Studio On Fire // Design & Letterpress Blog
Katie Kirk illustrated this fantastic little print to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Eight Hour Day. You can buy one of the edition in their etsy shop.
We printed it in two color letterpress on French Paper Muscletone Pure White 140lb C, at an 8.5 x 11 size.
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.
Shine Advertising Co. in Madison, WI designed this flashlight box wrapper as a promotional piece for their agency. The look is a pretty sweet 1800’s ephemera inspired style and inside is a mini Maglite flashlight. We letterpress printed in four spot colors on Smart Genisis Husk 110lb C – 100% PCW. There are three tones of blue ink plus red ink.
Chad, the design director, came in and spent the day on press with us. Take a look at a few press room images he created with an iphone camera using an app called HiCon – kinda nice black and white effect.
A note on press checks - We are always happy to have clients come in for press checks. And if you can’t make it, we often do a virtual press check and send along photos as we are on press. We schedule a press time and you can wait by your computer for letterpress goodness. That really gives no excuse not to letterpress with us. :)
So what happens when you are happily letterpress printing along and accidentally pull a print on your top sheet? If you leave that ink there it gets on the back side of the next dozen impressions you pull. Even if you wipe it away with a rag, there can still be some residual ink transfer.
We keep a bottle of baby powder in the press room to deal with the problem. After we wipe the top sheet with a rag to remove as much ink as possible, we break out the baby powder. A small shake of powder rubbed on the tympan paper top sheet helps stop the remaining ink from transferring on the backs of future impressions. And you’ll have the bonus of smelling like a clean babies bottom.
Now it’s even easier to get in touch with us for your custom letterpress project.
For our international and long distance clients we can be reached on our skype account to discuss projects.
10 am – 5pm CST.
And if you need more, follow our tweets.
Skype: studioonfire
Twitter: twitter.com/StudioOnFire
Land Phone: 612 379 3000
Email: Request an estimate here
Remember, If you can send a PDF preview of what you have in mind we can offer you the best price and advice based on your artwork.
And here is a preview our new certificate of production seal:
Vintage machines live or die depending on our care of their lubrication needs. Certain areas on the Heidelberg Windmill presses have lots small oil points – like the gripper head and the paper feed. It is all to easy to over oil and end up with drips oozing everywhere, not cool when you are trying to keep your paper clean. One of our best friends to assist in this task is the Precision Pen Oiler. It is perfect for getting a small amount of oil right where you need it. And at under ten bucks, a lube job never cost less.
