Tag Archive for '220lb'

Page 3 of 3

Typographic Elegance Letterpress Wedding Cards

Erin Jang designed this custom wedding project for Marci and Ben with a unique combination of letterpress and digital printing. The typography here really has a beautiful touch – even with lots of different typefaces, the design is balanced and elegant. Not always an easy thing to do. We also like how the mini envelope on the invitation card creates another level suspense in opening the invitation.

We printed the letterpress portion of the project with 220lb Crane Lettra in an Ecru color and returned them to Erin for finishing. (They needed them quickly, and yes we are always doing some sort of rush custom letterpress work) These cards then had a unique small envelope afixed to them which contains the digitally printed red invitation. Also worth a produciton note is the perf that separates the map and the rsvp card into two parts. We used a fairly coarse perforating rule – about 20 tpi. (teeth per inch) A very thick stock needs enough paper left intact on the perf so it doesn’t just accidently fall off. It’s always worth having several kinds of perf rule around to test the stock and use the one that works best. The difference between a perf that just won’t tear clean and one that falls apart to easy can be tricky to balance. We keep rule around from around 18 tpi up to 100 tpi micro perf.

Check out Erin Jangs blog for more sweet design work. And if you want more, this invite has also been bloggity blogged on some of our favorite sites including Design Sponge, Black Eiffel and Mint Design Blog.

_0000_marciben_erinjang_weddingcards

_0001_marciben_erinjang_weddingcard_digital

_0004_marciben_erinjang_wedding_map_rsvp

Published on August 12, 2009 in Letterpress and Wedding. 0 Comments Tags: 220lb, cotton, crane, custom, Design, designer, ecru, envelope, erin jang, gray, invitation, invitations, invite, Letterpress, lettra, mini, perf, perforation, printer, printing, red, script, stationary, stationery, tpi, type, typography, Wedding.

Tone-on-tone white and black inks

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.

_0001_white_ink_white_paper_logo

_0004_blacksilver_ink_black_paper_logo

Published on July 30, 2009 in Letterpress and Printing Tips and Tricks. 6 Comments 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.

Birds of Sadness Letterpress Poster

We designed and letterpress printed this poster for the Sweet Hair poster show featuring 37 Minneapolis artists. All prints are hair-inspired, handmade and created just for this show. A portion of proceeds benefits Locks of Love. It hangs at the Art Minion Gallery in Northeast Minneapolis until mid July. If you love hair, check out the Sweet Hair site.

Our 18 x 26 poster is a single color printed on 220lb Crane Lettra Pearl White. The type intertwines with a .30 point stroke that flows throughout the poster, making a nice deep impression on the cotton stock. The quote is a Chinese proverb that reads “You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from passing over your head, but you can prevent their making a nest in your hair.” If there are any left when the show comes down at Art Minion, we’ll sell them on our site.

birds_of_sadness_poster_studio_on_fire

_0000_birds_of_sadness_poster

Published on June 30, 2009 in Completely Unrelated, Design, Letterpress and Printing Tips and Tricks. 26 Comments Tags: 220lb, art minion, birds of sadness, chinese, deep, Design, edition, hair, hand lettering, impression, Letterpress, lettra, line, locks of love, poster, printer, printing, proverb, sweet hair, thick, thin, type, typography.

Serious Foodies Business Cards

We just love folks that can blur the line between the disciplines of design and illustration. Jessica Hische is certainly one of those rarities. Be sure and check out her site for more great hand lettering and typography. She designed these business cards for new project by Mischa and Jacob DeHart called Culinary Culture – A Site for Serious & Aspiring Foodies.

We letterpress printed these cards on 220lb Crane Lettra, 100% cotton stock. They are printed three colors on the logo side and two colors on the text side. Additionally, the logo side needed the dark red run as two passes – something we often do in letterpress when there is a solid area of color and text on the same plate. The heavy ink density needed to cover a solid versus the light ink density for text lets the type remain crisp and the solid run as saturated as possible. (That means this piece of paper ran through the press six times – four on front, two on back.)

And of course they just wouldn’t be complete without some edge coloring. These have a contrasting green edge which is nice and noticeable on the thick 220lb stock. We usually recommend edge coloring be applied to stock heavier than 160lbC. Coloring can be applied to thinner sheets, but the effect is more pronounced with thicker paper. _0000_culinary_culture_business_cards

Published on June 29, 2009 in Letterpress. 10 Comments Tags: 220lb, business, card, cards, cotton, crane, culinary culture, Design, edge, edge coloring, edges, handlettering, heavy, illustration, jessica hische, Letterpress, letterpress business cards, lettra, painting, printer, printing, serious foodies, thick, tipping, type, typography.

Round Juggling Business Cards

Fuel is a great creative shop in Iowa that sent us this unique business card design for Whatsup Juggling. It is letterpress printed on thick 220lb Crane Lettra cotton paper. The inks are orange, blue and a custom contaminated opaque white. The card was then die cut into 2.5 inch circles. We then tried to juggle them. Business cards are really hard to juggle.

Some production notes: The original intent was to have the white printing be a blind (inkless) impression. However, where those blind areas of text line up to one another from one side of the card to the other, there is a push back on the impression. When there is no ink to even out the visual appearance, legibility can suffer where the impression overlaps from side one to side two. Putting a white ink down contaminated with a bit of silver ink helps even out the look and gives the general appearance of a blind hit. Check out the pics for comparison. Still subtle, but with a hair more contrast than a true blind impression.

_0000_whatsup_business_cards

_0001_whatsup_business_card_side1

Published on June 24, 2009 in Letterpress. 3 Comments Tags: 220lb, blind, blue, business, cards, circle, contaminated, cotton, crane, Design, die cut, diecut, double, double sided, Fuel, fuel inc, impression, ink, inkless, iowa, juggling, Letterpress, letterpress business cards, lettra, orange, round, thick, two sided, unique, whatsup, white.

Lucky Cat

Fresh cards sent in from the good dudes at LovelyMPLS (who’ve got a real solid portfolio of design/screenprinted work). Two color print with ultra-bright day-glo pink and metallic silver on the good old 220lb Crane Lettra make for a very impressive and striking card, to say the least.

Check out that fine pattern work on the back- the envelope really got pushed with this one. A bunch of that line work is 1/4 point thick (literally as thick as a hair), tapering down, and on top of that the thing’s are reversed out!

01_luckycat_buscard

Published on June 8, 2009 in Client Focus and Letterpress. 2 Comments Tags: 220lb, day-glow, flourescent pink, Hairline, letterpressed, lettra, Linework, LovelyMPLS, metallic ink, pattern, registration, Reversed Out, tight.

One Card For Three People

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.

_0000_wilderness_card

Published on April 14, 2009 in Letterpress. 3 Comments Tags: 13 x 18, 220lb, business card, color, cotton, dark, DDC, Draplin, Field Notes, flood, Heidelberg, Letterpress, letterpress services, lettra, Nakamoto, OR, pearl, Phemister, portland, printer, printing, solid, stock, typography, white, Wilderness, Windmill.

Six Degrees Of Colored Paper

Since letterpress doesn’t do a great job flooding a page with ink, designers must come up with production alternatives to bring in big areas of color. One of the things that can be done when designing for letterpress is combining different colored paper stocks. This works especially well for projects with multiple pieces that need to coordinate – like stationery systems, wedding invitations, etc. Our previous post on the Ocean House system shows a splash of color added to the back of everything via offset printing. Adding a contrasting paper stock for pieces like envelopes and cards can be a more cost effective production solution to still add color to letterpress and avoid offset (or “flat” printing as people call it when comparing to letterpress)

This system designed over at Space150 by Jason Strong brings color to the system by adding a couple contrasting papers. We printed the same letterpress ink color on the white stock and then the burgundy colored stock for the envelopes. This creates a tone-on-tone effect that remains legible and adds a nice texture. A smaller note card in a pink stock also matches the pink ink used throughout the pieces. The business cards are on thick 220lb Crane Lettra, which does an excellent job eliminating the impression show through of a two sided card.

_0002_sixdegrees_system

_0008_sixdegrees_tone_on_tone

Published on March 11, 2009 in Letterpress. 1 Comment Tags: 220lb, Business Cards, colored, crane, envelope, envelopes, flood, jason strong, Letterpress, letterpress services, lettra, offset, paper, space150, stationary, stationery, thick, two sided.

Comparing Thick and Thicker Paper

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.