Tag Archive for 'Letterpress'

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Typography Deconstructed Poster

Ready to pump up your type vocab and sound smart next time you bump into Matthew Carter? Well then, this beauty of a poster designed by Drew Binkley at 38pages is just for you. They have a nifty site called typographydeconstructed.com with great typographic anatomy content. This poster is for sale there too – ready to release the inner type freak in all of us. Get yours with promo code SOF2011 good for $10 off.

We letterpress printed this poster on our Heidelberg 21 x 28 cylinder. You can see in the photo details, the polymer plate is positioned in the press on a custom made full size 21 x 28 inch Boxcar Base. The poster is printed with extra tight register (no trapping) on 100% cotton Crane Lettra Fluorescent White 110lbC and trimmed to a final size of 16 x 24 inches.

Published on February 28, 2011 in Letterpress and Posters. 8 Comments Tags: anatomy, black, blue, crane, cyan, deconstructed, flo white, large format, letterform, Letterpress, letters, lettra, poster, teaching, terminology, terms, tight register, type, typography, vocabulary.

Letterpress Open House TONIGHT

Final reminder for our Love Machine Open House Party tonight. Hope to see you soon.

Leaving you with a beautiful thought about machines from Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin:

“Machines challenge certainty so well. They should not be able to move. But they do. They turn, and move, and never cease — there is always an engine going, somewhere — like generations of silver hearts they keep the faith of the world and stoke imagination in its continued and splendid rebellion.” Quote from “Winter’s Tale” by Mark Helprin ©1983

Published on February 11, 2011 in Letterpress and News. 12 Comments Tags: Letterpress, love machine, machine, machines, minneapolis, minnesota, MN, northeast, open house, open studio, party, press, printer, printing, twin cities.

Badges for Bruises Rollergirls Poster

Adam Hoganson designed this subtle and beautiful poster for the Minnesota Rollergirls. We letterpress printed these for the bout that took place this last weekend. The poster is an 18 x 24 three color edition on Wausau Royal Complements Natural 100lbC. A big congrats to our press operator and MN Rollergirl “Lizzy the Axe”. She was a brutally wonderful jammer during the bout. (And she printed the poster on our Heidelberg S cylinder 21 x 28)

A word about letterpress poster image size… We get a lot of designers that are surprised by the cost to print at this size. This is not silk screen printing and comparatively, the costs are nowhere near similar. Printing poster size things with letterpress can be an expensive adventure. One way to keep the cost down is to limit the image area since plating is charged by the square inch. (For example, a single plate at 18 x 24 will run about $250, just in plating costs for EACH color) On this poster even though the paper trim size is 18 x 24 the image area is only 11.5 x 16 making plating costs a bit more reasonable.

See a previous poster we printed for the Rollergirls here.

Published on February 8, 2011 in Letterpress and Posters. 4 Comments Tags: 100lbC, 18 x 24, adam hoganson, complements, edition, Letterpress, minnesota, MN, natural, plate, poster, print, printing cost, rollergirls, royal, wausau.

Letterpress Love With Baker Associates

We’ve worked with BAKER here in Minneapolis on a few really fun letterpress projects over the last year or so. And they’ve designed some beautiful things for pressing. Most recently, their second installment of the bird themed holiday ornament cards rolled off the press. It is a little bird (a good luck Cardinal) with an ornate frame that die cuts and punches out of thick 60 point blotter stock. It is printed two color each side.

Last years card for Baker was a die cut bird ornament as well. The same production specs, but featuring a punch out owl.

Also in the last few months, we worked through the letterpress printing of the new Baker identity on their business cards. And is was quite the undertaking. They have an interesting post about the process of icon development here. Each employee has their own icon and each card has four color ways. With over 60 employees that was a lot of icons and business cards! They are a custom duplexed 200lbC black and white stock in an undersized narrow card format. (1 x 3.5 inches) BAKER is printed in silver on the black side and the white side receives the four different color variations.

BAKER is a Minneapolis based Branding + Design firm specializing in package design. On the web: bkrdsn.com or tweet: @bkrdsn

Published on December 20, 2010 in Business Cards, Holiday and Letterpress. 2 Comments Tags: 100lbC, 60pt, ahlstrom, baker, baker associates, birds, black, blotter, blue, business, Business Cards, cards, coaster board, coaster stock, coasters, color ways, custom, cut out, cute, cutting, die, diecut, duplex, eclipse black, green, hanging, heavy, Holiday, Letterpress, narrow, ornament, ornate, owls, pasted, printing, punch out, purple, red, thick, wausau.

Great Gatsby Business Card Poster

Heads of State designed this F. Scott Fitzgerald inspired poster, capable of bringing tears of joy to English teachers and designers everywhere. It is an epic layout project containing 32 calling cards of fictitious Great Gatsby characters. Each card is its own nugget of typographic excellence modeled after 1920′s social stationery.

This was an ambitious letterpress printing. (did we mention 32 card designs up on a sheet) With its large size, four ink colors, full dry back between each color, tiny type plus full solid areas, tight register and heavy stock this took some patience on press. We printed on French Poptone Sweet Tooth 140lb C – a massive 20 x 26 press sheet trimming down to the final 18 x 24 inch poster.

The poster is for sale at the Heads of State store

You can also check out our post on previously printed business cards for Heads of State.

Published on December 15, 2010 in Business Cards, Letterpress and Posters. 2 Comments Tags: blue, Business Cards, calling cards, fitzgerald, great gatsby, heads of state, heavy, heidelberg s, ink, large, Letterpress, navy, orange, poster, press sheet, red, social, solid, solids, stationery, tonal, type, typography.

Sozi And Friends Letterpress Print

This is a new letterpress print from Rilla Alexander. She’s been a part of our annual calendar project for several years, so we were super excited to be part of her Sozi character launch this month. This beauty as well as other well crafted Sozi items are available in her shop and also at Collette through the end of December.

We letterpress printed an edition of 100 in red ink on Pearl White Crane Lettra 110lb C. Actual size is 40cm x 30cm. Get one while they last.

Published on December 14, 2010 in Letterpress and Posters. 4 Comments Tags: berlin, byrilla, collette, crane, edition, france, germany, illustration, Letterpress, lettra, lion, paris, pearl white, print, red, rilla, sozi, sozi and friends, sun, trees.

2011 Letterpress Calendar

The Studio On Fire Letterpress Calendar is a favorite project in our shop for nearly ten years. It’s been worked on by many contributors from all over the world. Each year Studio On Fire puts together a loose theme, color palette and paper choices, then we invite 5 other designers / illustrators to participate. We design 2 months, and each contributor designs 2 months. Its always nice to have a large cross section of stylistic approaches within a little package that sits on your desktop. And this year is no exception. 2011 participants include Studio On Fire Adam Garcia, Brian Gunderson, Jessica Hische, We Make It So, and Aesthetic Apparatus.

This years calendar is a departure from the usual graphic illustration in our previous versions. Our theme this year was “Letter Form Genus”, with many contributors incorporating type and lettering. We’ve not had a distinctly type related theme before, so this was extra fun. Some favorite details you’ll find are: a moustache wearing a monocle, a spider wearing a thong, a monkey skull on a snake skeleton, a hidden giraffe, and bacterial letter forms spelling “grow kindness.”

The calendar is printed all together on a large 26 x 20 size press sheet. It is trimmed down into 12 months on 3.25 x 5 inch cards. This year, the paper for the months and the outer wrap was a light brown Wausau Winter Wheat 100lb Cover. We design the tri fold outer wrap using bits and pieces of each months design, all mashed together and printed in a long strip.

The stand was a custom duplexed paper made from dark grey Fibermark Eviva Stone 100lbC and copper Stardream 111lbC paper stocks. Our easel stand design has a clever fold-out angled leg that reveals the inner metallic paper color. The grey stock is letterpress printed in one color metallic silver.

These are now available on our studio site.

We’ve been doing this calendar for almost ten years now and have been fortunate to have some really great people involved. See a couple previous years here: 2010 Calendar, 2009 Calendar, 2008 Calendar.

Published on December 8, 2010 in Design, Letterpress, News, packaging and Studio On Fire Products. 5 Comments Tags: adam garcia, aesthetic apparatus, calendar, copper, custom, Design, desktop, die, dieline, easel, eviva, fibermark, hische, illustratioin, illustrator, jessica, Letterpress, metallic, minneapolis, minnesota, MN, packaging, print, product, silver, stand, stardream, wausau, we make it so.

Golden Rule Letterpress Poster

This poster is a father and son collaboration. All elements are hand drawn by Koen (age 6) with a Sharpie marker at the dining room table, then arranged digitally. The type is the “Golden Rule” as penned in the honest hand of a child. Maybe what we learned in kindergarten is most important.

It is 14 x 20 in size, letterpress printed in yellow and gold inks on Legion White Eco Rag, 600gsm. Available for sale on our site.

Published on November 19, 2010 in Design, Letterpress and Posters. 6 Comments Tags: 600gsm, animals, child, drawing, eco rag, edition, gold, golden rule, heavy, illustration, ink, legion, Letterpress, paper, poster, sketch, sunshine, thick, yellow.

Letterpress Video at Studio On Fire

Gestalten TV was in our studio and put together a great video.

You can get the podcast on itunes here.

For their visit, we had a little project on press called “The Pressroom Creed” – printing on 220lb Lettra and will be available soon for sale on our site. It is an adaptation of the better known Rifleman’s Creed, but for letterpress printers. Seriously, everyone in our pressroom must memorize this and we say it together each morning.

Published on November 2, 2010 in Design, Letterpress, News and Posters. 10 Comments Tags: 220lb, Ben Levitz, creed, gestalten, gestalten.tv, Letterpress, lettra, minneapolis, MN, podcast, press room, pressroom, publisher, rifleman's creed, video.

Paper Saw Blades

Since pretty much everyone needs a paper saw blade, we figured it was time to deliver. These heavy duty paper blades pop out of our latest promo card to fly through the air as a dangerous incarnation of business cards. You can toss them at pets, logs and trees, use them as coasters or keep them on hand to contact us for your next custom letterpress printing project.

(these are an upgrade from our previous ninja version)

Published on October 19, 2010 in Business Cards, Design and Letterpress. 7 Comments Tags: 200lb, bright white, Business Cards, calling cards, coasters, craftsman, custom, die cut, diecut, dieline, heavy duty, let er rip, Letterpress, orange, paper, printing, red, saw blade, spin, thick, throwing stars, tongue in cheek, toothy, wausau.

Villainy Black Business Card, Gold Edge

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.

Published on October 12, 2010 in Business Cards and Letterpress. 8 Comments Tags: black business card, blind, crafted, eclipse black, edge coloring, edge staining, edge tipping, executive, gold edges, gold ink, heavy, impression, LA, Letterpress, los angeles, new york, NY, paper, thick, tonal, tone on tone, type, typographic, typography, varnish, villainy, villainy and associates, wausau.

Letterpress at AIGA MN Design Camp Workshop

This post is a recap of the fun we had this last weekend leading a press free, hand style letterpress workshop at AIGA Minnesota Design Camp. We were located in the wine cellar at Grandview Lodge in Nisswa, Minnesota. Over 300 designers attend this event annually. We did three sessions of this 1.5 hour long workshop with over 120 total attendees.

The process was about putting down lots of ink quickly, creating textures, layers and happenstance in the layout and printing. No press required, no two prints alike.

Studio On Fire brought in lots of good stuff:

10 large cases of our woodtype collection (about 400lbs of type, mostly Hamilton faces)

Tape and cardboard (served as the bed of the press, tape held type in rough position)

A wadded up paper towel was the “printing press” (used with hands to burnish the back of the sheets)

Several dozen CSA images supplied on photopolymer plates (permission of CSA archives)

Wood grain background textures (blasted with a powerwasher, then relief carved)

Lots of good ol’ French Paper to print on (poptone sweet tooth and many many remnants)

Ink and brayers (oil based inks and soft rubber rollers)

It was a fluid process and a good chance for everyone to step away from the computer. A huge thanks AIGA Minnesota for having us and to the AIGA volunteers that supplied a steady stream of nature wash solvent to clean up and redistribute the wood type and images. And thanks to Phong Tran for his photo contributions.

If you would like Studio On Fire to do a workshop with your group, let’s talk. Please do contact us for more information.