This year's event will be held November 7-9, 2025 in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. The Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum annual Wayzgoose conference hosts designers, printers, typographers and letter geeks of all stripes from across the globe. It is a weekend filled with type talk, great speakers, and lots of letterpress.
Times below are stated in Central. Schedule Subject to Change.
We’re hosting ten engaging and hands-on workshops this year!
You must pre-register online in order to participate in a workshop.
Workshops break from 12-1pm for lunch. The purchase of boxed lunches are optional but must be done during registration. Workshops are held both on-site at the museum and off-site in the Two Rivers Community.
Get an up close and personal look at the newest exhibits in the museum with the artists themselves.
Boxed lunches must have been pre-purchased during registration.
Welcome Activities
Experience the Museum and spend time with old friends and new, wandering and talking, and participate in these open experiences (No registration is required to participate!).
Learn about the history of the Hamilton Manufacturing Company and the exciting things the museum is doing today.
See wood type being produced on the museum’s pantographs. Learn about the entire process of making wood type, from half round to finished piece.
WOOD * PAPER * COTTON
e bond »
WOOD * PAPER * COTTON examines artist e bond’s exploratory process while creating a fabric collection. This process-driven talk will focus on her two most recent surface design projects, COUNTER and PUNC*T, part of an ongoing series that thematically investigates aspects of language, letterforms, and the written word. Bond will share how the genesis of both collections began in the work she made during a two-week residency at Hamilton. COUNTER experiments with the interior spaces of letterforms, while PUNC*T celebrates the beauty of punctuation. Learn how e makes drawings, monoprints, and in this case, letterpress monotypes—that evolve into fabric patterns—and then ripple out into many other art expressions by other makers worldwide.
Print, Fold, Bind: Panel Discussion
moderated by Amelia Hugill-Fontanel »
This dynamic panel brings together a cohort of talented book artists who navigate the rich history of bookmaking, using their skills in printing and binding, and scoring to create complex, intimate art objects with diverse content. Speakers will discuss favorite structures, collaborative approaches, and how artists’ books uniquely amplify content and engage readers. Discover how these artists transform printed paper into immersive experiences while exploring themes of family, identity, history, science, nature, and politics through their innovative artists’ books.
Join us for a delightful evening of type talk and fine refreshments.
*NEW* This year’s Swap & Sale will be off-site at the Hamilton Community House in Two Rivers and open to the public. Transportation will be provided via trolley to and from the museum and the local hotels.
The Swap Portion: Anyone can bring prints to swap.
Before you arrive at Wayzgoose, create something that you would like to share with the Wayzgoose community. Then be prepared on Saturday morning to swap with other attendees that also brought prints that they would like to trade.
The Sale Portion: There are 35+ vendor tables to peruse for purchasing prints and print-related goods.
Vendors must be pre-registered. They’ll be able to set-up starting at 7am with the sale opening to the public at 9am.
There are no scheduled activities until this afternoon but the museum will be open for those who still need to check-in or if you’re just looking for a quiet spot or place to chat.
Grab your lunch and head back to the museum for this informal gathering, hosted by the Museum’s BIWOC Artists-in-Residence, Melissa Blount, Jen Graves & Desiree Aspiras.
The Business of Letterpress Gig Posters
Bobby Rosenstock will talk about what it’s been like creating woodcut gig posters out of his shop JustAJar Design Press for the past 16 years. From carving blocks to carving out a sustainable business, we’ll explore the craft, the creative process, client relations, pricing, and navigating the intersection of fine art and commercial work. Come to look at prints and learn what it’s been like to work with Willie Nelson, John Prine, Soundgarden, Jack Daniel’s, Billy Strings and more.
The Rabbit hOle: Highlighting Printmaking and Book Arts in the World of Children’s Literature
The Rabbit hOle is a new museum experience in Kansas City, MO, celebrating a century of American children’s literature.
The Rabbit hOle Print Shop is both a production studio and educational space, featuring letterpress, screenprint, and RISO print methods. Beyond creating children’s literature–inspired paper goods for the museum bookstore, it offers printmaking and book arts workshops for all ages.
Learn about the creation of a paper goods brand inspired by children’s literature and how printmaking and book arts educational programming is being developed to dig deeper into the lives of children’s book creators—aiming to inspire, empower, and enrich readers of all ages.
Rainbow Connections: Exploring the intersections of type, identity, and representation at Hamilton
At a Hamilton Residency, Katherine Fries came with both personal and public objectives. How can she use Hamilton’s remarkable resources to tell her story as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and how can she connect, share, and advocate for others to do the same? Let’s set the type, oscillate that rainbow roll, and discuss how wood type can craft our vision for the world, and document the lived realities of a diverse and dynamic community. This presentation will share examples of the work created and encourage others to get involved. Together, we can harness the power of the press to engage and uplift our intersecting communities. Grab your apron, we have work to do!
Adventures in Materiality: Machinery and Artifacts of Wood Type Manufacture
Industrial archaeology is the study of the industrial past based on its material remains, positing that artifacts can shine meaningful light on the experiences of people who lived their working lives in mines, mills and factories. This presentation explores what artifacts in the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum’s wood type shop have to say about the nature of work in the Hamilton Manufacturing Company’s type factory, and about the skills and knowledge type shop workers exercised daily — skills being preserved today through type manufacture ongoing at the museum.
Smoke & Mirrors: Stage Magic & Illusion in Book Arts
Magicians have been using illusionary techniques for centuries to mesmerize and trick audiences. Many principles of stage illusions are relevant to book art: sequencing and timing, hiding and revealing information, and orchestrating an audience’s experience. This presentation provides an overview of historical “magical” devices such as the blow book, magic wallet, and volvelles with a focus on their connection to book art structures. Further conceptual ties can be made between book art and magic through the “black art” of printing, curation of information, and the use of spectacle to tell a story.
The Ink Made Me Do It: Reclaiming Process in Design Education
What happens when graphic design students trade their screens for a letterpress studio? In this session, Kate Tepe, Associate Professor and Head of Design at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, shares how analog processes disrupted rapid digital workflows, creating space for deeper material sensitivity and intentionality. Students began to see type as texture, paper as presence, and process as meaning. Unexpectedly, this hands-on experience also transformed the studio culture – fostering emotional connection, collaboration, and pride in design and craft. By revisiting heritage tools of communication design, students gained fresh insight into contemporary methods – and a renewed sense of purpose in their creative work.
Connect & Make Art - Collaborative Public Letterpress Projects
Setting type and printing has always been about communication – words arranged to create meaning. This is what makes letterpress such a powerful tool for a two-way exchange, and a conduit for human connection.
Elana will share a range of community-centered projects – including events, interactive exhibits and intimate connections in the mail – that invite participation and exchange with the public as co-creators. She will discuss how the projects are structured to balance openness with intention, how the constraints of letterpress shape participation, and how the physicality of type and paper creates space for reflection and meaning.
The Linotype Daily; or how I learned to stop worrying and use 19th Century information technology to sort through the news at 540 degrees!
Dan Wood »
The Linotype was the first successful automatic typesetting machine, launching a new printing and information revolution at the end of the 19th Century. But how does a finicky Victorian Age machine with 3000 moving parts fit into the political/artistic/typographic discourse of today? To answer this question, Dan Wood began The Linotype Daily in 2019 to write, cast in hot metal type, print and publish a new letterpress print every day. It became an homage to the hot metal newspaper era and a contemporary reflection on our overloaded Information Age, using the machine that truly started it all.
Get an update on all things Hamilton.
Keynote: HERE: Where the Black Designers Are
Cheryl D. Holmes Miller is an American graphic designer, Christian minister, writer, artist, theologian, and graphic design historian. A pioneering advocate for racial and gender equality in the graphic design industry, she established one of the first Black women-owned design firms in New York City in 1984.
Miller’s early career in broadcast design led her to create iconic works, including the logo and branding for BET. In 1987, her groundbreaking article “Black Designers Missing in Action,” published by Print Magazine, ignited industry-wide conversations about the lack of diversity in graphic design. Her research and writing, including later works like “Embracing Cultural Diversity in Design,” laid the foundation for greater inclusion and helped form the basis for AIGA’s Diversity and Inclusion Taskforce. Her work has been preserved in the Cheryl D. Miller Collection at Stanford University, highlighting her lasting influence on the field.
In recent years, Miller has focused on decolonizing the history of graphic design, creating a curated database, The History of Black Graphic Design. Her book, Here: Where the Black Designers Are, was published in 2024. Her call to rethink traditional design principles, such as the Swiss grid and mid-century modernist aesthetics, reflects her desire to challenge symbols of exclusion in the industry. Throughout her career, she has worked with high-profile clients, including NASA and American Express, and her personal collection has been acquired by prominent institutions such as Stanford University Libraries and The Poster House in New York.
Set in Stone, Highlighting Winnipeg’s Printing History through Public Art
Sean McLachlan will delve into the design and creation of his recently installed public artwork, Spilled Type. A large-scale sculpture created using 21 Tyndall Stone letterpress sorts, carved to a type height of .918m. The type is arranged in front of the former T. Eaton Company Printing Plant, in the heart of Winnipeg, Canada. This printing plant, which churned out the iconic Eaton’s Catalog for Western Canada, creates a backdrop for this sculpture and for a brief conversation on Winnipeg’s prolific printing history.
Embodied text: from letterpress poster to protection spell
Fegan will detail the print production methods in her practice that demonstrate the contemporary, relevant, timely and seductive power of letterpress as a political messaging tool. From typesetting to installing letterpress posters in diver bar bathrooms. Transforming dynamic posters into screens for printing yardage. Fegan transformed her letterpress practice into wearable garments that are ritual ready. This presentation will include photo documentation of various print objects (protest posters, artist books, protection spell garments) at every stage from conception to circulation in the public sphere. Far from wedding invitations, this work encourages participation in many forms and moves beyond the gallery context.
A Sea of Friendly Faces
Tom Walker has been completely under the spell of the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum since a first visit nearly two decades ago. Over the years this beacon on the lakeshore has been a frequent and favorite destination for so many wondrous visits. A few of Walker’s past museum adventures have included student visits; historic restrikes; (lovingly) uncrating, cleaning, sorting & proofing collection materials; more cleaning & proofing; trash collection & pallet jack hustling; occasional personal print projects; and meeting up with print friends & wood type aficionados at the annual Wayzgoose conference (this is #17). Printed specimens, modular experiments and highlights from a three year typographic treasure hunt through the museum will be shared with gratitude.
In Search of Mexican Letterpress: Imprenta Enlace and their Posters of Tradition and Joy
Letterpress posters for Lucha Libre and patron saint festivities have long been celebrated as part of vernacular Mexican graphics, but they now seem to be an endangered species. In this presentation, Belinda Ugalde will share her journey of independent research and recount the story of one of the last remaining letterpress print shops in Mexico, Imprenta Enlace.