Beast Pieces » ephemera

Shine Advertising Knife Wrap Ephemera

admin — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:45:35 +0000

This ephemera was designed by the folks at Shine Advertising to dress up a pocket knife mailing sent to their clients as a promotional item. You might ask if that is really letterpress? Yep, actually that’s four color process plus two spot color letterpress printed one pass at a time. That means that lil’ piece of paper went through the presses seven times. (six color passes and a letterpress matrix score) Certainly not a typical use of letterpress, but that’s why it was so fun to print it. Laying down color one at a time means a little guess work as you build the color density for the final image, but fun to watch it unfold. The process printed picture was from CSA stock images and worked pretty well to break out into plates even though it started as a heavily line screened image. The plates were printed with a 90 line per inch screen on Mohawk Loop Husk 160lb Cover.

Also be sure and check out the flash light wrap we printed for Shine last year.

Augmented Reality Drink Coaster

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:05:15 +0000

This seems like a good Friday post – drink coasters. And not just any drink coasters, augmented reality drink coasters designed by our friends at Atomic Playpen. These ephemera inspired coasters were sent out to Atomic clients in a metal case. There are four coasters inside, each with a different marker on the back side. The instructions direct you to their anniversary website where you hold up one of the markers to your webcam and enjoy the action. (If you don’t have a coaster from Atomic, you can still print a marker at the site and give it a try.)

We letterpress printed them on 60pt blotter board with very dense black ink coverage so the marker would work properly. The sheet was then die cut into the four coasters. So cheers, we’ll have another round and add it to our beer wall.

Many Fold Farm Letterpress Business Cards

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:25:13 +0000

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.

Typography for Breakfast

admin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:25:07 +0000

It is usually bad form to blog or tweet about your breakfast. But sometimes it’s just too gooood. This morning a few of us from the studio went over to St.Paul for breakfast at the Copper Dome Restaurant. The type is served up hot as the walls in this place are covered with vintage flour milling ephemera. The pancakes were good as well.

(These are some of my first iphone pictures, so forgive the quality.)

Shine Flashlight Box – Ephemera Redux

admin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:24:36 +0000

Shine Advertising Co. in Madison, WI designed this flashlight box wrapper as a promotional piece for their agency. The look is a pretty sweet 1800′s ephemera inspired style and inside is a mini Maglite flashlight. We letterpress printed in four spot colors on Smart Genisis Husk 110lb C – 100% PCW. There are three tones of blue ink plus red ink.

Chad, the design director, came in and spent the day on press with us. Take a look at a few press room images he created with an iphone camera using an app called HiCon – kinda nice black and white effect.

A note on press checks - We are always happy to have clients come in for press checks. And if you can’t make it, we often do a virtual press check and send along photos as we are on press. We schedule a press time and you can wait by your computer for letterpress goodness. That really gives no excuse not to letterpress with us. :)