Thinktopia®, an idea generation company for some of today’s leading brands, commissioned this striking poster from illustrator Federico Jordan. Federico explains “The skull reflects our existence and interior vision: our vanitas.” He created this image for Thinktopia that explores the Shakespearian Yorick, San Jerónimo and mesoamerican skull racks called Tzompantli. There is an article on the back of the poster from Patrick Hanlon at Thinktopia that speaks about branding. (This poster print will serve Thinktopia as a new business tool – a mailing to prospective clients) More companies could learn from this – send out something cool to start a good conversation. We would say that an illustrated letterpress print is guaranteed way to get someones attention.
The 18 x 23 size poster is printed letterpress in four colors on Crane Lettra Pearl White cotton stock in both 110 and 220lb thicknesses on our Heidelberg Cylinder – quite possibly one of the most difficult jobs run in our shop recently. It was difficult because of the amount large areas of solid color, the thickness and size of the stock, and the tight registration. There is no overprinting of any of the colors, so all four color plates lock into each other with little forgiveness for shifts in register created by sheet distortion. Sheet distortion is physical stretching of the paper created under heavy impression. Each pass through the press creates slightly more distortion. So by the time we got to color number four, there was some colorful language as well. The 110lb stock ran pretty well but the 220lb stock is a bear to auto feed – especially five passes through the press.
Published on
November 6, 2009 in
Letterpress and Posters.
Tags: 110lb, 220lb, brand, branding, clients, cotton, crane, custom, cylinder, Design, edition, federico jordan, hanlon, Heidelberg, illustration, illustrator, Letterpress, lettra, mexico, minneapolis, patrick, pearl white, poster, print, printer, printing, Saint Jerome, Shakespeare, sheet distortion, skull, thinktopia, Tzompantli, unique, yorick.
Designing your own wedding invitations has to be a designers most challenging project ever. And these are some to be proud of. The groom, Jefferson Perky of Perky Bros., designed these with an elegant typographic flair. They combine textural wood grain photography and letterpress printed type.
We produced these cards together on a 13 x 18 press sheet. The wedding invite was printed along with a save the date card, a thank you card, an accommodations card and a die cut vertical belly band. The stock was 100% cotton 110lbC Pearl White Crane Lettra. The wood grain was digitally printed, then the black type was letterpress printed.
When thinking about doing a letterpress wedding invitation it is important to consider all the cards you need upfront. We ultimately print everything together – saving us time and our clients cost. (Example – if you know you need a thank you card, plan to print it with the main invitation set.)
Published on
September 22, 2009 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: 110lb, band, belly band, cotton, crane, custom, Design, die, die cut, digital, groom designed, invitation, Letterpress, lettra, nashville, perky, perky bros, photograph, press sheet, printing, save the date, tennesee, thank you, TN, type, typography, unique, Wedding, wedding invitation, wood grain.
Not every wedding invite is so typographically unique as this one, with wedding birds too! Emily and Emory, the Bride and Groom designed these fun loving cards with display typography built from basic geometric forms overprinting each other. The warm color palette is three spot PMS colors which overlap and create additional letterpress texture. The cards are Crane Lettra Florecent White 110lbC 5 x 5 size – all printed together on a single large press sheet in tight register. They even included a little “eye spy” art print that turned out really sweet as well. The envelope is a metallic Stardream stock printed with silver metallic ink. Check out Emory’s site for even more illustrative work.
Published on
September 4, 2009 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: 110lb, crane, Design, emory, geometric, illustration, invasion, invitation, invite, invites, Letterpress, lettra, ocular, ocular invasion, orange, red, stationary, stationery, type, typography, unique, Wedding, yellow.
Shine Advertising Co. in Madison, WI designed this flashlight box wrapper as a promotional piece for their agency. The look is a pretty sweet 1800’s ephemera inspired style and inside is a mini Maglite flashlight. We letterpress printed in four spot colors on Smart Genisis Husk 110lb C – 100% PCW. There are three tones of blue ink plus red ink.
Chad, the design director, came in and spent the day on press with us. Take a look at a few press room images he created with an iphone camera using an app called HiCon – kinda nice black and white effect.
A note on press checks - We are always happy to have clients come in for press checks. And if you can’t make it, we often do a virtual press check and send along photos as we are on press. We schedule a press time and you can wait by your computer for letterpress goodness. That really gives no excuse not to letterpress with us. :)
Published on
June 19, 2009 in
Completely Unrelated and Letterpress.
Tags: 110lb, 1800, advertising, blue, box, cuts, Design, ephemera, genisis, husk, Letterpress, madison, package, packaging, PCW, press, press check, printing, red, shine, shine advertising, Smart, smart paper, type, typography, WI, wisconsin.
We love thick stocks. It is a friend with benefits. One of the challenges in letterpress printing is working with the “show through” of the impression to the opposite side of the page. When you have a thicker stock it becomes easier to show more impression and have less show through.
These pictures compare 110lb Cover (300gsm) with 220lb Cover (600 gsm) Crane Lettra which is 100% cotton. What you should notice is that they both have a sculptural impression. But the thinner stock on the top does have some show through, while the thicker stock below has even more impression and no showing on the opposite side. That becomes important if you are doing a two sided business card and wish to minimize showing. The depth of impression on letterpress is controled by varying the amount of packing material underneath the sheet being printed. A single sided design is easier to achieve heavy impression because there isn’t as much worry about the back of the paper.
Published on
February 9, 2009 in
Letterpress.
Tags: 110lb, 220lb, Business Cards, cotton, crane lettra, heavy impression, impression, letterpress services, show through, studio on fire.
