A graphic design studio led by Nathan Moehlmann, Goosepen's primary focus is book design and production. Goosepen creates distinctive publications for museums, publishers, collectors, and artists. Goosepen book designs have won state, regional, and national awards.

Nathan attended Lenoir-Rhyne College before graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University with a B.A. and M.A., respectively, in English literature. For the Catawba County Historical Association, he served half a decade as a graphic designer, promotional writer, and editor. The North Carolina Museums Council awarded him its 2006 scholarship to the Jekyll Island Management Institute, an intensive museums studies course arranged by the Southeastern Museums Conference. He is a 2020 member of the Grolier Club of New York.

You're a what? Well, how did you become a book designer?

Though I grew up in a house full of books in High Point, North Carolina—and remember fondly my dad demonstrating "folio, quarto, octavo, 16mo," etc., until the sheet would fold no farther—my typographical pursuits were unplanned. Resigning from the family business, academia, I needed a job. During a trip to visit family, I stopped off in the Catawba County Museum of History, in Newton, North Carolina, to see some field cameras—mahogany, leather bellows—which had belonged to my great-grandfather (and which I was not allowed to touch as a child). Small town. The director knew me through my grandmother. He said, "Send me your resume, come help me edit books." At my interview over lunch, books and editing books were the main topics of conversation. When the check came, the director said, "By the way, as assistant director, you'll also run the membership campaign, handle PR, write grants, give tours, and edit, write, and design the newsletter." "I don't know how to design a newsletter," I said. "You'll figure it out." I edited a few books. I designed one; I hang my head. As a guest book designer a few years ago at a Wake Forest University publishing class, I shared some of the newsletters to illustrate my beginnings. The laughs were louder than I hoped for. But the figuring out for nearly two decades now, with the trust and partnership of many wonderful clients, has led to books—a number award-winning—for which I hold my head high. Be in touch! Let's make a book.

“Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goosepen.”  —Twelfth Night

Goosepen Studio & Press
Nathan W. Moehlmann
nwm@goosepenpress.com
828.850.2705

Mail: PO Box 3275, Hickory, NC 28603
Place: 7 2nd Ave NE, Hickory, NC 28601