're still very much a small business, with local design and manufacturing, and it's just as fun as ever!
How has it changed and evolved since the onset?We started out with eight letterpress greeting cards that we hawked at a miniscule booth at the National Stationery Show in New York {it was kind of sad, really, but it gave us the nerve to expand!}. Soon, we added custom letterpress birth announcements and wedding invitations. We quickly realized that that many of our diehard fans and would-be customers couldn't afford custom letterpress printing. So, we investigated cutting edge digital print technology and found a way to create invitations that look almost as beautiful as letterpress, at about 1/2 the price. Meanwhile, we developed our first e-commerce website that lets customers personalize and order invitations online. All this was accomplished without any tech or retail background and with the financial support of friends and family, so we've been creative in more ways than one! In the meantime, we wrote a couple of books: Handmade Hellos {2009} and Handmade Weddings {2011}, both published by Chronicle Books. We started collaborating with a handful of artists including Julia Rothman and Joel Dewberry. We're about to launch a brand new version of our website and blog along with a bunch of wonderful new designs and collaborations! We're super excited!
What's the story behind your studio space? Our studio used to be a button factory in the 1920s. The upstairs, where our retail area and our design and sales departments are located, looks down over our press room. We have four vintage presses, including the hand-cranked Vandercook press that we used to print our very first cards. All of our letterpress cards are designed and printed in our studio, and orders get shipped / picked up from our studio, too {customers can even come and see letterpress orders on press. Visitors are always welcome!}.
What does a day in the Hello!Lucky studio look like?A day in the life in the Hello!Lucky studio involves a lot of things, depending on who's involved. For designers, the day starts with revising customer proofs and may include time to develop new designs, work on our website, or hold informal crits of new work.
For our design consultants, the day starts with responding to customer inquiries and requests, and includes meeting with clients in our studio, checking on jobs that on press or being shipped, writing a piece for our blog, going to the farmer's market, and/or working on a crafty project for a client's wedding. At the moment, we're working on a British wedding that involves fan programs, a hand-cut paper cake topper, screen printed table plan banner, and table name cards cut out in the shape of English pub crests! 
For our printers, the day consists of making plates and printing orders on our vintage presses, and might involve working on personal art projects after hours. We encourage our printers, who are trained fine artists, to use our equipment for personal work; our very own James Tucker, is currently exhibiting in a letterpress poster show at The Curiosity Shoppe!"
What five wedding + design elements are you currently obsessed with?- Foil stamping - a bit of gold detail just adds a certain je ne sais quoi to an invitation!
- Edging - e.g. when the edge of a thick card is a solid color {preferably neon!}
- Water-related elements, e.g. dip dying, rainbow rolls, watercolor
- Polka dots and confetti
- Everything at BHLDN!
What style do your wedding clients tend towards?
Whimsical, handmade / hand-drawn, vintage-inspired, and refined. Our clients tend to want something that is uniquely their own, creative, and will stand the test of time. We love finding this happy balance for them!
You’ve pretty much seen it all in the wedding d.i.y world— any most-loved projects out there? This is such a hard one, because there are so many great ideas out there! We love bunting and streamers of all kinds because they're so simple and high-impact. A couple of our faves are of course in Handmade Weddings— the paper link chains and the dyed coffee filter pom-poms. But another recent fave are these simple fringed streamers by Jordan Ferney. We also love this finger print guest book from Etsy seller Bleu de Toi which could easily be translated for the DIY-inclined. What a lovely way to get guests involved in creating a cute keepsake!
{Above, pictured from L-R: Design Consultants Stewey Freund, Lia Lafreniere, Kristine Moore & Lillian Wilson}
When it comes to paper design, what would you like to see more of?
Refinement, subtlety, whimsy, and attention to detail. Great design is all in the details. We see so many paper options out there that are very trendy, not well-executed, and/or cheaply made. These days, if you're going to put something in print, it should be worth the effort: tactile, beautiful, and well-designed {or at least, that's our humble opinion!}.
The Bell Jar, Cotton Sheep, Crissy Field, Piccino, The Monk's Kettle, Bell'ochio, Chez Spencer, The Front Porch, Paxton Gate. In the East Bay: Castle in the Air, Tail of the Yak, and the Alameda Flea Market!
Hello!Lucky is a member of The Collection Event Studio
Visit them at 977 Howard Street, weekdays from 9am-6pm
Photography by Julie Bullock for Kate Webber Photography
Reader Comments (3)
Oh what a beautiful studio! I wish we could have place like that at some point!
Oh what a beautiful studio! I wish we could have place like that at some point!-Rado watches Swiss
Wonderful post!!!
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