These letterpress business cards were the perfect fit for web development and design company Ackmann & Dickenson. We like how these guys frame their business as “Craftsmen of Fine Technology”. They designed these cards and we letterpress printed them to reflect craftsmanship.
And this card did require some crafting. We started with the making of a custom duplex paper – 160lb Mohawk Loop Ivory Smooth pasted to French Construction Nightshift Blue 100C – totaling a thick 260lbC card. Next we letterpress printed them with two colors on each side, silver and tonal navy inks on the blue side, then blue and gray inks on the ivory side. We printed a couple 8up forms to meet all the employee name versions needs and then die cut them with small inverted corners. Viva tactility and technology.
Published on
September 2, 2010 in
Business Cards and Letterpress.
Tags: ackmann, blue, business, card, cards, corner, custom, dark, Design, dickenson, die, diecut, duplex, french, gray, heavy, inverted, ivory, Letterpress, mohawk, navy, nightshift, off white, pasted, pattern, quilted, round, soft white, stock, thick, tonal, two sided, web development.
My wife and I did our first visit to New Orleans on Friday the 13th this last month to celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary. Stayed in a condo in the French Quarter that was on the haunted buildings tours. Weird how that stuff lines up, ehh? Despite that uncanniness, it was an excellent trip. New Orleans has such a rich texture and patina of ornament everywhere. The food was amazing. Three favorites you must check out if you visit are Eat, Elizabeth’s, and Willie Mae’s Scotch House.
The beautiful iron and flourishing ornament of the area had me transfixed with everything I passed. Here are some photos I took for graphic inspiration. 
Published on
September 1, 2010 in
Completely Unrelated.
Tags: Design, eat, elizabeth's, fleur, floral, flourish, graphic, iron, new orleans, ornament, ornamental, paint, patina, pattern, scroll, textural, texture, willie mae's scotch house, wood.
These are some beautiful wedding invitations designed by Anchalee Chambundabongse just letterpress printed here at Studio On Fire. The variety of the hand drawn type in this invite is super well done. Mixing up lettering like this looks deceptively simple. The texture of the diverse type styles in this layout maintains simplicity without looking cluttered. The format is fun too and keeps the type big so the lettering details come through. The invitation unfurls as a long trifolded card. A nice punch of blue color with an acorn printed slip sheet and matching blue rsvp envelope. The blue paper stock is French Poptone and the invitation is Gruppo Cordenons Canaletto 111lbC.
We’ve had the pleasure of letterpress printing some other beautiful projects designed by Anchalee you can check out on our blog – coasters and cigar bands and cd packaging.
Published on
August 31, 2010 in
Wedding.
Tags: acorn, anchalee, blue, blue on blue ink, canaletto, chambundabongse, custom, folded, french, hand drawn, invitation, lettering, minneapolis, minnesota, poptone, RSVP, tonal, trifold, type, Wedding.
This invitation was designed by Julia Kostreva. We felt this was a unique wedding stationery set in both it’s design and production. Julie worked with us to lay out the press sheet for her design in a way that could utilize a split ink fountain. (That’s were a couple colors are loaded in the ink fountain and blended together in a single color pass on press.) It is printed on Crane Lettra Fluorescent White 110lb cover. It also has a unique halftone applied to the floral artwork that made additional visual texture within the letterpress printing.
PS. This is featured today on Martha Stewart Weddings.
Published on
August 26, 2010 in
Wedding.
Tags: 110lb, bright, crane, effect, flo wh, flourescent, fountain, green, ink, invitation, invite, julia kostreva, Letterpress, lettra, martha stewart, press sheet, split, Wedding, weddings.
These black and white wedding invitations dress up with a flashy little pink edge coloring. They were designed by the bride Laura Widmar. She incorporated both Spanish and English into each piece in the wedding suite by using the front and back sides of the cards.
We letterpress printed them on 110lb Crane Lettra Pearl White and pasted them Spanish to English after printing, making a thick 220lb cover stock. We then trimmed them to size and edge colored everything in a bright pink.
Published on
August 24, 2010 in
Wedding.
Tags: black and white, border, cards, color, coloring, crane, duplex, edge, english, invitation, invite, laura widmar, Letterpress, lettra, pasted, pearl white, pink, spanish, Wedding.
These cards were designed by the Thorburn group here in Minneapolis. They are letterpress printed with a silver ink on both sides of a custom duplex black and white stock.
Custom pasting of a duplex of paper stock is a good way to make a project with look and feel unique. It’s very often the best way to get both the colors and stock thickness desired for a project. And lets face it – most of the stocks available from paper companies as pre-duplexed options are pretty fugly colors and/or texture combinations. This stock is Wausau Royal Complements Eclipse Black 100lb cover pasted to 100% cotton Neenah’s Crane Lettra Flo White 110lbC. For production, these two papers were pasted together, then letterpress printed.
As an end note, I worked at Thorburn several years before the jump to full time operations of Studio On Fire. Check out the Thorburn site here for some solid design work.
Published on
August 17, 2010 in
Business Cards.
Tags: 100lbC, 110lbC, 877, black, Business Cards, cards, crane, custom, duplex, eclipse black, flo white, florecent, glue, ink, Letterpress, lettra, metallic, neenah, paper, pasted, pms, royal complements, silver, thorburn, thorburn group, wausau, white.
These business cards were designed by fashion and luxury photographer Zachary Goulko. (be sure and check his portfolio for additional inspiration) His layout is simple with diagonal linear pattern and a flashy metallic copper edge color.
We letterpress printed them with 2 colors – a copper metallic ink and a tonal white ink. We used Wausau Royal Complements Bright White 100lb Cover paper stock. The card press sheets were printed then pasted together with an extra sheet in the middle to produced a triplexed sheet for an extra thick custom 300lb cover stock. They were trimmed and finished with the metallic edge color. These are lux with a definite presence.
Published on
August 13, 2010 in
Business Cards.
Tags: 100lb, 300lb, bright white, Business Cards, color, copper, diagonal, edge, fashion, ink, Letterpress, lines, metallic, pattern, photographer, tonal, triple, triplex, wausau, white, zachary goulko.
This wedding invitation for Andy and Drew is certainly a unique format. It was designed by Drew Hodgson for his wedding in Palm Springs, CA. The bold colors and contemporary shapes make the design both modern and masculine. The invite is actually a folder enclosure that opens to reveal the invitation text on the flap. The folder opens further to Continue reading ‘Modern Graphic Type Wedding’
Published on
August 6, 2010 in
Wedding.
Tags: 110lb, bird, blue, CA, California, crane, custom, die cut, enclosure, envelope, folder, french, gay, graphic, gusset, hummingbird, initials, invitation, invite, Letterpress, lettra, masculine, modern, orange, orange fizz, palm springs, pearl white, pocket, poptone, printing, same sex, save the date, tone, type, typography, Wedding, wrap.
These over sized plaid pattern business cards were designed by our good friend Mark Saunders for his new solo creative venture PlaidLab. They use some great vibrant colors and the overprinting inks make rich and saturated secondary colors.
We letterpress printed them on heavy 220lb Cover Crane Lettra Pearl White. We usually run smaller custom business card orders two cards up on a small press sheet, so it was easy to provide some variety by including two different patterns. The magenta color is the same on both cards, but a color change from orange to blue on one plate gave the cards even more variety. One thing we did to keep the quality of the type crisp and punchy was to print it as a separate pass. By printing the same color in two passes we could run the large graphic plaid with heavy ink density and light ink density on the type. Mark was shooting for something about the size of an iphone, so the final cards were round corner die cut to an over sized 4.5 x 2.25. See comparison pic alongside a standard 3.5 x 2 inch business card for scale.
Published on
August 4, 2010 in
Business Cards and Letterpress.
Tags: 220lb, blue, bright, business card, colorful, crane, die cut, diecut, iphone, large, Letterpress, lettra, magenta, mark sauders, modern, orange, oversize, pearl white, plaidlab, round corners, rounded, scale.
A good narrative is behind good relationships. That’s why a booklet telling a little bit of the couples story is extra special as a wedding invitation. This invitation was designed by Craig Duffney at BBDO in New York for his friends Amy and Adam. He did excellent work making two sets of illustrated capitals and graphics. One corresponds with the bride, the other with the groom and they co-mingle in the invitation layout.
Planning out the production of a little booklet takes some extra finesse beyond the standard wedding stationery. The format here is an A7 size booklet with a soft cover and french folded pages. The cover is a heavier 110lbC Pearl White Crane Lettra. The gutt is lighter weight 80lbT Pearl White Crane Lettra. Both were letterpress printed in two colors, a lighter green corresponding with the bride and an olive green with the groom. The pages were scored, collated and top stitched inside the cover with a cream colored thread. Then a final trim was taken from head and foot. We also produced an RSVP card and matching folding thank you cards. This is certainly among the more elaborate invitations we’ve produced, yet the final appearance remains simple and striking.
Published on
July 29, 2010 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: 110lbC, 80lbT, BBDO, bird, book, booklet, cotton, craig duffney, crane, fold, french fold, icon, invitation, invite, Letterpress, lettra, narrative, pearl white, printing, stitch, stitched, top stitch, typography, Wedding.
Sometimes it’s possible to get an oversize sheet on an undersized platen letterpress. What is important to keep in mind is the distance between the arms on either side of the platen. As long as the sheet is smaller than that dimension, it could fit.
This is a long 4 x 18 inch card that needs to fold in half to 4 x 9 inch and fit into a standard #10 envelope. We are set up in this photo to run a 3 point matrix score, but this works for printing as well. To fit this sheet size onto our 10 x 15 size C&P platen press required a special McGill gauge pin for the side guide that fits between the tympan bail and the side of the platen. It extends beyond the platen and adds the couple inches needed to get the sheet to land inside the working area. It is a good solution to handle smaller hand fed jobs.
These guides came with equipment we purchased several years ago and we can not find more. Although, it could be rigged up from hardware store material pretty easily. If anyone has a source for these guides, please share! Someday we’ll just get a bigger hand fed press, but then there will be an even bigger sheet.
Published on
July 27, 2010 in
Letterpress and Printing Tips and Tricks.
Tags: 10x15, 12x18, 14x22, 6x10, 8x12, brass, C&P, Chandler and Price, gauge pin, Letterpress, matrix score, McGill, newstyle, oldstyle, oversize, paper, pearl, pilot, pin, platen, printer, printing, printing press, rule, sheet, side guide.
Ty Mattson really outdid himself on the design and illustration of these announcements for his son. Beautiful stuff. You can see his post on them here. Be sure and put an eyeball on his other portfolio work as well. This guy knows how to illustrate and take full advantage of simple overprinting – a rare and admirable skill in today’s print design.
The card itself is a large 7.25 inch square print, printed on one side only. We letterpressed these on Crane Lettra 220lb Flo White in bright red and light blue colors. The registration made us a little worried at first, but it did stay true despite the tight fitting and zero trapping.
