Beast Pieces » impression

SXSW Squarespace Skull Cards

admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 15:53:21 +0000

This is a letterpress card designed by Jessica Raley at Bantam Design for Squarespace. They are busy handing them out at SXSW Music Festival in Austin this weekend.

And they took some time to print, seven passes through the press to be exact. Due to the card volume, we printed them on larger 13 x 20 press sheet 15up. They are printed on two paper stocks. Side one on Wausau Royal Complements Eclipse Black, printed with black, varnish, dark silver, light silver. Side two is Mohawk Via Scarlet Red printed with varnish, black and light silver. To hide impression show through we pasted them together after printing, adding thickness and rigidity with another 100lb cover sheet in the middle. The final three ply paper thickness is 280lbC. We trimmed the sheets down and edge colored them in a metallic silver.

Also check out the striking Squarespace business cards we’ve posted about previously.

Villainy Black Business Card, Gold Edge

admin — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 12:49:28 +0000

These cards designed by Villainy and Associates really make you stop and turn the thing over in your hand. The understated typographic design gives the letterpress production value emphasis. It’s simple and pseudo executive – flashy without being too flashy.

We printed letterpress metallic gold for the information and letterpress varnish on the logotype. We like using a varnish on dark stocks for a tone on tone effect. That gives a slightly better legibility than a totally blind, inkless impression. The stock is a thick 200lb Wausau Eclipse Black with metallic gold edge coloring.

Fantastic Philatelic Wedding Invitations

admin — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 12:30:14 +0000

These invitations were designed by the bride Nichole Tremblay. You can visit her at Coral Pheasant. We worked with her on the letterpress printing of her custom wedding stationery cards. Then we were completely amazed when she sent us finished samples showing how she put them together. What a labor of love. She tied the various sized cards together in a stacked bundle using a textural gauze ribbon with golden string to wrap the pile. She produced her own lined envelopes and outer address labels that are carefully wrapping the edge of a large A10 envelope. Then she painstakingly picked her postage. She made beautiful stamp collages on the envelopes using specially selected vintage postage, different for each invitation, but little works of art unto themselves.

The invitations are printed in gray and pink inks on thick 220lb cover Pearl White Crane Lettra paper. We printed all the cards together on a larger press sheet, saving her money in the letterpress production. Large script type runs across the top of each card with small san serif type across the bottom. We used heavy impression with a lighter ink density on the gray ink so the printing could have a more textural and salty appearance on the cotton paper. These invitations are a tactile treat. And with bowling at the reception dinner, who wouldn’t want to go?

A Narrow Elegant Business Card

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:01:04 +0000

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.

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.