With beautiful pattern and subtlety, Jeff at Telemetry Studio designed this identity and stationery system for Arzu Studio Hope. Started by a former Goldman Sachs partner, Arzu is a social entrepreneurship company that works at a grassroots level to better the lives of women in Afghanistan.
We letterpress printed multiple elements for this stationery system using gray ink and contaminated opaque white ink on Neenah Classic Crest papers. The business cards are 165lb Solar White, a smooth stock with a with enough thickness for some impression on both sides with minimal show through. We printed on pre-converted envelopes opening the flaps, printing envelope face and flap at the same time, allowing the pattern to wrap from front to back. The pressed pattern in this system is elegant and understated, creating real tactile inspiration.
Published on
March 10, 2010 in
Business Cards.
Tags: #10, 165lb, afghanistan, arzu, Business Cards, envelope, florida, ink, letterhead, Letterpress, neenah, pattern, printing, rugs, social entrepreneurship, stationary, stationery, studio hope, telemetry studio, white.
V2 Creative in Las Vegas designed this system for the Bennett Family Foundation. We just received the Strathmore Gold Award for our production of the system.
Each stationery element is letterpress printed for the text and with a beautiful blind inkless impression for the logo initials. It utilizes one of the Strathmore sheets we really like for letterpress – 110lb Strathmore Cover Bristol. This sheet has a bit of tooth to the finish and takes a crisp impression. Plus there are matching text weights sheets.
The business cards are scored an fold open to present the contact information. The warm gray flood of color was offset printed (inside of folder, back of letterhead and business cards and insides of envelopes). When we manage production of a business stationery system, usually any offset printing is sent out and completed first. This allows us to properly plan full size press sheets. For instance, this project was able to combine the letterhead and envelope on the same offset sheet. Then we take the sheets back in house and complete the letterpress and finishing. And as this system shows, we do have the capability to letterpress print full size folders with our stationery system production.
Published on
February 26, 2010 in
Business Cards and Letterpress.
Tags: commercial, die cut, envelope, flood, folder, large, large format, las vegas, Letterpress, lettterhead, nevada, no ink, offset, pocket folder, score, stationery, v2 creative.
This massive custom wedding system is exquisitely graphic. It was designed by the groom, Scott Peiffer. More of his design portfolio here. What is especially nice about this invitation set is the uniqueness of each card. Care was taken to bring together lots of different textures and graphics – beautifully combining, flourishes, coral patterns, florals, silhouettes, crests and even a bulldog.
We letterpress printed all the cards on a sheet together in two color on Cordenons Canaletto Grana Grossa Bianco 111lb C . It is a 20% cotton blend stock with a textural finish. The A7 folder is sized to fit inside an A7 envelope. It is letterpress printed in a coral pattern with a tone on tone blue ink and then die cut. The folder stock is a bright color 100lb cover stock from French Paper’s Poptone line. The Save the Date Envelope is also a matching stock color, printed tone on tone.
Published on
January 26, 2010 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: a7, bahamas, band, blu rasberry, bulldog, canaletto, coral, cotton, crest, Design, destination, envelope, floral, flourish, folder, french paper, graphic, invitations, invite, Letterpress, paper, pattern, scott peiffer, silhouette, stationery, system, tone on tone, Wedding.
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.
Erin Jang designed this custom wedding project for Marci and Ben with a unique combination of letterpress and digital printing. The typography here really has a beautiful touch – even with lots of different typefaces, the design is balanced and elegant. Not always an easy thing to do. We also like how the mini envelope on the invitation card creates another level suspense in opening the invitation.
We printed the letterpress portion of the project with 220lb Crane Lettra in an Ecru color and returned them to Erin for finishing. (They needed them quickly, and yes we are always doing some sort of rush custom letterpress work) These cards then had a unique small envelope afixed to them which contains the digitally printed red invitation. Also worth a produciton note is the perf that separates the map and the rsvp card into two parts. We used a fairly coarse perforating rule – about 20 tpi. (teeth per inch) A very thick stock needs enough paper left intact on the perf so it doesn’t just accidently fall off. It’s always worth having several kinds of perf rule around to test the stock and use the one that works best. The difference between a perf that just won’t tear clean and one that falls apart to easy can be tricky to balance. We keep rule around from around 18 tpi up to 100 tpi micro perf.
Check out Erin Jangs blog for more sweet design work. And if you want more, this invite has also been bloggity blogged on some of our favorite sites including Design Sponge, Black Eiffel and Mint Design Blog.
Published on
August 12, 2009 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: 220lb, cotton, crane, custom, Design, designer, ecru, envelope, erin jang, gray, invitation, invitations, invite, Letterpress, lettra, mini, perf, perforation, printer, printing, red, script, stationary, stationery, tpi, type, typography, Wedding.
This invitation suite was designed by the bride, Stacey Averbuch. It is an elegant invitation in it’s typographic texture, mixing a coarse script font with a finely serifed engravers typeface. The ink is dark brown letterpress on Crane Lettra cotton paper. A cement green envelope color from French Paper was used for all the envelopes in the set. Email Stacey if you really like the design and would like her to work on a custom stationery set for you.
This a good wedding tip: Colored Envelopes. We like the simplicity of adding color to a wedding invitation set by using a colored envelope. It’s a great way to put some color in the set without the expense of letterpress printing more color.
The same dark brown color is printed on both the cards and the envelopes. We printed the invite cards together on a single press sheet and trimmed them to size after printing. That keeps the cost of all the cards more friendly. Also, don’t forget to include a thank you card while printing your inviations. That saves time and money in the long run. We specialize in printing custom sets brought to us by other designers and event planners. Thanks Stacey for a sharp looking invitation.
Published on
April 30, 2009 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: brown, color, contrast, cotton, crane, custom, dark, engravers, envelope, estate, french paper, green, hamptons, invitation, invite, Letterpress, lettra, printing, script, serif, texture, tree, typography, vineyard, Wedding.
If you aren’t sure what a “meat raffle” is you should really look it up to fully understand the heritage of this design. It’s good to see a fine establishment carry on this noble tradition. Our friends at Fame created this cuss-worthy design for Continue reading ‘Bingo, A Meat Raffle And Letterpress’
Published on
April 19, 2009 in
Letterpress.
Tags: 60, 60pt, a10, bar, beer, board, brown, coaster, dark, darts, Design, dive, envelope, ephemera, Fame, fameretail, foos ball, gold, heavy, ink, invitation, invite, Letterpress, letterpress services, meat, metallic, minneapolis, minnesota, orange, party, point, pulp, raffle, Sam Soulek, sizing, stock, thick, typography, vintage.
What could be better than a letterpressed rhino ready to charge? One with wings? Ok, here it is.
This is a two color letterpress stationery set for artist rep Conor Lawrence designed by Aurora Whittet at Red Organic. The printing is red and silver metallic inks on Neenah Classic Crest Solar White. The cards are on a thick, rhino worthy 165lb cover stock.
Published on
March 17, 2009 in
Letterpress.
Tags: 165lb, Aurora Whittet, business card, classic crest, conor lawrence, cover, envelope, ink, Letterpress, letterpress services, metallic, minneapolis, neenah, No. 10, red organic, rhino, silver.
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 design for a financial company that is both fun and elegant. Which makes sense for Ensemble because they cater specifically to creatives running small businesses by managing benefits and financial operations.
For the letterhead, the blind pattern runs on the text weight sheet along the top edge of the paper. That pattern also prints in color on the back of the No.10 note card (a flat card sized for a No. 10 envelope). A pattern like this is a great way to get some color into a letterpress print job without running a big solid color block. Since this card and the business cards are on the same paper and print the same color, we can run them together. We run a lot of jobs with a this card and a business card on the same press sheet. That gives the client way more bang for their print dollars.
Published on
March 12, 2009 in
Letterpress.
Tags: blind, business card, Design, ensemble, envelope, impression, letterhead, Letterpress, minneapolis, No. 10, pattern, printing, services, spunk, spunk design machine, stationary, stationery, system, Tea Slip, thick.
Since letterpress doesn’t do a great job flooding a page with ink, designers must come up with production alternatives to bring in big areas of color. One of the things that can be done when designing for letterpress is combining different colored paper stocks. This works especially well for projects with multiple pieces that need to coordinate – like stationery systems, wedding invitations, etc. Our previous post on the Ocean House system shows a splash of color added to the back of everything via offset printing. Adding a contrasting paper stock for pieces like envelopes and cards can be a more cost effective production solution to still add color to letterpress and avoid offset (or “flat” printing as people call it when comparing to letterpress)
This system designed over at Space150 by Jason Strong brings color to the system by adding a couple contrasting papers. We printed the same letterpress ink color on the white stock and then the burgundy colored stock for the envelopes. This creates a tone-on-tone effect that remains legible and adds a nice texture. A smaller note card in a pink stock also matches the pink ink used throughout the pieces. The business cards are on thick 220lb Crane Lettra, which does an excellent job eliminating the impression show through of a two sided card.
Published on
March 11, 2009 in
Letterpress.
Tags: 220lb, Business Cards, colored, crane, envelope, envelopes, flood, jason strong, Letterpress, letterpress services, lettra, offset, paper, space150, stationary, stationery, thick, two sided.
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 a nice warmness and a little texture.
Published on
March 9, 2009 in
Letterpress.
Tags: business papers, businss cards, card, Design, envelope, flood, ink, letterhead, Letterpress, letterpress services, mucca, ocean house, offset, stationary, stationery.
