Tag Archive for 'heavy'

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Serious Foodies Business Cards

We just love folks that can blur the line between the disciplines of design and illustration. Jessica Hische is certainly one of those rarities. Be sure and check out her site for more great hand lettering and typography. She designed these business cards for new project by Mischa and Jacob DeHart called Culinary Culture – A Site for Serious & Aspiring Foodies.

We letterpress printed these cards on 220lb Crane Lettra, 100% cotton stock. They are printed three colors on the logo side and two colors on the text side. Additionally, the logo side needed the dark red run as two passes – something we often do in letterpress when there is a solid area of color and text on the same plate. The heavy ink density needed to cover a solid versus the light ink density for text lets the type remain crisp and the solid run as saturated as possible. (That means this piece of paper ran through the press six times – four on front, two on back.)

And of course they just wouldn’t be complete without some edge coloring. These have a contrasting green edge which is nice and noticeable on the thick 220lb stock. We usually recommend edge coloring be applied to stock heavier than 160lbC. Coloring can be applied to thinner sheets, but the effect is more pronounced with thicker paper. _0000_culinary_culture_business_cards

Published on June 29, 2009 in Letterpress. 10 Comments Tags: 220lb, business, card, cards, cotton, crane, culinary culture, Design, edge, edge coloring, edges, handlettering, heavy, illustration, jessica hische, Letterpress, letterpress business cards, lettra, painting, printer, printing, serious foodies, thick, tipping, type, typography.

Flooding Letterpress Ink

This post shows a card we letterpress printed for Grass Fed Cattle Company designed by a good friend and design mentor over the years – Michael Skjei. We love the commitment to local farmers and free range meats. If you are local, give these guys a try.

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We seem to be getting an aweful lot of requests to print business designs with floods of solid color. It can work on letterpress – with a couple big caveats.

Will the color be consistent?

We will have a wider range of ink density variation in the print run than an offset press. We do not have computers sitting on press monitoring this, it is all by eye. We matching to a print at the beginning of the run and keep it as a target, adjusting as we go to keep everything as close as we can. But there will be variation.

The heavier the ink density, the more difficult it becomes to hold the detail of fine typographic detail. So if you are flooding, more robust type works better.

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Will my color print solid?

This depends on the type of stock and the color. Lighter colors and smoother paper stocks generally print with less “saltiness” in a solid area of coverage. Since letterpress prints with pressure, we are much more subject to the texture and formation of the sheet of paper to achieve an even solid.

Will there be impression on the text?

Generally, no there will not be impression. Letterpress works best with text and artwork that is pressing into the sheet. If you are looking for impression while flooding a color, this is not a great use of letterpress. Notice how the logo and gray ink have impression, the green flood of color does not.

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Is the cost the same?

A flood of color takes much more time to set up on letterpress than a card that has text only. Generally, this involves making ready the ink fountain and double the amount of makeready sheets to get color up to speed. Since we charge based on press time, printing a flood of color will cost more than printing a text only design.

However, most small offset printers can’t make a 160lb or heavier sheet of paper run through their press. So that leaves letterpress as a viable method to print to handle these heavier stock thickness. You have to get on a much larger offset press to touch that kind of stock thickness, which means also means bigger quantities and costs.

So yes, we can print solid colors IF you are comfortable with the variations that are inherent to the letterpress process.

Published on May 18, 2009 in Letterpress. 4 Comments Tags: 165lb, beef, business, business card, cards, color, Design, flood, grass fed cattle company, heavy, ink, Letterpress, paper, solid, stock, thick, typography, variation.

Back In Black

I’m back after a helluva week with some crazy virus. I miss writing this thing!

This is a sweet little business card designed by Andrew Young at Exclamation 101. The information wraps the card from front to back. We letterpress printed them on a thick two ply black museum board. Weight wise, it is about 200lbC which gives virtually no show through. We really like the finish on this sheet too. The impression takes with a nice crisp bite and the black is very dense compared to commercial papers. The metallic silver ink offers great opacity on the black stock.

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Published on May 15, 2009 in Letterpress. 5 Comments Tags: 2ply museum, andrew young, black, board, business card, exclamation 101, heavy, impression, ink, Letterpress, silver, thick, two sided.

AIGA booklet, Student Tours, Chocolate

We’ve been busy with an AIGA student event this last weekend called Portfolio One-On-One. It’s an event for design students to tour studios in the Twin Cities, have their books looked at and attend some short workshops. We had a group through our studio to see the press room and we also did a workshop about “Planning design with specialty production techniques.” Good times.

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We also printed a booklet cover for this AIGA event. We hit the bejesus out of an 80lb cover stock and thought we’d show what the other side looks like. Granted, we don’t run everything this heavy. But a thinner stock with a heavy impression is going to have more show through than a thicker stock with the same impression. On this booklet, nothing was on the reverse side, so it did not matter that the impression was extra hard.

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A note about tours – We have student groups from all over the country take tours of our shop and we are happy to do it. However, none of them have ever sent us a box of chocolate with a thank you note. That is until Brigham Young University. Thanks BYU. And to all the other student groups inquiring about tours – we now expect some edibles! ;-)

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Published on April 27, 2009 in Letterpress and News. 3 Comments Tags: 80lb, AIGA, booklet, cover, heavy, impression, Letterpress, letterpress services, minnesota, one, one on one, portfolio, shop, show, student, Studio, through, tour, tours, twin cities, workshop.

Electric Green Edges

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Edge coloring is an amazing addition to a letterpress project. These are a couple thousand cards stacked up, just completed for GS Design in Milwaukee. They designed these for their client Dohmen. The radial dots are a nice contemporary design on the face of the card and the sides are a matching vibrant green. They are printed in two PMS colors on thick 165lb Neenah Solar White.

We can match edges to any printed PMS color. And the effect looks at it’s best on stock 160lb or thicker. It’s taken us a few years of practice to get the edge coloring production process just right, so we are purposefully a bit elusive about exactly how we do this. It has something to do with unicorn tears and hens teeth. ;) The effect is much more subtle when seen as a single business card and always makes people take a closer look.

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Published on April 20, 2009 in Letterpress. 12 Comments Tags: 160lb, 165lb, accent, bright, business, card, color, coloring, contemporary, cover, edge, green, heavy, Letterpress, letterpress services, paint, pantone, paper, pms, printed, printer, printing, stack, stain, stock, thick, typography.

Bingo, A Meat Raffle And Letterpress

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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. 9 Comments 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.

Four Friends Letterpress Business Cards – Pt 1

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This is a big post with lots of images so be sure and see Part 2 as well.

We’ve been an online friend with French designer Fabien Barrel for a while. He’s been kind enough to show our press work on his Graphic Exchange website. His site is a finely curated collection of designers and projects from all over the world. Be sure and see it next time you need some graphic inspiration.

Fabien collected three other friends that also wanted letterpress printed business cards. Fabien Barrel designed his card and the card for So Goods. Fred Dauzat designed his card and the card for Limited Press. We letterpress printed these cards together with Continue reading ‘Four Friends Letterpress Business Cards – Pt 1′

Published on April 7, 2009 in Letterpress. 0 Comments Tags: blind, Business Cards, card, fabien barrel, france, fred dauzat, french, graphic exchange, heavy, impression, ink, Letterpress, letterpress services, limited press, minneapolis, minnesota, paper, so goods, stock, thick.

Four Friends Letterpress Business Cards – Pt 2

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This is part two showing the production of business cards on our Heidelberg Windmill. Be sure and see Part 1 showing the finished cards.

We start with a high resolution film negative. The negative is used to expose the plastic plates. The plates are attached to an aluminum base and placed into the press. The press uses air suction to pick up a sheet of paper on the left side and deliver it into the press for printing. The printed sheets are automatically stacked in the delivery pile on the right side of Continue reading ‘Four Friends Letterpress Business Cards – Pt 2′

Published on April 7, 2009 in Letterpress and Printing Tips and Tricks. 4 Comments Tags: 10 x 15, 10x15, blind, Business Cards, card, fabien barrel, france, fred dauzat, french, graphic exchange, heavy, Heidelberg, impression, ink, Letterpress, letterpress services, limited press, minneapolis, minnesota, paper, press room, printer, printing, so goods, stock, thick, Windmill.

Coaster Stock Business Card

We designed this identity with mountaineering in mind. Saying “10 Zing Consulting – Helps you reach the top” would have been really lame. So we wrapped that message into the design with the shape. Show it, don’t say it.

We went lo-fi with the production and used a 55pt coaster board with 2 color letterpress. Then the pieces were steel rule die cut. Coaster board works OK for letterpress printing, but isn’t the best if you are looking for a deep impression. The material core is soft and the surface will tend to crack if you drive the plate to deep. It also sucks up the ink and requires heavy ink lay down.

In addition to our design work, our letterpress room prints projects for designers and agencies all over the country. Contact us for an estimate on your project.

Published on February 7, 2009 in Design and Letterpress. 1 Comment Tags: 10 Zing, 55pt, beer mat, Business Cards, coaster, coaster board, die cut, heavy, Letterpress, letterpress printing, letterpress services, thick.