When a design firm gets all the details right, it’s a beautiful thing to print. These business papers for Dohmen were designed by GS design in Milwaukee, and the details are tight. We just finished printing them and thought it was a design well suited for letterpress. The radial dots under heavy impression create a tactile logo, the custom converted rounded envelope flaps echo the logo shape and the edge coloring is a perfect accent on the business cards and folding note card.
The business cards are Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 165lb Cover. They are 2 color letterpress printed with edges colored to match the logo PMS color. Since this was a single sided business card, some impression show through on the back side was not a concern. However, check out the photo of the back side of the business card and you get a visual on what we’d be looking at if there were printing. Printing on both sides with letterpress is possible. Be aware if if deep impression is used, there will be show through from side to side, even on thick stock like 165lb Cover. We can pull back on impression and minimize show through for two sided cards.
The note cards are Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 130lb C - just a little thinner to help get a nice fold.
The letterhead and envelopes are Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 80lb Text. We like the additional weight of an 80lb vs. a 70lb text weight for letterpress printing. It helps everything feel a bit more substantial and does better job with a heavy impression. And the custom converted envelopes are pretty cool - check out the side flaps - they even follow shape of the rounded seal flap. We freak out about stuff like that - nice.


Published on
August 24, 2009 in
Letterpress.
Tags: 130lb, 165lb, 80lb, business, business cards, card, cards, converted, cover, custom, deep, Design, detail, Dohmen, dots, edge color, envelope, envelopes, flaps, GS Design, impression, letterhead, Letterpress, Milwaukee, note card, notecard, paint, printer, printing, radial, show through, stationery, text, unique, wisconsin.
We’ve been busy with an AIGA student event this last weekend called Portfolio One-On-One. It’s an event for design students to tour studios in the Twin Cities, have their books looked at and attend some short workshops. We had a group through our studio to see the press room and we also did a workshop about “Planning design with specialty production techniques.” Good times.

We also printed a booklet cover for this AIGA event. We hit the bejesus out of an 80lb cover stock and thought we’d show what the other side looks like. Granted, we don’t run everything this heavy. But a thinner stock with a heavy impression is going to have more show through than a thicker stock with the same impression. On this booklet, nothing was on the reverse side, so it did not matter that the impression was extra hard.

A note about tours - We have student groups from all over the country take tours of our shop and we are happy to do it. However, none of them have ever sent us a box of chocolate with a thank you note. That is until Brigham Young University. Thanks BYU. And to all the other student groups inquiring about tours - we now expect some edibles! ;-)

Published on
April 27, 2009 in
Letterpress and News.
Tags: 80lb, AIGA, booklet, cover, heavy, impression, Letterpress, letterpress services, minnesota, one, one on one, portfolio, shop, show, student, Studio, through, tour, tours, twin cities, workshop.
What does a really classy guy do when it is time to pop the big question? Buy a ring to be sure. But here is another little something - a small book of various emails between the couple, collected, bound and side sewn as a letterpress book. We designed this little gem as a request from the groom-to-be. He compiled all the email notes between the two of them from the past four years and sent them to us. We’ll keep the couple and their notes anonymous, but here are the production details:
The gutt of the book is digitally printed in black text. The pages have a single hit of blind letterpress on the french folded edge. The pages are side sewn together and tuck into a custom hard bound book cover with black book cloth. We printed a custom liner on the cover interior with silver ink on black paper. The cover of the book and the title page are also letterpress printed in silver ink. The paper is 100 percent cotton Crane Lettra 80 lb text.
We’ve confirmed that she said yes.


Published on
March 20, 2009 in
Design and Letterpress.
Tags: 80lb, black, book, book cloth, crane, Design, design services, edition, engagement, fold, folded, french, hard cover, Letterpress, letterpress services, lettra, metallic, paper, sewing, side sewn, stitched, text.