Tag Archive for 'black'

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An Advertising Sleeper Cell

In the spirit of the freemasons, there exists a creative group called Levy 7. Not much is known – they describe themselves as, “a collection of like-minded individuals who, through their awesomeness and grace, elevate the larger group in any and every social and professional endeavor, making us simply the most dynamic advertising sleeper cell/social club in the free world.”

The materials were designed by our friends in DesignWorks at BBDO in New York, a group that bleeds pure design talent. There are business cards, coasters and of course, cigar bands. We letterpress printed the materials in two metallic ink colors. The black paper is ultra thick custom duplexed Black Stonehenge. The white is paper is 179lb Crane Cover, 100% cotton. The cigar band stock was a black text weight from French Paper. After the labels were printed, we applied a remoist glue to the back edge and die cut them. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to form my own letterpress sleeper cell fraternity.

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Published on April 1, 2009 in Business Cards and Letterpress. 2 Comments Tags: BBDO, black, Business Cards, cigar band, Design, designworks, die cut, die cutting, duplex, ink, labels, Letterpress, letterpress services, luxury, metallic, new york, paper, printers, printing, remoist, sleeper cell, typography.

Love Correspondence: Letterpress Engagement Book

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.

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Published on March 20, 2009 in Design and Letterpress. 7 Comments 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.

Rhymesayers Cards – Metallic Color and Heavy Ink

These guys are certainly one of the hottest Minneapolis record labels. Rhymesayers Entertainment sent us this business card design for a raw and painted letterpress look.

Production turned out sweet, but it has some letterpress challenges.

Colored Metallic Ink on Black Stock

This card is printed on a custom duplexed paper – French Construction Black glued to French Speckletone. On the black side we printed a red metallic ink. Metallic ink colors on in letterpress or offset printing are opaque BUT as color pigment such as red is added the ink becomes more transparent. The look is more subtle than a foil stamp.

Large Ink Area with Small Type Reversing Out

In modern letterpress application, clients want to see impression. As a general rule, reversing small type out of a larger graphic is not the best use of letterpress. The type is not getting “impressed” – the graphic around the type is. So, if you are looking for letterpress impression with your text, don’t reverse out of a field of color. Note how the small information text and the logo on the black side of the card have more visible impression than the logo inside the spatter mark.

An additional challenge with a large area of ink coverage becomes holding onto small detail within the graphic and running the ink heavy enough for good dense coverage. On this card, the raw and heavy ink was desirable, the look is a like a heavy paint on chipboard. You can see how the heavy ink begins to “squeeze” a bit on both the logo and the information type. Sometime to get crisp type we can run a large graphic separate from small text even though they may be the same ink color. This allows us to run a heavier film of ink for the graphic and get solid coverage, then run a lighter film of ink for the text and get crisp type. However, that does mean an additional set up and press run.

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Published on March 19, 2009 in Letterpress. 6 Comments Tags: black, black paper, business card, duplex, impression, ink, Letterpress, letterpress services, metallic, minneapolis, over inking, record label, reverse, reversing, rhymesayers, small text, spray paint.

Art Of The Business Card – Black Paper

When we work with designers on projects we have conversations about “production strategy.” Sometimes letterpress is a good fit for the design intent, sometimes not. And often times we combine other production methods to achieve the effect being sought after. Black business cards present a range of production challenges. Flooding a white paper with black ink doesn’t produce fine detail in small type sizes. Here are two projects featuring different ways to print on black paper by combining letterpress with other processes.

Jamie Wickard Card – Designed by our friends at Westwerk Design

This card was produced on black paper stock: Tonal Black letterpress ink and a gloss black FOIL (side 1) and Silver Letterpress (side 2)

Antitdote X Card – Designed by our friends at Antidote X

This card was produced on cream paper stock custom duplexed to black paper stock. (Black letterpress on the cream side and white ENGRAVING on the black side) Then it was finished with custom die cutting.

To achieve fine white type on a black background Engraving is the most premium (and most costly) printing method. By duplexing a black stock rather than printing black ink and reversing out the white we’ve achieved something letterpress and offset printing would not have done well – notice the fine 3 point serif type! White foil and screen printing can print on black, but not with detail like that. Letterpress printing does not do well printing opaque white on dark colored paper and achieving bright opacity either. Like offset printing, opaque white can be laid down with several passes and achieve a mottled looking white – not a bright white. As a rule for general production: only metallic inks have good opacity on dark stocks.

Of course this all combining of production methods comes at a cost. Which comes to a final point – KNOW YOUR CLIENT BUDGET. Our best production advice is to know what your client wants to spend before finalizing your design. If you have an extravagant design with multiple production steps and your client has only a $300 dollar budget, you’ve just wasted design time on something they can not afford to produce. But if you plan production along side design, you can present your client an option that doesn’t need rounds of compromise. That is what “production strategy” is all about.

Published on February 22, 2009 in Letterpress. 19 Comments Tags: antidote x, black, Business Cards, Design, die cut, duplex, engraved, engraving, foil, foiled, ink, jaime wickard, Letterpress, letterpress services, minneapolis, opaque, paper, print, printing, production, silver, strategy, westwerk, white, white ink.

The Devil Is In The Details

Our design friends over at Westwerk have some tremendous attention to detail. Be careful, these images are NSFW. With dense black and custom silver inks printed on heavy 160lb chocolate colored stock, these cards are pretty sexy. That black ink on the dark stock impresses a subtle layer of texture. The silver was toned back with a bit of black mixed in. And the offset printed label wrap with a nice accent color is inset with a die cut and provides the information. Perfect.