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Fabien Barral Business Cards & Note Cards

admin — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 02:22:40 +0000

Here is another fantastic project designed by Fabien Barral over at Graphic Exchange. He brought in wonderful organic drips and brush strokes that interpret with a unique sculptural quality under letterpress impression.

We put down a lot of letterpress printing on this sheet. It’s a good way to make a project affordable – - spread the cost over several items all on the same press sheet. The paper stock is Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 165lb Cover. The sheet contains four business cards and three large note cards. We printed a slightly contaminated opaque white ink for the tonal white effect, also a dense black ink. For our white ink, we usually put just a hair of silver in the opaque white to give it a little tone. It also has the benefit of creating a stronger sheen difference between the inked impression and the uncoated paper stock than you would get with a blind (inkless) print.

After printing this project went to live in French customs for a little while. And that should answer another question we get a lot – Yes! we do ship international all the time. Just let us know if you have any specific customs needs for your country.

Culinaria Food and Wine Letterpress Cards

admin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:54:24 +0000

Jeff at Biklops Design created these note cards and business cards for catering and event planning company Culinaria. We love the simple line work logo and are a little amazed it actually printed. It is one of those “it turned out really cool but was a pain in ass to print” kind of projects. Inking a solid like this with letterpress is one of the more difficult things to print. There is a constant struggle to maintain minimal variation in the color density. With a large solid area the press sheet warps like a ripple potato chip, making feeding the sheets in register a challenge. And keeping the fine line weight of the logo from filling in made for a fun time on press. To help with the filling in on the logo we ended up shortening the exposure of the plate, which still hardens the plate but lessens the amount of base/neck material on the edges of the printed image. So good job on the design Jeff, we can even print your curve ball.

The cards are printed letterpress on 220lb Crane Lettra Flo White 100% cotton stock. The final trimmed cards were finished with a matching light blue edge coloring accent. The text is printed after the solid so it has a sculptural impression. If the text were printed first, the solid blue on the opposite side would flatten the impression down to near nothing.

Dohmen Letterpress Stationery System

admin — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:10:08 +0000

When a design firm gets all the details right, it’s a beautiful thing to print. These business papers for Dohmen were designed by GS design in Milwaukee, and the details are tight. We just finished printing them and thought it was a design well suited for letterpress. The radial dots under heavy impression create a tactile logo, the custom converted rounded envelope flaps echo the logo shape and the edge coloring is a perfect accent on the business cards and folding note card.

The business cards are Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 165lb Cover. They are 2 color letterpress printed with edges colored to match the logo PMS color. Since this was a single sided business card, some impression show through on the back side was not a concern. However, check out the photo of the back side of the business card and you get a visual on what we’d be looking at if there were printing. Printing on both sides with letterpress is possible. Be aware if if deep impression is used, there will be show through from side to side, even on thick stock like 165lb Cover. We can pull back on impression and minimize show through for two sided cards.

The note cards are Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 130lb C – just a little thinner to help get a nice fold.

The letterhead and envelopes are Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 80lb Text. We like the additional weight of an 80lb vs. a 70lb text weight for letterpress printing. It helps everything feel a bit more substantial and does better job with a heavy impression. And the custom converted envelopes are pretty cool – check out the side flaps – they even follow shape of the rounded seal flap. We freak out about stuff like that – nice.

Laurie DeMartino – Letterpress Identity

admin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 01:29:40 +0000

We love involved custom production projects with other design firms – especially identity systems. The refined work of designer Laurie DeMartino exemplifies the level of production we strive for in our letterpress shop. A keen eye for detailed type and color makes her design work striking. In fact, we believe she has a sixth sense related to finessing details. We worked with her to produce this identity system by matching her attention to detail on press.

Some noteworthy things about this system:

We partnered with another vendor to produce the offset floods of color on the letterhead and envelopes. Those big fields of color are next to impossible to hold consistent on letterpress. We can do larger areas of color (we did it on the note card and business card) but there is more variation in letterpress printing than in offset. When that variation is desirable we will print a flood of color on certain stocks. When it is not desirable, we recommend combining letterpress with offset. (Yes, that adds cost.) It is worth noting that we can print a large press sheet and often work in tandem with commercial offset printing.

Business Cards are 5 PMS /1 PMS. We matched the ink printed offset with our letterpress ink.

All the type and small graphics are letterpress printed. Light colored type is a heavy impression with custom mixed varnish. You can see in the letterhead detail and business card detail the show through on the reverse of the sheet.

The envelope is custom converted and has a perforation line across the flap.