Red Star Printing

Specialties

Red Star Printing is a small, family-​owned print shop that has provided high quality, short run printing to River North’s designers and arts community for more than twenty years. Red Star offers the kind of craftsmanship and tenacious devotion that faceless corporations are unable to match.

History

Established in 1987.

My wife and I started this business a year after getting married. We raised our three kids at the shop. It is a family business.

Meet the Business Owner

Jeff C.

Business Owner

Jeff is the owner of Red Star Printing and chief pressman. He has worked as a pressman for almost thirty years.

«When I was fourteen I began my life in the printing trades with a high school class in letterpress printing. Letterpress was my first love. Setting type by hand, locking up the form, feeding the press, and having something you could hold, touch, and read come out was somehow insanely romantic to me. I was also taught offset, which is fine stuff, but that just wasn’t as personal as letterpress. The next year letterpress was discontinued and I could only do offset. Later, when I got into the business, there were no jobs in letterpress (all the old guys had them), so I worked in offset shops, paid my dues, learned the trade, all with an eye to opening my own shop one day where I could do letterpress work once again. Now I have that shop, and I’m a damn good offset pressman, but letterpress is still my first love.»