About Clo Mor Press

Perhaps it started like this ... circa 1990 Sid Hillman and Lisa Garza meet in college at UCLA. Five years later they get married. At the time, Lisa works as a producer for FUEL, a motion design firm in Santa Monica but secretly wants to be a graphic designer for print projects. Enter, Sid's hip older sister, Kim Hillman, who after several years as a Senior Graphic Designer for the Warren Group (Culver City, CA), works in Amsterdam as a Lead Designer for Michael Peters Group handling large-scale fashion and retail accounts. Kim designs Sid and Lisa's wedding invitations on hand-made papers, which, of course, must be letterpressed. She finds a printer in England who expertly hand typesets and letterpresses the invitations. They are a hit ... beautiful, simple, elegant, textured and thus begins our journey.

A year later Kim returns from Amsterdam and she and Lisa open a graphic design firm, inkfish in Santa Monica. Together they design and coordinate projects for fashion, entertainment, technology and corporate clients. Later on, Kim moves to Northern California and both Lisa and she branch out while still maintaining active inkfish clients together. Kim becomes a part time designer and press-person at Dauphine Press. Meanwhile, Lisa peruses Ebay and her husband, Sid, finds himself directing a forklift to place a 2000 lb. antique printing press in their Los Angeles garage. Lisa and Sid begin by pressing for Sugar Paper (Century City, CA) while developing their own custom letterpress wedding, holiday and baby lines. Sid, a musician and working actor, adds a new trade to his repertoire, expert letterpress printing.

Finally, Sid and Lisa move to 3 acres just off the Mendocino coast, with plenty of room for the Clo Mor Press studio, 3 kids, 2 dogs, and 2 guinea pigs. They are also close to Kim with her husband, 2 kids and 2 dogs making it easy for all 3 to design and print together as Clo Mor Press.

'Clo Mor'
In Gaelic Clo Mor means "great web" or "great cloth." At 900 ft. above the sea, the Clo Mor cliffs are the highest in Britain, located at the northwest tip of Scotland. Bottom left is the view from the Clo Mor at Cape Wrath looking east. Lisa and Sid spent an afternoon here in summer 2002 and found their visit so inspiring that their new company was named after these cliffs.

Clo Mor Press team, Clo Mor Cliffs, Americano

"We like our printing the way we like our coffee ... why have a pot of coffee in the morning when you can have a fresh draw from an espresso machine ... made with care and attention, each one unique but still with perfect crema and rich taste. Clo Mor Press approaches printing in much the same way ... hand-crafted letterpress with our highest attention to quality, each piece ... luxurious, tactile and elegant."