Pinball Publishing is not your everyday printer. For one, the business is housed in a bright yellow building in an industrial section of SE Portland. So from the point of contact, you know something different is afoot.
To see what’s different about PP’s work, they’ve lovingly installed several of their recent jobs on the company blog, CoinOp. Another point of difference is the company’s history as a publisher of poetry and other literary works.
In a Portland Mercury article from 2005, PP Creative Director and partner Austin Whipple said:
We never really felt that the publishing would be the way we would survive financially. It was the investment in the equipment that allowed us to publish [eye-rhyme and other] work that we did. Instead of spending $5000 or whatever on paying another press to print it, we were kind of like, “well, the little money that we have for this project–maybe we should invest it in equipment instead…”
Whipple and his wife Laura describe their business as “a challenge to provide custom offset print options with a focus on understanding our clients’ vision in an enthusiastic, design sensitive environment where novice to professional can purchase the highest level of quality with the best service in the industry.” That’s what I’d look for in a printer.