Last night we had a rockin’ time showing off our studio space and letterpress shop to Minnesota AIGA members. A big thanks to Minnesota’s AIGA chapter for giving us the opportunity.
We talked about the relationship of letterpress and design, did some Q&A, drank some Pabst Blue Ribbon and wrapped up the event with a little coaster project on press. Take a look at the coaster sheet – it’s 60pt Ahlstrom blotter paper. We pre printed a couple colors before people arrived. Then, we had a different color set up on both of our Vandercook presses. Everyone got to pull a couple prints, then we die cut the sheet into the set of four coasters. Lots of paper touching and good times had by all. Thanks Kayd Mustonen for taking some pics to share.
Published on
July 31, 2009 in
Design, Letterpress and News.
Tags: 60pt, ahlstrom, AIGA, blotter, board, coaster, coasters, demo, Design, impression, Letterpress, minnesota, MN, pressroom, printer, printing, Studio, studio on fire, thick, tour, type, typography, vandercook, workshop.
We have a lot of requests for blind (inkless) impression with letterpress plates. However, a tonal ink is often something we suggest rather than a truly blind impression. If the stock being printed does not lend itself to deep impression, the artwork needs some legibility or the art work is on both sides of the sheet, a blind hit can be ill advised. The amount of impression needed to clearly read a completely blind hit will create impression show through on the reverse side of the printed piece. One of the ways we get around this is to mix a tonal ink, shown here on both black and white business card samples. By printing a tone, we can lessen the impression and dial up the legibility a bit.
The black stock is 200lb Wausau Eclipse Black. It is letterpress printed with a black and silver ink mix.
The white stock is 220lb Crane Lettra Flo. White. It is letterpress printed with opaque white ink contaminated with 877 silver.
Published on
July 30, 2009 in
Letterpress and Printing Tips and Tricks.
Tags: 200lb, 220lb, black, blind, business, Business Cards, cards, cover, crane, eclipse, flo wh, impression, ink, inkless, Letterpress, lettra, opaque, plates, printer, silver, tonal, tone, tone on tone, wausau, white.
Sometimes a great didone typeface just looks succulent, at least we think so. Those serifs are so nice and letterpress crisp, mmmm.
Sara Janssen, who I worked with back in the day at Carmichael Lynch Thorburn (now The Thorburn Group), designed them beautifully. The detail of the hummingbirds and the classic type makes this an elegant set of wedding stationery indeed. Hummingbirds are such an exquisite little bird of great symbolism, we love the copy they put on the table number card. The color is a dark purple ink printed on Gruppo Cordenons Canaletto 111lbC. We’ve been specifying this sheet for some weddings as a cost savings alternate to Pearl White Crane Lettra. It has a more pronounced texture but only a 20% cotton content. It does not taste very good though.
Published on
July 27, 2009 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: 111lb, birds, canaletto, cards, Design, didone, hummingbird, invitation, invite, invites, letter, Letterpress, letterpressed, modern, number, press, printing, purple, Sara Janssen, stationary, stationery, table, type, typography, Wedding.
We just got these suckers back from Ideal Printers over in St. Paul- designed by SOF and offset printed (feasibility and cost issues made it much more reasonable for offset) for The College of Visual Arts- in St. Paul as well.
In order to make the colors on this guy pop as hard as possible we swapped out the standard CMY inks with their florescent equivalent. The actual design process was one of the funnest yet- we took various wood type and ran scrap paper through a little tabletop proofing press and immediately sprayed with our press wash-up solvent and then isopropyl alcohol to make interesting splatters / streaks / clouds / etc. The solvent and the alcohol has the same effect when mixed as gas and water.
Published on
July 24, 2009 in
Design and News.
Tags: 2009, College of Visual Arts, CVA, day-glo, Design, flourescent, halftone, Letterpress, offset, overprinting, poster, st paul, typography, Visual, Wood Type.
Here’s a sweet little run we just finished up for Mauseth Design out of Hoboken, New Jersey. They came up with this set of faux business cards with fake names and numbers for those certain instances where you just- well, where you just could use one of these little guys (e.g. Clubs, Bars, Lounges, Coffee Shops, Class Reunions, Chinese Restaurants and Traffic Stops).
Published on
July 21, 2009 in
Client Focus, Letterpress and News.
Tags: 130lb Manadanack astrolite PC 100, Business Cards, funny, illustration, Letterpress, perf, perforated, post consumer, recycled, three color.
We worked with Vermont couple Dana and Katie to design and letterpress print their wedding invitations. They had a custom silhouette using their own hands to make a heart shape produced by Le Papier Studios. We used this motif throughout the invitation stationery. The soft cotton paper and bright blue silhouettes are contrasted with a simple recycled brown bag envelope and typewriter style navy typography – just the right balance of a raw yet refined style. The invites are printed in a square format with 2 inks on Crane Lettra, 100% cotton stock. All the cards were letterpress printed together on a 13 x 13 press sheet for cost effective production.
Dana and Katie are excited to be on the cusp of history, celebrating just after Vermont legalizes gay marriage on September 1st. Congrats!
Published on
July 16, 2009 in
Design and Letterpress.
Tags: blue, bright, brown bag, cotton, crane, Design, flo wh, hands, heart, invitation, invite, le papier studio, Letterpress, lettra, print, printer, printing, raw, recycled, refined, shape, shaped, silhouette, stationary, stationery, type, typewriter, typography, unique, vermont, Wedding, wedding invitation, wedding invite.
Next time the public transit looks a little sketchy, you’re leaving the bar late and alone or your co workers simply won’t shut it – here is a gift we now ship with each custom project we letterpress. With tongue planted ever so firmly in cheek we present our very own 220lb, 100% cotton throwing star business card. It may not be deadly, but it will get the point across.
NOTICE: It is all fun and games till someone loses an eye. Don’t throw it at anyone unless you intend to use deadly force.
Published on
July 14, 2009 in
Letterpress.
Tags: business, Business Cards, card, cards, crane, heavy, Letterpress, lettra, ninja, paper, pearl white, star, stock, thick.
It is usually bad form to blog or tweet about your breakfast. But sometimes it’s just too gooood. This morning a few of us from the studio went over to St.Paul for breakfast at the Copper Dome Restaurant. The type is served up hot as the walls in this place are covered with vintage flour milling ephemera. The pancakes were good as well.
(These are some of my first iphone pictures, so forgive the quality.)
Published on
July 10, 2009 in
Completely Unrelated.
Tags: breakfast, copper, copper dome, Design, dome, ephemera, flour milling, flour sack, Letterpress, pancakes, restaurant, st paul, type, typography, vintage.
Toot toot! Our Design Camp system for last summer’s event (designed and letterpress printed by SOF) has been making the rounds in the local and national design competition circuit- and lucky for us, doing quite well.
So far we got in at the AIGA MN show, the AIGA National show, and Print’s Regional Annual- and we couldn’t have done it without our copywriter on the project, Riley Kane, illustrator extraordinaire Jenna Brouse, Jeff Baker at Shapco and Dave Lundell at Anchor, Aleks Stancevic and for the Minn. AIGA for givin’ us the darn thing in the first place.
It took about 3 months to design this sucker from the ground up and another month (thereabouts) to mash pretty paper with big greasy machines until this came out:
Published on
July 7, 2009 in
Completely Unrelated, Design, Letterpress and News.
Tags: AIGA, competition, day-glo, design camp, flourescent, four color, identity, Letterpress, lettra, show, system.
The Wall. Its up- in all its magical glory. So special, so tasty.
There’s a better half of a thousand cans up there and darn near all are (diligently) cracked open from the bottom, preserving the original seal. Also out of all the cans hanging, there’s only a handful of duplicates. We are quite proud of this assemblage of our cultural history and all of us, at one time or daily, have to be reminded to get the hell back to work and stop staring into abyss of an unfortunately long-gone and better era.
Have a good weekend everyone- and for all those in America, “Don’t blow your hands off.”
Gems: (Note late 1970’s “Grain Belt Extreme”)
