Right, so people keep asking me what a Hellbox is, and whether I named my studio after something satanic. Which tbh is a fair question, given the name. And the occult prints. And the general overall vibe. BUT no, it’s not just completely named after culty things for culty sake.
A hellbox is actually an old printing term, back in the day, when a letterpress printer finished with a piece of metal type, or when it got too worn or broken to use, it got chucked into a box called the hellbox. Eventually all that battered broken type would get melted down and recast into shiny new letters. Old type dies, new type is born. Bit poetic really.
And here’s the bit I really love: the hellbox isn’t even the only devilish word in printing. The old print trade is absolutely crawling with odd terms. There were printer’s devils, the apprentice boys who ran around the workshop covered in ink, doing the worst jobs, and who got blamed whenever anything went wrong (any mysterious mistake in the type was the work of a mischievous printing demon - yes we have our own demon - called Titivillus, obviously, and not the exhausted child...).
There are ghosts, faint, unwanted impressions that show up where they shouldn’t. There are widows and orphans, lonely little lines of text stranded at the end of a parapgrah. bodkin, which sounds like a murder weapon and is basically a spike (so depending on how it was used, could be…) which is used to move and adjust type.
So when I needed a name, hellbox just felt right. A lil nod to all of the weird print stuff, the death, the rebirth, the devils, the ghosts, the mess.
And for those who are new here, I’m Ruby. I’ve been a graphic designer for 17 years, which mostly means I’ve spent the last 17 years staring at a screen, and the last two years worrying that AI was going to take my job.
So I decided to take fate into my own hands (literally) and wanted to make something cool with my actual hands. Something slow, something messy, and something a robot couldn’t do…
So I did the natural thing, I bought a vintage proofing press. Then another one. Then some wood type. And in May this year I officially set up The Hellbox Press in a little studio in Leighton Buzzard.
The kinda work I make is a bit of a smorgasbord of my brain, it’s not all one vibe. Some of it is soft and inspiring, flowers, gentle words, the sort of thing you’d buy your mum. And some of it is dark and weird and a bit rude, think metal lyrics, mild threats, tarot - you know, just the standard.
I refuse to pick just one style, because life isn’t just one thing; humans are tender and brutal and funny and sad, sometimes all at the same time, and my letterpress prints just reflect that.
I like to print on vintage books too, pages torn out of antique books, old maps, atlases, a slightly unhinged book about cats from the 70s... which means a lot of my prints are one of a kind, I can’t reprint them even if I want to, because there was only ever one of that page.
Letterpress has saved my love of being a creative, it feels like I'm back in college, playing and being silly. No screens, or clients, or AI, just ink, old type, and me, pulling each one by hand and occasionally swearing at the press (though we both know if I make a mistake it's Titivillus).
So that’s what a Hellbox is and what my Hellbox Press is. Nice to have you here!
Ruby x