Inspired by all the bits of Saskatoon’s 20th Street history that found their way into the Collective Coffee shop in the Two Twenty building, this accordion-fold booklet was completed in time for their grand opening.

Research for the piece began in the Local History Room at the Saskatoon Public Library. It was impressive to watch the archivists in action – if I so much as mentioned something I was on the trail of, they would run with it, and soon I’d have a stack of archive materials sitting on the table awaiting perusal.

The inside of the booklet features two historical panoramas of 20th Street, and photos of several re-incarnations of the Two-Twenty building (including stints as Kanigan’s Furniture and Joe’s Cycle & Sports).

The outside of the booklet has some details about the ‘coffee philosophy’ of Collective Coffee’s Jackson Weibe, and the story of the Two-Twenty building, owned by Shift Development‘s Curtis Olson. The Two-Twenty is part of an ongoing revitalization of 20th Street that began with the riverbank development and the Farmer’s Market on 19th, and houses Saskatoon’s first co-working community.

One of the details we managed to hunt down was the history of the vinegar factory in Riversdale. Reclaimed wood from the vinegar vats was used in the façade of the front counter at Collective Coffee. Jacob Semko, a local artisan and printmaker who crafted the counter, said the wood gave off a strong whiff of vinegar when cut. These days, of course, the only thing you can smell in the café is espresso.

Production notes: We used a Xerox color laser printer for printing. The booklets were printed two-up on a 12″ x 40″ piece of paper, the maximum length that the printer would accept. This was a massive piece of paper to put through a Xerox printer – we had to use props at each end to help support the in-going and out-coming paper. The first edition was a run of 50. Calculating the scoring was the tricky part, since we had eight panels and each fold adds a tiny amount of ‘creep’ to the length. We needed to adjust our score marks for the second batch. 100 were printed in total.

Grant Unrau let us use his facility for production and I am in love with Stun Collective‘s giant old guillotine slicer! A girl can use a little leverage once in a while….