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 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.
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.
One of the best ways to get lots of color in a letterpress project is to print a colored paper. For these business cards Cricket Design Works in Madison, WI chose three colors for some extra vibrant variety in their design.
The paper is all custom duplexed from French Paper Poptone colors. We love the color options and small quantity availability of this paper line. These cards are printed on Gumdrop Green, Wild Cherry and Blu Raspberry each pasted to Poptone Sweet Tooth White on the opposite site for a 200lb heavy weight. The cards were printed with a metallic silver ink first, then overprinted in black. The same artwork and ink colors were used for all three business cards on the press sheets. (Everyone received all three colors.) This made the project more budget friendly since all we had to do was change out paper stock while running the prints – no extra wash ups or ink color changes.
Published on
June 29, 2010 in
Business Cards.
Tags: 200lb, blue, Business Cards, cricket design works, custom, french paper, green, heavy, ink, Letterpress, madison, metallic, overprint, poptone, red, silver, sweet tooth, thick, WI, wisconsin.
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.
Published on
June 21, 2010 in
Letterpress and packaging.
Tags: 160lb, advertising, art, color, CSA, Design, ephemera, four, heavy, husk, impression, knife, Letterpress, mohawk, packaging, paper, pocket, pocket knife, process, shine, spot, stock, thick, wrap.
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.
This is a letterpress printed invitation for a destination party, complementing a custom wedding system we printed a while back. These are also designed by the groom Scott Peiffer.
The card is a thick 200lb Wausau bright white. It was printed on a cylinder press with a light blue flood of ink with a red ink mixed to match the envelope color. We printed the same red ink on the envelope flap for a tonal effect. Note the nice pop through details of the paper left white.
Published on
May 26, 2010 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: 200lb, a7, bahamas, bright, card, cocktail, color, envelope, flap, flood, heavy, ink, invitation, invite, Letterpress, match, paper, party, pointed, red, rightsidedesign, scott peiffer, thick, ultra, wausau, white.
Conrad Lim, a photographer out of LA, had some ideas for an identity and we made it happen. He was pretty darn excited that the letters R-A-D were smack dab in the center of his name so it was pretty clear where we needed to go with it.
Published on
November 19, 2009 in
Business Cards, Client Focus, Design and Letterpress.
Tags: business card, camera, card, conrad, heavy, icon, ink, Letterpress, lettra, paper stock, photo, photographer, photography, rad, red, type, typography.
Not that a heart felt email blast or animated web message for the holidays isn’t all well and good, but as you may have guessed we are suckers for a good old fashioned ink on paper. The next few days, we’ll show some previous custom holiday projects we’ve letterpress printed in the hopes of inspiring your own letterpress holiday projects. The holiday card seems to be one of those notorious last minute tasks for creative types. We are already heavily into estimating custom cards for many designers. And as much as we love rushing last minute projects, earlier is always better and leaves many more production options available. Word to the wise, ask us early for an estimate on your project.
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Who says typographic characters don’t make delightful tree ornaments? This card was designed by Katie and Nate over at Eight Hour Day. The green combined with hot pink makes a unique holiday color combo. The card was die cut to produce two parts for a desktop Christmas tree, to be decorated further with objects on your desktop. It was letterpress printed on thick Fox River Blotter stock from Neenah Paper. Since the paper is produced without any surface sizing the blotter sheet has a more mottled appearance in how the textured surface accepts a large solid ink area like the green tree. This gives the printed piece some additional tactile quality. Fa la la la la, ooolala.
Published on
October 28, 2009 in
Holiday and Letterpress.
Tags: blotter, card, cards, christmas, custom, Design, die, die cut, eight hour day, flourescent pink, fox river, green, greeting, heavy, Holiday, Letterpress, neenah, paper, pink, printing, score, tactile, thick, tree, type, typography, unique.
Abbie at Passing Notes is a master of refined print design. Her type is always exquisite and these cards for her client Aphro Chic were a pleasure to print. They are on a thick 60pt blotter stock with a flood of bold geometric pattern on the back and two color letterpress on the front. The blotter sheet has a pulpy appearance with lots of soft fiber texture. We printed the business cards along with a note card on the same press sheet so the print dollar went a bit further. The business cards were edge colored in a PMS match yellow for the perfect finishing accent.
Published on
October 21, 2009 in
Business Cards and Letterpress.
Tags: abbie, aphro chic, blotter, board, bold, Business Cards, CA, California, Design, edge, edge color, edge coloring, fiber, geometric, heavy, Letterpress, note, note card, passing notes, pattern, printed, printing, refined, San Francisco, soft, stock, texture, thick, typography, yellow.
Caryn Gutterman designed this business card for photographer Scott Regan. We are suckers for letterpress printing the unique, custom and out of the ordinary. And these business cards are no ordinary cards. If Scott Regan hands you a business card, you will KNOW he’s handed you a business card. The thick stock is 60pt blotter stock. It is a little more textured on one side than the other. The texture of this stock is deep – reminds us of the finish on an egg carton, kind of raw and porous in appearance. It takes some work to print a solid letterpress, even more work on this stock. It’s not a fine surface like cotton sheets, but it’s soft and takes a nice impression which makes it attractive for letterpress. The paper just drinks up the ink and leaves paper fuzz everywhere – guess that’s why it’s a blotter stock. But the result is really beautiful. There is an uneven nature to the way the ink lays on the heavy formation of the paper. We printed the gray ink first, then the tightly registered yellow logo. The card was trimmed and edge colored in a PMS matching yellow. We like the simple modern design combined with the raw material – people will hang onto this card for sure.
Published on
September 9, 2009 in
Business Cards and Letterpress.
Tags: 60pt, blotter, board, business, card, cards, caryn gutterman, color, custom, Design, edge, egg carton, formation, heavy, Letterpress, modern, painting, paper stock, scott regan, solid ink, textured, thick, tipping, unique.
We like our printing aprons, but sexy and sustainable clothing fits nicely with letterpress too. We were asked to designed and produced these new garment tags and business cards for new LA based label – Degree Six Clothing. And they are sexy indeed, but in an earthy conscious sort of way.
They create garments with consciously produced fabrics, so for our part we used a fully recycled material for the project. Notable is the 100% recycled 80pt book board. Also, the cards are long and narrow – only half the size of a typical business card. We worked with the Hot Snot screen printing shop to put down our fluorescent green plant pattern on sheets of the book board. Since screen printing ink is opaque, we got a nice bright green color on the darker colored board. Then we letterpress printed metallic 877 for the text. Screen printing does well on a lot of things, but it does not like tiny type. The tags were hole punched, trimmed to size and edge colored with the signature fluorescent green Degree Six color. The board thickness is great for flashing a glimpse of the accent edge coloring. Can wait to see them in stores soon.
Published on
August 27, 2009 in
Design and Letterpress.
Tags: book board, bright, business, Business Cards, cards, clothing, clothing label, colored, d6, d6 clothing, degree six, Design, fluorescent, garment tags, green, half size, heavy, hot snot, labels, painted, recycled, screen printing, tags, thick, tipped, typography.
These cards were designed by Reddoor Creative in LA. Finely designed and printed business cards speak volumes about a business or an individual – and there are no half measures here. These cards are letterpress printed 2 pms colors each side plus a blind hit. The paper is custom duplexed Fluorescent White 268lb 100% cotton Crane Cover Kid Finish. We’d say they have a “thump factor”.
Duplex means pasting two sheets of paper back to back. In this case, we had the sheets pasted AFTER they were printed. We started with a press sheet for the front of the cards and another press sheet for the back of the cards, each sheet being at 134lb Cover weight. What this accomplishes is deep impression on both sides of the card with out show through from a heavy letterpress impression. Custom duplex pasting a sheet is the best way to achieve that heavy impression both sides and get a nice thick card with the artwork on both sides looking top notch. After pasting the press sheets together they were trimmed to size and edges were colored to match the printed pms. Coloring the edge of paper that thick really makes the most of the edge coloring effect.
I think I want to buy a house from this guy.
Published on
August 25, 2009 in
Letterpress.
Tags: 134lb, 268lb, back to back, both sides, business, California, cards, coloring, crane, deep, Design, duplex, duplexed, duplexing, edge, edge coloring, heavy, impression, LA, Letterpress, letterpress business cards, los angeles, luxury, painting, pasted, pasting, printer, printing, reddoor, reddoor creative, tipping, trimmed, typography.
