Tag Archives: Design

Fold Only CD Pocket - No Glue Package

This is a CD package we designed and letterpress printed for Erik Brandt with illustrations by Andy DeVore. He put this CD together after spending a year teaching in Hungary. The structure houses both a fold up lyric sheet and a CD. We printed the packaging with two ink colors on 140lb French Poptone. The [...]

Smashing Alphabets Letterpress Poster

Coming soon to an alphabet near you is a typographic mash up. Once again Spunk Design Machine created a simply amazing poster, this time for Chank. Be sure and check him out as he tours the design community.
And getting smashed comes easy for paper on a letterpress. Hot off our big Heidelberg cylinder press, these [...]

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 [...]

A Tasty Food Stylin’ Business Card

As the name would imply, a stylist has to have style. This morsel was designed by Westwerk Design and was just featured in the Minnesota AIGA award show. And check out Lara’s site for some really succulent looking food photography.
The letterpress printing is tasty too. The card was printed four colors on the front and [...]

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 [...]

Murphy & Co - Offset & Letterpress Business Card

This well crafted card was designed at VO2 Media in Minneapolis for Murphy & Co. Design, designers of exceptional residences. But don’t let the simple look of this business card fool you. It’s design subtlety has layers of complexity in production. Here’s how:
The impression is not very deep and the paper is not overly thick. [...]

1st 100,000 - Thanks Beast Pieces Readers

The benefit of slow times is they make us try new things. At the end of January it was a slow time in our studio, and we certainly don’t like to sit with idle hands. We had this blog started in 2008 but due to low content we were only seeing a trickle of 50 [...]

A Shaped And Buckled Letterpress Wedding Invite

This uniquely shaped invitation was designed by us at Studio On Fire. It is one of the most interesting die lines we’ve created for wedding invitations - elegant and fun at the same time. It is a simple green one color letterpress on white paper with that same green printing on a green paper for [...]

Hey, Nice Ensemble

You know what they say about too much letterpress - you’ll eventually go blind. That is exactly what happened to our design friends at Spunk Design Machine. They created this stationery system for Ensemble with a beautiful and subtle pattern that we letterpress printed blind (a plate striking the paper with no ink). Imagine, a [...]

Ocean House Stationery - Mucca Design

Our good friends at Mucca Design in NYC designed this beauty. A tight piece of typography with a punch of color to bring everything to life makes this system sweet.
The large color flood on the back of everything is offset printed. Then we printed two color letterpress. The paper is Monadnock PC100 throughout which gives [...]

How Design - Top 10 Sites for Designers

Our blog was just selected by How Design as a “top 10 site for designers”. You found us. See the rest of the list here.
Thanks How!

Compassion Letterpress Poster

This is a poster designed and letterpressed at Studio On Fire. It was for a gallery show called the Poster Offensive put on by our good friends at Spunk Design at the Frank Stone gallery in Minneapolis.
A couple years ago when this poster was designed, our countries leaders were talking about “exporting democracy”. I thought [...]

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 [...]

Space 150 - Letterpress Card Retrospective

It started back in high school art class. I was a junior and there was this senior that sat in the back doing pottery and was always throwing frickin’ balls of clay at my head while I was trying to draw. Fast forward over a decade and both of us have design careers. Me - [...]

Campfire On Your Desk

This is a promo piece designed by our friends at Swink. We had this job on press a while back and wanted to show the exquisite finished project. It was 3/2 PMS letterpress printing plus lasercutting. Note the overprinting blue and orange to create the brown. All this on a 220lb C. tree free, reclaimed [...]