Parisian Phoenix Publishing

Yesterday, art director Gayle Hendricks and I headed to Massachusetts so we could visit the Museum of Printing, which is only open Saturdays, and near the home of author E.H. Jacobs.

We planned one stop on the way up– in Mystic, Connecticut– and had a room booked at the Doubletree by Hilton because they have warm chocolate chip cookies and I know Gayle likes chocolate. The cookie did not disappoint!

I come into a lot of these adventures by accident, and the details that impress me often may go unnoticed in the everyday world. Unless you’re Gayle.

But that because I’m talking about books, bookstores and design.

We ended up in Mystic in part because it’s about halfway, but also because I found Alice’s Haunted Little Bookshop and had to see it for myself.

(Gayle is not miserable in that photo, she was cold and I was too obsessed with the chandelier to notice. She hates this photo so to compensate her I am posting a photo of me in the hot tub at the end of this.)

After we left Alice’s, we visited a few more shops, one of which was Cloak & Wand where we had delicious drinks, mine was called a “Hag’s Brew.” But the real winner here was their graphic design.

They managed to put soooo much type, typefaces and general decorative stuff without making it look cluttered and like garbage. Gayle might credit that to type hierarchy but I don’t want to put words in her mouth.

We stopped at the Mystic Chamber of Commerce visitor’s center, because I love a good visitor’s center. The person staffing it gave us some maps and material and among it I found this children’s fun sheet that packed an amazing amount of activities into one page. We need something like this for our company.

So, I gave it to Gayle without coloring it first.

When we arrived in Massachusetts, the Doubletree did not disappoint. The cookie was delicious and the restaurant was named “Characters.” Which, as the executive team of a publishing company, seemed like a place where we should be.