Archive for the 'Letterpress' Category

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Webb de Vlam Edge Color Business Cards

This business card was designed by Webb de Vlam as part of their new identity launch. With design offices in both London and Chicago, they wanted a card that would surprise and delight clients and employees. The variety of bright accent color truly brings this project to life. The overlapping colors in the logo mark also create dimension by overprinting ink colors – a nice print interpretation of the online media logo.

The business cards are letterpress printed on Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 165lb C with four spot Pantone colors. There are three spot gray colors common to all the cards – that was the easy part. What made things interesting were the ten additional accent colors that switch out on the logo and edges – each person in the company receiving a palette of four color versions.

There has definitely been a trend toward larger companies using letterpress printing in their identities. We manage business card projects for companies with one person, or several hundred employees. These type of projects are most effective when they are planned with shell sheets in mind. A shell is a sheet with multiple cards ganged up that has all the common colors and logo already printed. That way, when a new hire or reorder occurs, we have those sheets on hand and ready to imprint on future orders. Typically, this works best and is most cost effective when the variable information on a card is planned in only one color. We advise companies to think about their card needs inside the next 18-24 months when ordering shells. Contact us to establish a letterpress business card production plan for your company.

Published on May 13, 2011 in Business Cards and Letterpress. 9 Comments Tags: 165lbC, bright, Business Cards, classic crest, edge color, edge tipping, neenah, shell sheets, solar white, spot color, thick, webb de vlam.

Oooh, Ornithology Overprinting

We printed these for New Found Original – a new online shop selling a carefully selected and ever changing collection of graphic products. They commissioned artist and designer Ryan Todd to design a set of four luxury letterpress coasters for their first collaboration project and introductory collection. The coasters are now for sale at NewFoundOriginal.com and Ryantodd.com

These were letterpress printed in two colors on extra heavy 60pt blotter stock. With the colors common to all four coasters, they were printed together and die cut four up out of the press sheets. We were really happy with how well the overprinting colors actually create a much darker third color. This is overprinting at it’s best – when the illustration is really planned to make use of that third color. Complementary colors do that best.

Published on May 11, 2011 in Letterpress. 1 Comment Tags: coaster, Design, green, illustrated, illustration, Letterpress, new found original, overprint, press, pressed, printed, printer, printing, red, ryan todd, simple, two color.

Letterpress at AIGA MN Design Show

We stay active in the AIGA Minneapolis design community and are excited about the many projects printed in our shop that were in this years Design Show. With just over 90 pieces in the show – 11 of those had letterpress production in our shop. We are proud to be a trusted letterpress production partner for so many designers. Also notable – we took the AIGA MN Peoples Choice award for our own design of the Golden Rule poster. You can still buy one here.

But what does this mean for letterpress as a printing method? Why do designers and judges choose it? Why do the people love it? Here are a few thoughts…

Letterpress is a counter point to slick

The more prevalent digital printing and smart phones become, the stronger the counterpoint of a tactile production method like letterpress. The materials, the sculptural impression, the raw yet refined nature of it make a difference in your hand. We love our iphone as much as the next designer, but there is something in letterpress printing that digital media and digital printing can not touch.

Online Media Is Squeezing The Middle

A lot of the middle range print marketing is being cut out in favor of online business tools. The print industry overall has seen a pretty big smack down over the last few years. The remaining print budget for companies is going toward pieces that will work hard and stay memorable. Projects like business cards, invitations, and other highly visible print pieces get the budget with online media doing the heavy lifting.

Letterpress Simplifies Design

Letterpress makes designers simplify a layout. Pieces usually have just a couple colors, since each color is a separate pass through the press and costs add up quickly. Things like gradients and drop shadows get kicked to the curb because they don’t plate well for letterpress. Artwork on letterpress gravitates toward type.

We’ll be doing some more in depth posting on some of these soon, but here is a summary of what we produced in this years show:

Capsule cards and covers for Blue Earth Interactive

Colle+McVoy an occasion card gift set for C+M All-Set Card-Set

Colle+McVoy Schwinn Calendar Poster,Studio On Fire design

Eight Hour Day cards and note cards for Eight Hour Day Stationery

FAME Annual party invitation and coasters FAME Fair Open House Invite

Loaf Nest LP record jacket, posted here Douglas Quin “Fathom” LP TAIGA records

Red Organic business cards, disc sleeve, folder for Gina Zeidler Photography

Holmberg Design cards and labels for Station K & Company Agency Branding

Studio On Fire our annual calendar, buy one here 2011 Studio On Fire Letterpress Calendar

Studio On Fire our print for a poster show, buy one here Golden Rule Poster

ZYDECO design business cards and brochure for ZYDECO design Image System

Published on May 10, 2011 in Client Focus, Design and Letterpress. 5 Comments

Godspeed Poster with Bicycle Parts Typography

This poster was designed and letterpress printed here at Studio On Fire for the 2011 Artcrank, a poster show for bike people. The construction of this poster is an assemblage of prints we created with actual bicycle parts. Used bike parts were inked up with a brayer and printed by hand. We printed all kinds of parts: cranks, chains, cables, wheels, handlebars and even a seat. It was well worth the trip to One On One Bike to scavenge suitable parts from their basement bike bone yard. After inking each part individually we had a whole table full of prints to chose and build from. It was amazing how much type and texture come out of each part. These prints were then digitally arranged on top of a pencil sketched layout. The word “Godspeed” seems especially appropriate for cyclists, as a wish for someones safe and prosperous journey. It was plated in photo polymer and printed as a large format 20 x 26 letterpress print in 2 color on 100% cotton Crane Lettra. It can be trimmed and framed at 18 x 24 size.

The prints are available on our site for $30.

Published on April 11, 2011 in Design, Letterpress and Posters. 5 Comments Tags: 20x26, ARTCRANK, bicycle, godspeed, hand print, large format, Letterpress, metallic, minneapolis, minnesota, northeast, one on one, parts, poster, tonal white, type, typography.

Winter Xgames Field Guide

We were excited to produce this booklet, designed and illustrated in-house at Target by Aaron Melander. This piece was created for guests of the Target Chalet as a field guide to the 2011 Winter X Games.

To begin the project, we worked closely on the paper selection. It needed to be thick and sturdy in feel yet thin enough to do some 180 degree folds to form the inside cover pocket. For the cover we duplexed two stocks after printing – off white on the outside and brown on the inside. The outside is 78lbC Canaletto Granna Grossa printed in tight register three color letterpress. A tonal pattern printed on French Poptone Hot Fudge 80lbC floods the inside.

One of our favorite commercial shops in town then helped with the interior printing and bindery. The gutt was traditional 4 color offset printed and saddle stitched at Shapco. Since the open edges of the cover are folded to the interior a final trim with the gutt in place was not possible. That meant the gutt pages needed to be stitched separately, trimmed to size, then stitched again into the cover.

Published on April 4, 2011 in Letterpress. 5 Comments Tags: 78lb, 80lb, aaron melander, bindery, blue, book, booklet, brown, canaletto, die cut, duplex, fold, french, gutt, hot fudge, Letterpress, offset, plaid, poptone, red, saddle stitched, score, shapco, stitch, taget, target chalet, winter, woods, xgames.

Well Crafted Coffee, Well Crafted Labels

This coffee label packaging was designed locally by Holmberg Design. Dogwood Coffee Company is a small coffee roaster based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota (and generously present at our last studio party.) They source, roast and serve some truly amazing coffees. And what is especially unique to the experience of Dogwood Coffee is the single cup brewing. Visit them and always expect a well crafted, fully realized flavor. And be sure to take beans home in one of these delicious bags. This is the good stuff, these guys love crafting coffee as much as we love letterpress.

We printed these with two colors – a red and a very light gray /nearly blind ink for the diamond texture. They are printed on our house label stock which is Strathmore Writing, Ultimate White Wove. This label takes a stiff impression and has a bit of tooth and texture that adds to the artisanal quality of letterpress. They are kisscut two up on an 8.5 x 11 sheet. They are cleverly designed to be end user friendly with use of simple rubber stamp imprints specific to the roasted microlots. Overprinting the stamp on the letterpress imprint gives the surface another layer of texture.

Also see the “Reserve” coffee labels we printed previously (when Dogwood was still a part of Bull Run Roasting) also created by Holmberg Design.

Published on March 14, 2011 in labels and Letterpress. 6 Comments Tags: blind, crack and peel, die, diecut, dogwood, dogwood coffee company, holmberg, holmberg design, kiss cut, kisscut, labels, minneapolis, Minneasota, MN, red, strathmore, texture, tonal, ultimate white wove.

SXSW Squarespace Skull Cards

This is a letterpress card designed by Jessica Raley at Bantam Design for Squarespace. They are busy handing them out at SXSW Music Festival in Austin this weekend.

And they took some time to print, seven passes through the press to be exact. Due to the card volume, we printed them on larger 13 x 20 press sheet 15up. They are printed on two paper stocks. Side one on Wausau Royal Complements Eclipse Black, printed with black, varnish, dark silver, light silver. Side two is Mohawk Via Scarlet Red printed with varnish, black and light silver. To hide impression show through we pasted them together after printing, adding thickness and rigidity with another 100lb cover sheet in the middle. The final three ply paper thickness is 280lbC. We trimmed the sheets down and edge colored them in a metallic silver.

Also check out the striking Squarespace business cards we’ve posted about previously.

Published on March 12, 2011 in Business Cards, Invitations (non wedding) and Letterpress. 6 Comments Tags: 280lbC, 3ply, black, cards, cougar, coupon, cylinder, edge color, edge tip, edges, heavy, Heidelberg, impression, ink, large press sheet, Letterpress, metallic, mohawk, red, show through, silver, skull, solid, thick, thickness, tonal, triple, triplex, wausau.

Matching Paper To Sand

Sometimes when you run an island in the Bahamas, you’ll need a business card that reflects the surrounding beauty. This textural business card was designed by island director Cathy Daly for Musha Cay, David Copperfield’s lush 700 acre tropical retreat.

These cards were letterpress printed in three colors on an appropriately sandy colored Mohawk Loop Antique Vellum Husk, custom pasted to a 220lb weight. Note how the island seal is printed in with just tonal transparent white ink. After the letterpress printing, these sheets were pasted back to back with digitally printed sheets (with the island beach image) for a 320lbC final weight. Those sheets were trimmed into oversize 4 x 2 inch business cards and edge colored in a matching blue.

Published on March 8, 2011 in Business Cards and Letterpress. 8 Comments Tags: 220lb, 320lb, antique vellum, bahamas, blue, business card, david copperfield, digital, heavy, husk, ink, islan, loop, luxury, mohawk, musha cay, oversized, recycled, sand, sandy, textural, thick, thickness, thump factor, tonal.

Typography Deconstructed Poster

Ready to pump up your type vocab and sound smart next time you bump into Matthew Carter? Well then, this beauty of a poster designed by Drew Binkley at 38pages is just for you. They have a nifty site called typographydeconstructed.com with great typographic anatomy content. This poster is for sale there too – ready to release the inner type freak in all of us. Get yours with promo code SOF2011 good for $10 off.

We letterpress printed this poster on our Heidelberg 21 x 28 cylinder. You can see in the photo details, the polymer plate is positioned in the press on a custom made full size 21 x 28 inch Boxcar Base. The poster is printed with extra tight register (no trapping) on 100% cotton Crane Lettra Fluorescent White 110lbC and trimmed to a final size of 16 x 24 inches.

Published on February 28, 2011 in Letterpress and Posters. 8 Comments Tags: anatomy, black, blue, crane, cyan, deconstructed, flo white, large format, letterform, Letterpress, letters, lettra, poster, teaching, terminology, terms, tight register, type, typography, vocabulary.

A Matchbook Made In Heaven

We designed this wedding invitation for the lucky couple that won our giveaway with Martha Stewart. It’s only too fitting that the couple we chose to work with will be jumping fires on their wedding night. Besides complimenting our studio name, their scheduled wedding night activities (get your mind out of the gutter) lends perfectly to the orange and white color palette featured by Martha Stewart.

Juan and Irma will be getting married in Madrid on the 24th of June, the night of “San Juan,” traditionally a night when friends and family gather to build bonfires and leap across them in celebration of the summer solstice. (We did some intense Googling and it appears that in many parts of Spain this is a party night not to be missed). They wanted to keep the invitations informal (reflecting the backyard bbq reception), to the point where it doesn’t even use the word wedding–we had to imply celebration and union strictly through the design.

With fire as a central part of the celebration, a matchbook format for the actual invitation seemed only natural. The whole letterpress printed suite is designed in physical layers, causing the viewer to interact as they unfold the invitation setting the stage for the matchbook sitting in the center of a custom frame. The invitation itself is a two and a half inch by three and a quarter inch matchbook that opens to reveal french folded text weight sheets (spanish on the front, english on the back), an intimate piece meant to directly reflect the fires that will be sparking that night.

The copy inside reads “Celebrating the arrival of the summer solstice (amongst other astronomical events),” so we created custom illustrations based around the sun, the moon and the stars to give the suite a celestial feel.

The wrap features the graphic sun inspired emblem with a smattering of stars making their way to a moon icon on the inside flap.

Several diecut papers and a pop of edge coloring create a custom built A7 size frame surrounding the matchbook invitation for mailing.

Published on February 23, 2011 in Design, Letterpress, packaging and Wedding. 6 Comments Tags: die cut, duplexed, edge color, edge tipping, french fold, invitation, invite, leader, lettra, martha stewart, match, matchbook, orange, pasted, spain, spanish, stapled, stationary, stationery, tonal, Wedding, white, wrap.

Letterpress Open House TONIGHT

Final reminder for our Love Machine Open House Party tonight. Hope to see you soon.

Leaving you with a beautiful thought about machines from Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin:

“Machines challenge certainty so well. They should not be able to move. But they do. They turn, and move, and never cease — there is always an engine going, somewhere — like generations of silver hearts they keep the faith of the world and stoke imagination in its continued and splendid rebellion.” Quote from “Winter’s Tale” by Mark Helprin ©1983

Published on February 11, 2011 in Letterpress and News. 12 Comments Tags: Letterpress, love machine, machine, machines, minneapolis, minnesota, MN, northeast, open house, open studio, party, press, printer, printing, twin cities.

Badges for Bruises Rollergirls Poster

Adam Hoganson designed this subtle and beautiful poster for the Minnesota Rollergirls. We letterpress printed these for the bout that took place this last weekend. The poster is an 18 x 24 three color edition on Wausau Royal Complements Natural 100lbC. A big congrats to our press operator and MN Rollergirl “Lizzy the Axe”. She was a brutally wonderful jammer during the bout. (And she printed the poster on our Heidelberg S cylinder 21 x 28)

A word about letterpress poster image size… We get a lot of designers that are surprised by the cost to print at this size. This is not silk screen printing and comparatively, the costs are nowhere near similar. Printing poster size things with letterpress can be an expensive adventure. One way to keep the cost down is to limit the image area since plating is charged by the square inch. (For example, a single plate at 18 x 24 will run about $250, just in plating costs for EACH color) On this poster even though the paper trim size is 18 x 24 the image area is only 11.5 x 16 making plating costs a bit more reasonable.

See a previous poster we printed for the Rollergirls here.