The esteemed fellows at Wilderness in Portland sent us an unusually simple business card for letterpress printing. Rather than load up the card with four telephone numbers, an email, a fax, a twitter, etc – they all simply share the same card. A nice solution for keeping cost down too. Wilderness is the new design trailhead of Aaron James Draplin, John Phemister and David Nakamoto. We can’t wait to see what they do next.
Of course, simple design doesn’t always mean simple production. We printed these on 220lb Pearl White Lettra, 100% cotton. Flooding a dark color like this on letterpress is difficult to lay down and keep consistent over the course of the print run – especially on a stock that has some texture to the surface. When we print a solid like this, we generally go to our Paul Bunyan of Heidelberg Windmill presses – the 13 x 18. Even so, there is still a salty, weathered look to how a stock like this will take a solid coverage on letterpress. But we like it that way, it ain’t offset.
My solution usually is to simply double impress to get better coverage on the 10×15. My 13×18 is foil/die only. I’m guessing for a job shop (even a specialized one) double impression isn’t a cost effective option?
We double pass projects often, and it certainly is more cost effective at times then battling a job, trying to hit it in a single pass. However, the inking system and the impressional strength on a 10×15 is not as robust and we’d like. We struggle even with a rider roller on the 10×15 to eliminate mechanical ghosting altogether. A 13×18, especially with rider rollers just handles the ink better. There are three form rollers and two riders, plus even more rollers in the ink train. The down side is that the 13×18 is a beast and a bit touchy. In the press room, once you switch back over to the 10×15 you feel like you are running a race car.
Hi there – very nice!
Out of interest which typeface is that?