Exploring Life & Business with Dave Wofford of Horse & Buggy Press and Friends

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dave Wofford.

Hi Dave, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
During my senior year at N.C. State’s School of Design in 1994, I attended a visiting designer’s slide lecture. Asked his opinion of a book he had designed, he admitted he hadn’t read it as he doesn’t have time to read the books he designs — and without so much as an awkward pause, it was on to the next slide! Mustering up the vim and vigor of an idealistic 22-year-old, I vowed I would not become like this. It may very well be the way of the world, but it would not become my world. I would design books collaboratively; reading them was part of the picture. (To this day, I have designed over 300 books and read them all.)

After graduating in 1994, I headed for the Hills—specifically, Mitchell County—and the Penland School of Craft, where I participated in the Core Student work/study fellowship program. Learning from a revolving group of visiting craftspersons (and fellow students from all walks of life) in a workshop-centered environment, I concentrated on letterpress printing, bookbinding, and papermaking. I gained inspiration from potters and metalworkers making functional everyday items and turning useful objects into elevated acts of aesthetic enjoyment. In 1996, I established Horse & Buggy Press at “Antfarm”— a still active self-governing artist/artisan cooperative established by fellow School of Design graduates. A former washboard factory in Boylan Heights, this was H&B’s home for seven years. One of my last activities was organizing a 33-person, 400-piece exhibition at the Gregg Museum for Antfarm’s tenth anniversary. This included co-writing and designing the exhibition catalog. In 2003, H&B trotted over the county line into Durham, and in 2005, I co-founded the Bull City Arts Collaborative with filmmaker Kenny Dalsheimer. Housed at 401 Foster Street for a dozen years, we enjoyed being a part of the revitalization of Durham’s downtown. Books were my chosen medium, and I continued collaborating with many talented writers and artists, including Allan Gurganus, Ippy Patterson, and Kathryn Stripling Byer, while working on projects like the 128-page program guide for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. In 2016, I celebrated the 20th anniversary of H&B with major exhibits at Cassilhaus and the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh. Exhibitions included author readings and talks with artists whose works I had turned into book editions and broadsides over the years.

As of February 2017, I’ve been working from 1116 Broad Street. The studio is in an old grocery store building shared by two restaurants. I curate a 500-square-foot storefront gallery, “Horse & Buggy Press And Friends,” which opens into the design studio. In addition to showcasing the many book projects I design, I also curate a bookstall that features interesting artist monographs and books by other small presses publishing lively work. 2019, I curated a two-month pop-up exhibit in a downtown Durham storefront and had much fun doing it. Upon seeing the enthusiastic response, I decided to scale up and go year-round with a 1,300-square-foot gallery and event space. Within a month, COVID-19 struck. We persevered for two and a half years, offering a host of exciting exhibits and events during the ‘good’ COVID months. In June 2022, due to a changing downtown landscape, we decided to close the gallery and event space in favor of having more time for book design. In the studio, I work as a designer, art director, project manager, typesetter, production coordinator, and occasionally copy editor on all things ink on paper (and that has recently expanded to digital publications). Clients include individuals with passion projects they have worked on for years and a wide range of publishers and organizations.

Why the folk name? The beginning years of the studio were heavily focused on in-house letterpress printing and hand-bound books. In the early aughts, we transitioned from the letterpress to work in a broader range of publications with more content to sink our design teeth into. But we kept the folksy-sounding name to reflect our craft-based approach to designing contemporary books and publications.

It wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The road has unsurprisingly been filled with many zigs and zags as I respond to changes in our world and changing desires for the type of work I want to do. For the first seven years, I was focused on handmade paper, letterpress printing, and hand-sewn bindings. I enjoyed being both a designer and maker and showing what is possible aesthetically in embracing older technologies and hand processes. I created many dozen letterpress wedding invitations, business cards, and artifacts for which the letterpress is well-suited. I enjoyed winning several awards for book projects and special collections, and rare book libraries started to purchase them for their collection. This was exciting. But then, on a trip to NYC, I stopped in at the Rare Book Library, which had purchased several of my titles, and I asked to browse the stacks, see what my books looked like in this context and what other books they were surrounded by. They explained it doesn’t work like that and that I could ask to see a book, but browsing wasn’t possible. Well, I knew no matter how hard I worked or how lucky I got, Horse & Buggy Press wouldn’t become famous, so who would learn to ask to see my books? The idea of making super high-end books quickly lost its luster as well when I heard, more than a few times, from collectors who bought my books they were “going to keep them in a box so they stay in good shape, no way I’ll them on my library shelves.” Well, that was a deflating moment. I wanted to design books for readers, not just collectors who were often more interested in already famous texts than engaging with emerging writers and new content. That was a big moment to change tracks and tack in a different direction. I’m glad I did because I now work with and for a much more diverse range of people, with a wider variety of content, and on books with much longer page counts with many different layers of content, writing, and images to weave together.

I appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Horse & Buggy Press and Friends?
I design books for various individuals, publishers, and other organizations. This work includes poetry books and memoirs for folks who want a beautifully designed book but only want a few copies to give to friends, colleagues, and relatives. Other clients include established writers who wish for a larger edition and are excited to work with me because they want a more collaborative design process than most traditional publishers. Publishers and other professional organizations come to me because they know I’m one of the best book designers around, that I know how to work fast and efficiently, either as part of a team or to manage a project entirely on my own, and with great attention to detail in all aspects of a project from communication to typography.

For all projects, the first step involves becoming familiar with the content and the specific goals, parameters, and context. Only by understanding and addressing these areas can one create a robust design with appropriate production paths to create a book that will be successful aesthetically and economically and address other goals. With a great love for typography, every spread of every book I work on gets lush attention, so the journey of reading a book is rewarded at every step. The book becomes a stage for the work to sing out in a clear voice, an essential thing in today’s world with so much noise and clutter that prevents slow, sustained reading.

Despite the folksy-sounding name, I’m extremely well-versed in digital and the newest technologies. This includes editing images to maximize reproduction values and restoring old photographs that may be of poorer quality or have incorrect color casts. I know which vendors to utilize for production based on project specifics, and these production facilities enjoy working with me because they know I’m organized, easy to work with, and don’t bring things around with a “This is a rush job! Needed it yesterday” attitude.

Coming from a photography and drawing background, I’m a visual person who quickly understands balance and composition, how the ocular experience of vision affects things, and so artists publishing monographs or catalogs of their work appreciate knowing their work will shine. One recent project I’m most proud of is designing a 144 page for a wildlife painter (David Lanier) that celebrated thirty years of his paintings and drawings and included first and third-person essays and background and personal stories about the paintings. To hear David say he couldn’t have imagined a better process or book result was great to hear, as was that he sold over 2,000 books in the first eight months

I was equally proud to design a small book of poems for a widowed woman with advanced Parkinson’s. The poems were fantastic, and the response to the book was enthusiastic. She quickly asked for a second printing of 100 copies and told me the book, and through it being gifted to friends and colleagues, had helped her reconnect with many friends and former colleagues, and it was her most joyous event in many years. She’s now looking to give a reading in the library at her transition home. This kind of project is essential to me as an independent business, and I work on a sliding scale to help make it possible for older and less financially well-off individuals.

Networking and finding a mentor can positively impact one’s life and career. Any advice?
Learn how to write well and directly, and don’t be shy about approaching people you admire, hope to work with, for, or want to pick their brains. Understand the valleys will come if you choose to be self-employed and trust you can work through them and get to a better place. Every couple of years, do a self-check evaluator path and determine if you should chart a new path through a minor tweak or a radical revamp.

Pricing:

• All work I do is custom, so project quotes are created after getting project specifics.

Contact Info:

• Website: horseandbuggypress.com
• Instagram: horseandbuggypress
• Facebook: Horse & Buggy Press and Friends