Tag Archive for 'duplex'

Howler Business Cards

Designed by Priest + Grace for Howler magazine, these oversize business cards are an amazing example of what a good design and a little tonal ink can do. Howler magazine is a quarterly publication for soccer enthusiasts in North America, so it only made sense for these cards to reference the size and color of actual penalty cards used in soccer.

There are several production techniques we used to successfully produce these cards. First, instead of printing all of the information blind we used a tonal ink color (a red ink on the red, yellow on the yellow). When something is printed blind it relies solely on good lighting conditions to be legible. Our solution is to print using a tonal ink, which creates just enough contrast between the artwork and the paper to make your contact information visible. Secondly, these cards were printed with fronts and backs up on the same sheet, duplexing the sheet after printing. This allowed us to run a heavy impression on press but then conceal the impression show through by duplexing the sheet back to itself.

The red cards are printed on Mohawk Via Scarlet Vellum 80C (duplexed to make 160C) and the yellow cards are on French Poptone Lemon Drop 100C (duplexed to make 200C).

Published on December 9, 2011 in Business Cards. 1 Comment Tags: custom, custom duplex, diecut, duplex, duplex after, french, lemon drop, Letterpress, minneapolis, mohawk via, red, round corners, scarlet, soccer, tonal ink, tonal varnish, yellow.

Olli Salumeria Business Cards

Yael Miller, from Miller Creative, designed these gorgeous business cards for Olli Salumeria, a salumeria that makes dry-cured salumi in Virginia. Though the outcome is, dare we say stunning, these cards posed several production challenges along the way.

As a general rule, we don’t suggest using letterpress when the design uses floods of color and require clients to agree to our Solid Areas Disclaimer before we will proceed with their job. To achieve a nice solid coverage of color we had to run the ink heavy across the card, thankfully we had added some additional stroke weight to the artwork in the pre-press stage so the line work would not fill in on press. Another trick we used was lightly wetting the sheet before running- this cuts down on the appearance of saltiness and variation across the color.

Flood aside, take a look at that red. Yael refers to it as “Ferrari red,” and we can’t say that we disagree. The design actually specified a Pantone GOE color, which is not a Pantone book we match to, but since we custom mix all of our colors we were able to match a swatch that was mailed in for reference. We took one of our base red inks and pumped it up with a hit of fluorescent red to really get the color to pop.

These cards are printed on Crane Lettra 110lb cover that we custom duplexed after printing to make 220lb. By duplexing after printing we were able to run the flood without completely flattening the text on the other side of the card (not to mention we love any excuse to make a business card thicker). A custom diecut, shaped to reference a ticket or label, finished off the cards in an unexpected, yet refined way.

This project can also be found on FPO, DesignWorkLife, and Miller Creative.

Published on December 6, 2011 in Business Cards, Letterpress and Printing Tips and Tricks. 3 Comments Tags: 110lb, Business Cards, crane lettra, custom, duplex, flood, Letterpress, lettra, red.

Winter Xgames Field Guide

We were excited to produce this booklet, designed and illustrated in-house at Target by Aaron Melander. This piece was created for guests of the Target Chalet as a field guide to the 2011 Winter X Games.

To begin the project, we worked closely on the paper selection. It needed to be thick and sturdy in feel yet thin enough to do some 180 degree folds to form the inside cover pocket. For the cover we duplexed two stocks after printing – off white on the outside and brown on the inside. The outside is 78lbC Canaletto Granna Grossa printed in tight register three color letterpress. A tonal pattern printed on French Poptone Hot Fudge 80lbC floods the inside.

One of our favorite commercial shops in town then helped with the interior printing and bindery. The gutt was traditional 4 color offset printed and saddle stitched at Shapco. Since the open edges of the cover are folded to the interior a final trim with the gutt in place was not possible. That meant the gutt pages needed to be stitched separately, trimmed to size, then stitched again into the cover.

Published on April 4, 2011 in Letterpress. 5 Comments Tags: 78lb, 80lb, aaron melander, bindery, blue, book, booklet, brown, canaletto, die cut, duplex, fold, french, gutt, hot fudge, Letterpress, offset, plaid, poptone, red, saddle stitched, score, shapco, stitch, taget, target chalet, winter, woods, xgames.

Point Form Business Cards

We recently printed these business cards, designed by the fellows at Point Form, a Canadian design collective.

A little tricky production was in order with their design. The paper we used is a 100lb French Poptone Sweet Tooth custom pasted (duplexed) after printing to 100lb French Poptone Lemon Drop for a final 200lb Cover stock. Pasting sheets after printing can add a little cost, but with a two sided card it is the best production move because we don’t need to worry about impression show through from a heavy letterpress imprint. Note that there is no indentation from one side to the other.

Published on February 2, 2011 in Business Cards and Letterpress. 2 Comments Tags: 100lb, 200lb, business card, duplex, french, lemon drop, pasted, pasting, solid, sweet tooth, tonal, tone on tone, type, typography, yellow.

Letterpress Love With Baker Associates

We’ve worked with BAKER here in Minneapolis on a few really fun letterpress projects over the last year or so. And they’ve designed some beautiful things for pressing. Most recently, their second installment of the bird themed holiday ornament cards rolled off the press. It is a little bird (a good luck Cardinal) with an ornate frame that die cuts and punches out of thick 60 point blotter stock. It is printed two color each side.

Last years card for Baker was a die cut bird ornament as well. The same production specs, but featuring a punch out owl.

Also in the last few months, we worked through the letterpress printing of the new Baker identity on their business cards. And is was quite the undertaking. They have an interesting post about the process of icon development here. Each employee has their own icon and each card has four color ways. With over 60 employees that was a lot of icons and business cards! They are a custom duplexed 200lbC black and white stock in an undersized narrow card format. (1 x 3.5 inches) BAKER is printed in silver on the black side and the white side receives the four different color variations.

BAKER is a Minneapolis based Branding + Design firm specializing in package design. On the web: bkrdsn.com or tweet: @bkrdsn

Published on December 20, 2010 in Business Cards, Holiday and Letterpress. 2 Comments Tags: 100lbC, 60pt, ahlstrom, baker, baker associates, birds, black, blotter, blue, business, Business Cards, cards, coaster board, coaster stock, coasters, color ways, custom, cut out, cute, cutting, die, diecut, duplex, eclipse black, green, hanging, heavy, Holiday, Letterpress, narrow, ornament, ornate, owls, pasted, printing, punch out, purple, red, thick, wausau.

Space150 V26 Business Cards

Just launched this last week was the 26th version of the Space150 identity. These guys change up their identity every 150 days. They designed this business card with lots of production love. Here are the production steps:

1. Custom pasted triple layer stock. Black with a white middle, 330lb total weight.

2. Black foil on the logo side

3. Letterpress printed metallic ink on the info side

4. Die cut with little “snake bite” marks

See previous Space150 card versions we’ve printed here and here and here.

Published on September 24, 2010 in Business Cards and Letterpress. 1 Comment Tags: black, business card, Design, die cut, die cutting, duplex, foil, heavy, layer, Letterpress, metallic, minneapolis, paper, ply, snake, space150, stock, thick, three, triple, triplex, v26.

Beautiful Blind Impression Business Card

This stunning letterpress business card was designed by 485 inc. for an arts group called Artistaday. And as the name would imply, Artistaday is a website that has a daily fine artist featured. Great stuff too, make sure and check them out here.

The typographic design is nice and bold, making the blind (inkless) impression really stand out. These business cards do something that does take an extra production step – heavy impression on both sides that lines up from side to side. To get this blind type to look really look good and provide enough sculptural to keep it readable without ink, it needed to be printed as a single sheet, then pasted back to back after printing so the impression on one side wouldn’t flatten the impression on other. The cards were printed on 110lbC Crane Lettra, then glued together for the final 220lb thickness.

Published on September 15, 2010 in Business Cards and Letterpress. 2 Comments Tags: 110lb, 220lb, 485Inc, artistaday, blind, business card, cards, crane, duplex, glued, heavy, inkless, lettra, paper, pasted, show through, thick, type, typographic.

The Craftsmen of Fine Technology

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. 1 Comment 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.

English Spanish Wedding, Pink Edges

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. 3 Comments Tags: black and white, border, cards, color, coloring, crane, duplex, edge, english, invitation, invite, laura widmar, Letterpress, lettra, pasted, pearl white, pink, spanish, Wedding.

Burn and Crossbones Business Cards

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. 4 Comments 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.

A Narrow Elegant Business Card

These business cards are elegant and simple with an unusual format. Although the feel of the design is traditional, the 4.25 x 1.25 inch size presents as an untraditional business card size. The client, William and Mary, makes premium gift wrap collections, so the paper crafting of the printing was very important.

These cards were letterpress printed with 2 ink colors on each side. The cards also have a heavy blind letterpress impression graphic on both sides. This blind area overlaps type on the reverse side. To get an even type appearance and a heavy sculptural impression on both sides we printed a 110lb sheet of Crane Lettra Fluorescent White and pasted it together back to back after printing. By duplexing the stock to a thick 220lb weight after printing the impression show through is eliminated. It is a time consuming and more premium production step, worth it for the final look of these cards. The final step was a round corner die cut.

Published on June 30, 2010 in Business Cards and Letterpress. 1 Comment Tags: 110lb, 220lb, blind, Business Cards, classic, corner, crane, die cut, diecut, duplex, elegant, flo white, flourescent, glue, heavy, impression, Letterpress, lettra, long, narrow, paste, pasting, potdevin, round, slim, traditional, type, typography, unique size.

Touchpoint – Foil, Letterpress and Laser Cut

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.