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.
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 business cards are elegant and simple with an unusual format. Although the feel of the design is traditional, the 4.25 x 1.25 inch size presents as an untraditional business card size. The client, William and Mary, makes premium gift wrap collections, so the paper crafting of the printing was very important.
These cards were letterpress printed with 2 ink colors on each side. The cards also have a heavy blind letterpress impression graphic on both sides. This blind area overlaps type on the reverse side. To get an even type appearance and a heavy sculptural impression on both sides we printed a 110lb sheet of Crane Lettra Fluorescent White and pasted it together back to back after printing. By duplexing the stock to a thick 220lb weight after printing the impression show through is eliminated. It is a time consuming and more premium production step, worth it for the final look of these cards. The final step was a round corner die cut.
Published on
June 30, 2010 in
Business Cards and Letterpress.
Tags: 110lb, 220lb, blind, Business Cards, classic, corner, crane, die cut, diecut, duplex, elegant, flo white, flourescent, glue, heavy, impression, Letterpress, lettra, long, narrow, paste, pasting, potdevin, round, slim, traditional, type, typography, unique size.
What if you received a mailing from a company and it was actually something beautiful? With this card, you could even try planting it. This oversize postcard for Northern Lights Landscaping was designed by WestmorelandFlint and is letterpress printed on a plantable paper containing wildflower seeds. We would say they have easily surpassed the typical beauty threshold of your garden variety direct mail piece.
We letterpress printed this 10 x 5.75 card in two colors. The stock came from our new friends here in the midwest at Porridge Paper. It is their Plantable Seed Paper, Ecotan 110lb Cover, wild flower mix. This paper does produce a beautiful sculptural letterpress impression. A cautionary note on those wildflower seed inclusions – it also makes a really big mess inside the printing press. After running several thousand sheets through the cylinder press four times, we had enough wildflower seeds inside the machine to plant a small meadow. A fun mailer AND good times cleaning up afterwards.
Published on
June 25, 2010 in
Letterpress and Printing Tips and Tricks.
Tags: 110lb, brown, eco, ecotan, flint, garden, inclusions, ink, Letterpress, mess, northern lights landscaping, paper, plantable, planting, porridge, post card, postcard, press, seed, seeded, WestmorelandFlint, wildflower, yellow.
Designer of luxury stationery Leslie Vega created these business cards for the photographers of Verve Studio. Visit her blog post here for some additional images and details.
These letterpress business cards took us some time in production with six passes through the press. They feature a brown paper imprinted with a woodgrain texture in tonal varnish with the text in a metallic silver ink overprint. The offwhite side of the card is printed in three colors in tight, tight register. The stock is custom duplexed Crane Lettra Pearl White 110lb cover to Wausau Royal Complements Chocolate Truffle 100lb cover. The final card was round corner die cut to size.
Published on
June 23, 2010 in
Business Cards and Letterpress.
Tags: 100lb, 110lb, 877, brown, Business Cards, cards, chocolate, cut, die, diecut, duplex, duplexed, florida, leslie, luxury, metallic, pearl white, photographers, photography, rounded, silver, stationery, texture, the lv studio, tonal, truffle, vega, verve studio, wausau, woodgrain.
Travis at Lifelong Friendship Society in Brooklyn designed these invitations for his wedding. We love the vintage-yet-modern style with beautiful art nouveau title typography details. The text for the main invite card is nested into the unique and detailed illustration. The elaborate illustration is complete with birds and bees, spiders web, stylized portraits, and lots of geometric love.
We letterpress printed with brown and gold ink on Pearl White Crane Lettra 110lb. The three cards were printed together (in really tight register) as a press sheet and trimmed to size. The linear artwork paired perfectly with the letterpress process, creating sculptural impression highly detailed press work.
Published on
April 22, 2010 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: 110lb, art nouveau, boathouse, brooklyn, brown, crane, Design, geometric, gold, illustration, ink, invitation, invite, Letterpress, lettra, lifelong friendship society, new york, pearl white, protrait, registration, stationery, typography, Wedding.
This poster was letterpress printed for the Artcrank poster show here in Minneapolis, which opened this last weekend. Since much of this show tends to be image and graphic heavy, we wanted our poster to stand apart with lettering only. It is an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Considerations by the Way, 1860. The full sentence is actually, “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air’s salubrity.” (But “salubrity” is such an odd word and just didn’t work well in the design.) The lettering started as a hand drawn sketch, then refined in Adobe Illustrator. We printed with a photopolymer plate on Crane Lettra 300gsm Florecent White at 18 x 24 size. They are on display now at One On One in Minneapolis.
They sold well at the opening night and are still available. There was some confusion about them being sold out. They are $30, to be purchased at One On One Bike Shop.
You can also buy one, now for sale on our studio site as well. Cost is $40.
Published on
April 13, 2010 in
Design, Letterpress and Posters.
Tags: 110lb, ARTCRANK, bicycle, bike, blue, Design, edition, flo wh, hand, large, letter press, lettered, lettering, Letterpress, lettra, poster, print, printer, printing, ralph, ralph waldo emerson, size, type, typography, unique.
This invitation designed by the groom Tyler Thiessen at Neuhaus Design and illustrated by bride Jessie Turner makes their wedding invitation into a fresh art print. It is nice to see a wedding invitation that is illustration centric versus type heavy. They put all the text on the web. You can check out the couples wedding website here.
The illustration is simple with just a little overprinting of bright red and light blue inks. Most of the artwork knocks out, requiring very tight register. (like the blue dotted lines on the hot air ballon.) It is printed on Crane Lettra Flo. White 110lbC The card is like a small poster and folds up to a 5.5 x 5.5 square.
We won’t mince words, this was a hard invitation to print with letterpress. Registration was tight, and the paper does stretch with heavy impression over a solid graphic area. Plus, large areas of solid color are not ideal for letterpress. Letterpress is definitely not like screen printing these kind of solid colors. Most letterpress equipment will not be able to handle this kind of press work. We printed this one on a Heidelberg Cylinder that has the impressional strength to lay down some pressure. Chances are if you send an invitation our way with a lot of ink going down you will get an email with our handy disclaimer that goes something like this. Once all this is understood we can move to press. And as you can see, we DO print areas of solid color and it can turn out very beautiful. Just realize there WILL be variation within the job that is inherent to printing this type of work with letterpress.
Published on
March 30, 2010 in
Letterpress, Printing Tips and Tricks and Wedding.
Tags: 110lb, area, art print, blue, canada, color, flo white, Heidelberg, hot air ballon, illustration, impression, ink, invitation, invite, Letterpress, lettra, neuhaus design, poster, red, register, solid, square, tyler thiessen, Wedding.
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.
