Katya Kisin

2024 CUT/PASTE Feature:

With long days of Zoom meetings and “projects that never seemed to end,” Katya Kisin ‘19 was well on her way to corporate burn-out as a product designer in San Francisco’s tech sector when she saw a job listing for Press Room Assistant & Platemaker at a letterpress print shop. Armed with her MCAD design portfolio, and some technical skills she picked up in a print production class, Kisin surprisingly accepted the job offer, convincing herself that the fifty-percent pay cut would be well worth the improvement to her lifestyle.

Six months later, Kisin took an even bigger risk by buying the business from the long-time owner who’d been looking for his successor. She says with a laugh,“I was the obvious choice because I was the only one! But I thought if not now, when will I ever get an opportunity like this?”

Today Kisin is the proud owner of The Aesthetic Union, a boutique letterpress shop in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District situated on a creative corner of Alabama Street that’s also home to the Heath Ceramics tile factory and Tartine Manufactory. Working from a bright and airy printmaking playground of windmills and cylinder presses, she and a small team of long-time staffers create books, business cards, party invitations, and other custom work, along with affordable art prints that are also sold through their retail space in front of the shop and their website. One of their largest recent orders came from a major AI firm that printed bespoke notebooks for its staffers and clients. “I feel like things are moving in the direction where there'll be more desire for things that are real and tactile,” she says. “In this industry, I’ve noticed that it’s often the younger graphic designers who just love our space and want to work with us.”

But catering to a digital age clientele also requires educating customers about the beauty and value of this analog printing technology. “No one knows letterpress anymore, but when you show people how the paper feels, they start to get it,” says Kisin, who also conducts small, letterpress workshops and rents out the space to allow novice printmakers to make wedding invitations and other projects more affordably. “What I love about this work is there’s something living in letterpress. People might not always understand what it is, but because it’s been touched by so many hands with so much care and intention, there’s something human about letterpress. It just feels real.”