These letterpress business cards were the perfect fit for web development and design company Ackmann & Dickenson. We like how these guys frame their business as “Craftsmen of Fine Technology”. They designed these cards and we letterpress printed them to reflect craftsmanship.
And this card did require some crafting. We started with the making of a custom duplex paper – 160lb Mohawk Loop Ivory Smooth pasted to French Construction Nightshift Blue 100C – totaling a thick 260lbC card. Next we letterpress printed them with two colors on each side, silver and tonal navy inks on the blue side, then blue and gray inks on the ivory side. We printed a couple 8up forms to meet all the employee name versions needs and then die cut them with small inverted corners. Viva tactility and technology.
Published on
September 2, 2010 in
Business Cards and Letterpress.
Tags: ackmann, blue, business, card, cards, corner, custom, dark, Design, dickenson, die, diecut, duplex, french, gray, heavy, inverted, ivory, Letterpress, mohawk, navy, nightshift, off white, pasted, pattern, quilted, round, soft white, stock, thick, tonal, two sided, web development.
These black and white wedding invitations dress up with a flashy little pink edge coloring. They were designed by the bride Laura Widmar. She incorporated both Spanish and English into each piece in the wedding suite by using the front and back sides of the cards.
We letterpress printed them on 110lb Crane Lettra Pearl White and pasted them Spanish to English after printing, making a thick 220lb cover stock. We then trimmed them to size and edge colored everything in a bright pink.
Published on
August 24, 2010 in
Wedding.
Tags: black and white, border, cards, color, coloring, crane, duplex, edge, english, invitation, invite, laura widmar, Letterpress, lettra, pasted, pearl white, pink, spanish, Wedding.
These cards were designed by the Thorburn group here in Minneapolis. They are letterpress printed with a silver ink on both sides of a custom duplex black and white stock.
Custom pasting of a duplex of paper stock is a good way to make a project with look and feel unique. It’s very often the best way to get both the colors and stock thickness desired for a project. And lets face it – most of the stocks available from paper companies as pre-duplexed options are pretty fugly colors and/or texture combinations. This stock is Wausau Royal Complements Eclipse Black 100lb cover pasted to 100% cotton Neenah’s Crane Lettra Flo White 110lbC. For production, these two papers were pasted together, then letterpress printed.
As an end note, I worked at Thorburn several years before the jump to full time operations of Studio On Fire. Check out the Thorburn site here for some solid design work.
Published on
August 17, 2010 in
Business Cards.
Tags: 100lbC, 110lbC, 877, black, Business Cards, cards, crane, custom, duplex, eclipse black, flo white, florecent, glue, ink, Letterpress, lettra, metallic, neenah, paper, pasted, pms, royal complements, silver, thorburn, thorburn group, wausau, white.
These extra fine business cards were designed by Merge Creative and Touchpoint. Once in hand they require a good touching and groping session. They wanted a card with an OMG factor and this is certainly one of the most elaborate cards we’ve put together. The paper stock has a surprising skin-like feel. It is from the Appleton Coated Curious Collection. We custom duplexed the card from two colors. The black side is Skin Black 141lb Cover. That is pasted to Skin White 141lb Cover for a total thickness of 280lb Cover. With that kind of heavy, this card definitely has a thump factor.
Production went something like this… The black stock is hot foil stamped in a clear gloss foil and a mirror finish metallic silver. The white stock is letterpress printed in metallic silver ink. Then the black and white sheets are pasted together in register into a heavy duplex sheet. Those sheets are covered with a protective mask on both sides. The masked sheets are laser cut into the custom shaped business cards and the protective mask is removed.
This was an update to the look and feel of the orange Touchpoint business cards printed over a year ago. Those were on Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 165lb. The production of them was elaborate as well. Those cards were offset printed with and orange solid, foil stamped in clear and metallic silver, letterpress printed in silver, masked and laser cut to final size.
Published on
June 28, 2010 in
Business Cards and Letterpress.
Tags: 141lb, 165lb, 280lb, 877, argo wiggins, black, business, Business Cards, card, cards, classic crest, clear, custom, cutting, die cut, diecut, duplex, duplexed, foil, ink, laser, lasercut, Letterpress, Merge Creative, metallic, neenah, offset, orange, rubber, silver, skin, solar white, Touchpoint, white.
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.
Letterpress seems pretty far removed from the slickness of the iphone. Yet even the most technically focused business can benefit from the tactility of letterpress business cards. In fact, we would argue that they are the perfect counterpoint. Marko Karppinen & Co is a software developer in Finland specializing in iphone and ipad applications. We designed and printed this card for their ten person company.
The back of the card is printed with a heavy blind (inkless) letterpress impression. The front side is printed with gray ink plus accent yellow bars. A key production step to virtually eliminate show through and have heavy impression on both sides was to print two separate sheets and paste them together after printing. For this step we use Potdevin pasting and rotary presses. The pasting machine applies glue to the back of a sheet. That sheet is then paired with the sheet for the reverse side of the business card and run through the rotary press to firmly squeeze them together and eliminate any air bubbles. The stock is 110lb Neenah Classic Crest Solar White custom duplexed to a thick 220lb weight. Special finishing is a yellow edge color. A well crafted card indeed.
Published on
June 18, 2010 in
Business Cards and Letterpress.
Tags: 220lb, app, apple, application, blind, business, card, cards, classic crest, color, colour, developer, duplex, duplexed, duplexing, edge, finland, gray, grey, heavy, impression, iphone, Letterpress, machine, marko karppinen, minnesota, MK&C, neenah, painting, paper, pasting, potdevin, press, printing, rotary, solar, thick, tipping, white, yellow.
So often, what we do for our clients in the graphic design profession is disconnected from personal passions. This project managed to combine both food and design values. The food our family eats falls into a traditional foods diet, as recommended by the Weston Price Foundation. Which is why we were especially excited when Rebecca and Ross Williams asked us for business cards for their new adventure called Many Fold Farms. Their must-read blog is smartly written and shows a true passion for food and land. I’ve been learning about fine cheese and feeling a bit envious of their farming adventure.
This was both a design and print project for us, which is where our company can truly shine. Not that we don’t love printing the custom work of other designers and collaborating in the production process. We also love owning a design project from concept through production completion.
The design for the logotype merges custom 19th century inspired decorative capitals with slab serifs. We combined typographic texture with a folk inspired pierced tin borders and an inverted round corner die cut. The letterpress printing is on Crane Lettra Ecru (Ivory) 220lb Cover stock for a thick and soft feel in a nice warm color. We produced two different sizes – an oversized card with farm information and a smaller card with personal contact info.
Published on
February 12, 2010 in
Business Cards, Client Focus, Design and Letterpress.
Tags: 19th century, 220lb, artisan, Business Cards, calling card, cards, cheese, cotton, Design, die cut, diecut, ecru, ephemera, farm, identity, lamb, Letterpress, many fold farm, pierce, punch, sheep, the dirty way, tin, type, typography, weston price.
This is a nifty little letterpress card and a7 envelope designed by Duel Purpose in Austin, Texas. It is printed in three colors, the overlapping bold graphics make unique areas of overprinting ink. The stock is 100% cotton 220lb Crane Lettra, with a matching Lettra envelope. Hand written correspondence on these are sure to any leave digital message in the lurch.
Published on
February 4, 2010 in
Letterpress.
Tags: 220lb, austin, black, blue, bold, card, cards, correspondence, crane, duel purpose, duelpurpose, graphic, ink, Letterpress, lettra, overprinting, printer, printing, red, stationary, stationery, texas, writing.
We made some new friends in London at a digital agency called Forward. They rebranded themselves recently and designed these cards that feel very undigital and textural, and that is what we do best. They are printed on Ahlstrom Blotter stock with custom duplexing to bring the thickness to about 50pt. This blotter board has an uneven pulp formation that gives the flood of ink a washed, almost denim feel on the soft paper stock. The cards are edge colored in a matching purple. And this was no small task, an office of over forty people is a lot of cards. We ran them 10 cards up on press five press forms.
Published on
February 2, 2010 in
Business Cards and Letterpress.
Tags: 50pt, agency, ahlstrom, blotter, board, business, card, cards, Design, edge color, edge tipping, forward, Letterpress, london, painted, paper, pulp, purple, sheet, stock, texture, UK, United Kingdom.
Here is another fantastic project designed by Fabien Barral over at Graphic Exchange. He brought in wonderful organic drips and brush strokes that interpret with a unique sculptural quality under letterpress impression.
We put down a lot of letterpress printing on this sheet. It’s a good way to make a project affordable – - spread the cost over several items all on the same press sheet. The paper stock is Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 165lb Cover. The sheet contains four business cards and three large note cards. We printed a slightly contaminated opaque white ink for the tonal white effect, also a dense black ink. For our white ink, we usually put just a hair of silver in the opaque white to give it a little tone. It also has the benefit of creating a stronger sheen difference between the inked impression and the uncoated paper stock than you would get with a blind (inkless) print.
After printing this project went to live in French customs for a little while. And that should answer another question we get a lot – Yes! we do ship international all the time. Just let us know if you have any specific customs needs for your country.
Published on
January 15, 2010 in
Business Cards and Letterpress.
Tags: 165lb, 2010, afforadable, barral, black, brush, business, business card, card, cards, contaminate, decor, Design, drip, fabien barral, graphic exchange, harmonie interieure, ink, interior decoration, Letterpress, neenah, note, notecard, opaque white, organic, press sheet, printer, printing, solar white, texture.
These are the brand new cards for Dita Eyewear in Los Angeles. Bryan Crabtree designed them and did a nice post over on his blog too. The blind flourish on the light side and the diamond pattern on the black gives these cards a tonal and elegant look.
We first printed these as two sheets, a natural color and black stock and then pasted the sheets together after printing. This step eliminates show through of the impression when printing a two sided design. We’ve found that the gluing of the sheet after it is printed does flatten back some of the impression, so we start with a heavy impression initially. The lighter color stock is Wausau Compliments Natural White 100lbC and is printed with a blind pass and black ink. The black stock is Wausau Eclipse Black 100lbC and is printed with PMS 8001 silver and black ink. The final thickness is 200lbC, about the thickness of a US dime. After printing and gluing, the cards were die cut to the final shape with angled corners.
Published on
November 30, 2009 in
Business Cards and Letterpress.
Tags: 100lbC, 200lbC, angle, black, blind, bryan crabtree, business, Business Cards, California, card, cards, cut, Design, die, die cutting, diecut, duplex, fashion, inkless, LA, Letterpress, los angeles, natural, off white, offwhite, paste, pasted, shape, silver, white.
