10/01/2026
We are deeply saddened by the news that Bob Masse, one of the greats of poster art, passed away.
IPR founder Bruce Licher had the opportunity to work with Masse on the cover design of a CD compiling Canadian folk rock singer Tom Northcott’s mid-to-late ‘60s Warner Bros. recordings, which was released by Rhino Handmade back in 2010. Art director for the project David Gorman hired Bob to create the front cover illustration with the hand-drawn lettering, and a ’60s era poster that Bob had designed for a Tom Northcott Trio gig was also reproduced (complete with the original mis-spelling of Northcott’s last name). Bruce says that looking back over the email threads that he and Bob exchanged at the time was a trip, and he seemed like a pretty cool dude with plenty of snark as needed (his response after Bruce sent him the very wordy text they wanted him to hand-draw for the cover: “sh*t!!!....thats way too much wording!!!!!...going to be cluttered as hell!” and then after Bruce offered to do some of it in handset type if it was too much: “yo, bruce....dude, don't pay any attention to my bitching! its just thirty odd years of clients fu***ng things up with too many words! or make the letters red because its my wifes favourite color....you know what I mean.......thing is, that making the letters work with the image is what I do...its all part of the art..... hey, I like that ...''its all part of the art ''......sort of rhyms, wait till you see my rough...should have something this weekend ........massso”).
And of course, what Bob sent Bruce to work with was very cool, a black and white digital file scanned from his illustration, which was then turned into a 3-color letterpress treatment printed in 4 different color schemes. It was a really fun project to work on, and it turned out great, in an oversized 10” square package filled with goodies, and excellent music to boot. This was one of the larger projects Bruce printed shortly after he and his wife Karen moved to Bishop from Sedona, when they had the print shop crammed into an insulated garage on Mustang Mesa about 10 miles out of town, a couple years before they found the current print shop and studio space on Willow Street in town. Good times.
RIP Bob Masse. As Bruce says, “I’m glad we had the opportunity to collaborate on this beautiful tribute to Tom Northcott’s music”
