It goes without saying, we like unique paper structures. This Bat Mitzvah invitation, designed here at Studio On Fire features two triangles with a hole punch that clips together making a six pointed star shape. The paper triangles unclip to open and reveal the invitation text. The paper is 110lb Crane Lettra Flo White 100% cotton, letterpress printed in hot pink and die cut into the two triangles. It was mailed in a large square Neenah Eames Furniture, Weave Finish, Pacific Blue envelope printed in one color on the flap.
Those little metal clips are something we get asked about a lot. They are called #2 Petite Fasteners, made by GEM Office Products here in the USA. They have a little point that pierces the paper and holds the sheets together. You can buy them wholesale here. ($7 per box of 100 clips, 10 box minimum) They come in two sizes – the #2 is the bigger one, the #0 is smaller. And no, we do not sell the clips. But if you are in need of some top notch Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah invitations we’d love to hear from you.
Published on
February 8, 2010 in
Design, Letterpress and Printing Tips and Tricks.
Tags: bar, bar mitzvah, bat, bat mitzvah, clip, Design, eames, Fastener, furniture, GEM, invitation, invitations, invite, Letterpress, lettra, metal, office, Petite, printer, printing, products, structure, unique.
Chris at Echo Creative designed this invite for an exclusive Timberwolves event. Getting court side tickets for the season is a big deal and attracting the right people to get in on the action requires an invite with some presence. This clean and tactile card is much visually different than the usual slick and colorful NBA related material. But its overall size and thick luxury material make their own statement. And, the dimpled basketball pattern just looks great printed letterpress.
The invite is a massive over sized 12 x 19 inch card printed on Crane Lettra 220lb Flo. White paper stock. The card is printed with silver and a light silver tinted opaque white ink and the text area is die cut to remove as a ticket to the event. If this is what basketball is about, I’m in.
Published on
November 9, 2009 in
Letterpress.
Tags: 220lb, basketball, custom, echo creative, exclusive, flo wh, invitation, invitations, invite, Letterpress, lettra, luxe, luxury, nba, printing, silver, tickets, timberwolves, white ink.
This simple one color wedding invitation was designed by the groom for the couples December wedding in Kyoto, Japan. The head silhouettes have a unique anime / manga style. We also love the modern graphic crest containing the interlocking rings and the matrimony announcement. It’s a bold yet refined design – traditional subject with a modern presentation. Nice work Osamu!
The cards were layed out together on a large 13 x 18 Flo White Crane Lettra 110lbC press sheet. These were printed on our Vandercook Uni III. We letterpress printed two passes of the gold ink for better ink density . Here’s something to keep in mind when running a double pass on a cylinder press – don’t adjust the packing on the press between pass one and two. By adjusting the packing, you also change the circumference of the cylinder, making it very difficult to register the second pass. We like to run two passes of ink metallics to give a little better sheen. Metallic ink, especially on an uncoated cotton stock will never be shiny like a coated stock or approach the mirror finish of a foil stamp, but it is crisp in details and does offer a small amount of shine.
Published on
October 6, 2009 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: 1 color, 110lbC, anime, cards, crane, crest, custom, cylinder press, Design, graphic, invitation, invitations, invite, japan, japanese, kyoto, Letterpress, lettra, manga, modern, one color, silhouette, stationery, uni iii, unique, vandercook, Wedding.
Designing your own wedding invitations has to be a designers most challenging project ever. And these are some to be proud of. The groom, Jefferson Perky of Perky Bros., designed these with an elegant typographic flair. They combine textural wood grain photography and letterpress printed type.
We produced these cards together on a 13 x 18 press sheet. The wedding invite was printed along with a save the date card, a thank you card, an accommodations card and a die cut vertical belly band. The stock was 100% cotton 110lbC Pearl White Crane Lettra. The wood grain was digitally printed, then the black type was letterpress printed.
When thinking about doing a letterpress wedding invitation it is important to consider all the cards you need upfront. We ultimately print everything together – saving us time and our clients cost. (Example – if you know you need a thank you card, plan to print it with the main invitation set.)
Published on
September 22, 2009 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: 110lb, band, belly band, cotton, crane, custom, Design, die, die cut, digital, groom designed, invitation, Letterpress, lettra, nashville, perky, perky bros, photograph, press sheet, printing, save the date, tennesee, thank you, TN, type, typography, unique, Wedding, wedding invitation, wood grain.
Not every wedding invite is so typographically unique as this one, with wedding birds too! Emily and Emory, the Bride and Groom designed these fun loving cards with display typography built from basic geometric forms overprinting each other. The warm color palette is three spot PMS colors which overlap and create additional letterpress texture. The cards are Crane Lettra Florecent White 110lbC 5 x 5 size – all printed together on a single large press sheet in tight register. They even included a little “eye spy” art print that turned out really sweet as well. The envelope is a metallic Stardream stock printed with silver metallic ink. Check out Emory’s site for even more illustrative work.
Published on
September 4, 2009 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: 110lb, crane, Design, emory, geometric, illustration, invasion, invitation, invite, invites, Letterpress, lettra, ocular, ocular invasion, orange, red, stationary, stationery, type, typography, unique, Wedding, yellow.
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.
Sometimes a great didone typeface just looks succulent, at least we think so. Those serifs are so nice and letterpress crisp, mmmm.
Sara Janssen, who I worked with back in the day at Carmichael Lynch Thorburn (now The Thorburn Group), designed them beautifully. The detail of the hummingbirds and the classic type makes this an elegant set of wedding stationery indeed. Hummingbirds are such an exquisite little bird of great symbolism, we love the copy they put on the table number card. The color is a dark purple ink printed on Gruppo Cordenons Canaletto 111lbC. We’ve been specifying this sheet for some weddings as a cost savings alternate to Pearl White Crane Lettra. It has a more pronounced texture but only a 20% cotton content. It does not taste very good though.
Published on
July 27, 2009 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: 111lb, birds, canaletto, cards, Design, didone, hummingbird, invitation, invite, invites, letter, Letterpress, letterpressed, modern, number, press, printing, purple, Sara Janssen, stationary, stationery, table, type, typography, Wedding.
We worked with Vermont couple Dana and Katie to design and letterpress print their wedding invitations. They had a custom silhouette using their own hands to make a heart shape produced by Le Papier Studios. We used this motif throughout the invitation stationery. The soft cotton paper and bright blue silhouettes are contrasted with a simple recycled brown bag envelope and typewriter style navy typography – just the right balance of a raw yet refined style. The invites are printed in a square format with 2 inks on Crane Lettra, 100% cotton stock. All the cards were letterpress printed together on a 13 x 13 press sheet for cost effective production.
Dana and Katie are excited to be on the cusp of history, celebrating just after Vermont legalizes gay marriage on September 1st. Congrats!
Published on
July 16, 2009 in
Design and Letterpress.
Tags: blue, bright, brown bag, cotton, crane, Design, flo wh, hands, heart, invitation, invite, le papier studio, Letterpress, lettra, print, printer, printing, raw, recycled, refined, shape, shaped, silhouette, stationary, stationery, type, typewriter, typography, unique, vermont, Wedding, wedding invitation, wedding invite.
A simple pattern goes a long way with letterpress printing. This is a design from the bride that uses a contemporary geometric pattern with a refined gray and yellow color palette. It is pressed on Crane Lettra 110lb Cotton stock with a matching Lettra envelope. The pattern even comes across the flap of the envelope. A nifty little details card directs you to the couples web site and replaces lengthy printed information that can clutter up an invitation suite. Connect with the bride Sabrena if you like the design style of this invite and would like her design services . The right pattern produces such beautiful letterpress texture. We’d love to print more like this.
Published on
June 16, 2009 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: bride design, California, contemporary, design texture, details, flap, geometric, invitation, invitations, invite, LA, Letterpress, letterpress wedding invitation, lettra, los angeles, modern, pattern, printing, simple, square, Wedding, yellow.
We recently finished this rather large letterpress wedding system designed by Priya Patel. Check out her fashion forward blog Love Made Visible. We asked her about the design:
Priya: “The background for the design is that the couple are to be married in a botanical garden and the bride Neerja was really inspired by traditional Indian miniature paintings which often depict figures in natural settings. She wanted to incorporate a painting with her invitation so we printed one on vellum as a cover sheet for the invite.”
Priya: “We needed to design invitations for not only her wedding in Virginia, but also a reception the weekend after in Texas that is hosted by the groom Neel’s parents. We also wanted both events to be linked visually, thus the full color nature elements.”
Since the invite was sized for a large A10 envelope, that made for a very large 13 x 20 press sheet that incorporated all the wedding cards. In this wedding, there were two main invite cards – the brides invitation and the grooms invitation. Plus the other reply cards, direction cards and sangeet invitation. That’s a lot of letterpress! Producing multiple pieces on the same press sheet keeps the cost down.
We produced the design from Priya with a combination of letterpress and digital printing. Digital printing is used for the vellum sheet and the back of the reception card. All of the navy text is letterpress printed. The paper stock is 111lb (300gsm) Canaletto Grana Grossa 20% cotton from Gruppo Cordenons. We also die cut the contrasting navy paper for the folding enclosure using French Papers Nightshift Blue and mixed our printing ink to cordinate with the navy paper. The minimal typography and ornamental detail of this design were perfectly suited for letterpress printing and produced a beautiful sculptural impression.
Published on
June 13, 2009 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: botanical, canaletto, cards, cotton, Design, enclosure, garden, grana grossa, indian, invitation, invite, large, letter press, Letterpress, love made visable, navy, overlay, painting, paintings, pomagraita, priya, reception, reply, sangeet, traditional, typography, vellum, Wedding.
Custom wedding projects are a specialty for our studio. When a marriage has multiple events and large amounts of information – a booklet structure just makes sense. We worked with stationery designer Kavita Ahuja on this letterpress printed booklet for her brothers wedding. (Also, her and her fiancee also have a very cool website selling boutique handmade perfumes called D.S. & Durga.)
The booklet is a french folded structure with a cover that wraps the spine to hide the raw page edges. The french folding allows a nice letterpress impression on each page while hiding any show through of impression on the interior since the backs are hidden. Everything is printed on Pearl White Crane Lettra 80lbT with navy and gold ink. The binding edge is stitched from the top with a navy thread. The booklet fits into an existing A7 square flap envelope. Note on that the envelope can print both the face and the flap by opening them before printing.
Published on
May 26, 2009 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: a7, binding, book, booklet, crane, d.s. and Durga, ds & durga, french fold, invitation, invite, Letterpress, lettra, marriage, mendi, pearl white, printing, script, stationary, stationery, stitch, structure, text, thread, top stitch, type, typography, unique, Wedding.
When we posted the Save The Date card by designer Nick Brue a couple months back, we were super excited to see what he had in mind for the design of the actual wedding invitation. Finally, here is his design that just recently left the pressroom:
This invitation set is housed within a mini custom die cut pocket folder which neatly organizes the various cards. The folder is printed with a tonal custom woodgrain pattern using a clear varnish ink on letterpress with heavy impression. A belly band is fitted to the exterior of the folder with a Continue reading ‘Woodgrain & Crest Letterpress Wedding’
Published on
May 8, 2009 in
Letterpress and Wedding.
Tags: band, belly band, brown, buckle, crest, custom, Design, die cut, diecut, folder, invitation, invite, Letterpress, letterpress printing, mini, minneapolis, minnesota, monogram, nick brue, pocket folder, printing, shield, stationery, tiny, tone on tone, type, typography, Wedding, wedding invitation, woodgrain, wrap.
