Sure, lots of people have laser printers hooked up to their computers. But vanishingly few have the equipment and technical know-how for traditional letterpress printing, in which individual letters on wood or metal ‘type’ blocks are arranged into words, inked up and physically pressed onto paper.
At her St. Paul studio Lunalux, though, Morgan Hiscocks does.
So as federal immigration enforcement activity — and the violence of agents’ tactics — ramped up in the Twin Cities earlier this year, Hiscocks said, she quickly realized the role she could play. She began regularly inviting community members into the studio to typeset posters, which she helped print in larger quantities to distribute in exchange for donations to mutual aid efforts.
Posters printed at St. Paul letterpress studio Lunalux hang on the walls of the studio in the Midway Triangle Building, in the Creative Enterprise Zone, on Feb. 12, 2026. In recent months, owner Morgan Hiscocks has invited community members to create protest posters in the studio. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
So far, Hiscocks said, the poster project has resulted in more than $3,000 in contributions to grocery funds, rent relief and other direct-support fundraisers. Designs are posted on the studio’s Instagram page, @lunalux.mn.
“The historical context of all this type is to print whatever needed to be printed — news, ideas, protest posters, warnings, announcements — in multiples,” Hiscocks said. “Loud, important messages. I don’t know how to write those things, but I know how to help those things find their way to a page.”
The original Lunalux was founded in 1993 as a storefront letterpress card and stationery shop in Loring Park, in Minneapolis. The shop’s final owner, Jenni Undis, closed the business in 2016 — but Hiscocks, who’d started as an intern in 2009 and quickly became Undis’s right-hand woman, worked with Undis to save three printing presses and an extensive collection of hard-to-find large wood type in storage until she could find a new home.
After two years of searching, in 2018, Hiscocks found a nook for rent, tucked deep inside the Midway Triangle Building. As a nostalgic nod to the history of the presses, although she’s running a personal workshop and not a client-facing business, Hiscocks kept the Lunalux name for her studio.
“I’m hanging on for dear life to this because I am so passionate about letterpress printing, the history of it, keeping things in practice,” she said. “The more that people are walking away from it, the more that these things sit stagnant, and then they literally get scrapped.”
For Hiscocks, keeping the history of analog printing alive is also the motivation behind the Minnesota Newspaper Museum, a working print shop that she, Undis and a team of volunteers run at the Minnesota State Fair every summer. Many younger fairgoers have never considered how printing worked before computers, she said, nor have the college students she’s teaching this semester at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University.
Vintage wood type blocks spelling out “ICE DROOLS” are set up to be transferred to a printing press at St. Paul letterpress studio Lunalux on Feb. 12, 2026. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
“Their jaw’s just on the floor; it’s awesome,” she said. “Other people’s wonderment with this process is something that I’ve grown to love. … I just have this hope in the back of my mind that somehow people return to this method of printing, that this does become necessary again.”
Lunalux is not and will never be Hiscocks’ full-time job, she said, nor really even a paying job at all. That’s not to say it’s quick — letterpress printing is an “insanely time-intensive practice,” she said — but there’s just not enough money in it anymore. Nowadays in the Twin Cities, there are maybe a handful of people who make sustainable livings as independent letterpress printers, a more dire state of affairs than even 10 years ago, she said.
“As much as I’ve tried to make this my way of living, it has shown me so many times that it’s not possible, and those experiences broke my freaking heart,” she said. “It will never be a financially secure thing, so that is no longer the goal.”
Protest posters lie on a table at St. Paul letterpress studio Lunalux on Feb. 12, 2026. Printer Morgan Hiscocks has been distributing community-made posters in exchange for donations to fundraisers supporting those impacted by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement activity in the Twin Cities. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
Instead, for Hiscocks, the fact that the process is so slow and methodical and meditative and anachronistic is itself the point; the fact that, after hours spent setting type, the only payoff is seeing the inky paper roll off the press. The Lunalux studio has no windows. Yes, there’s a clock, but often Hiscocks will gauge how much time has passed by how many movies on VHS tape she’s played on the small TV.
On a recent Thursday, she was spending one “Jurassic Park” worth of time organizing stacks of “Unchecked Force is Un-American” and “All My Friends Are Antifascists” posters. Christmas decor stays up year-round, she explained, “for morale.” Her dog, Delta Dawn, snoozed nearby.
“The process is the most romantic part, the most enjoyable part — that your hands get filthy,” she said. “It’s just filling my cup. Not with money, damn it, but it is very fulfilling.”
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