Feast is a recurring public dinner designed to use community-driven financial support to democratically fund new and emerging artmakers. We did a poster for the upcoming event here at Studio On Fire. The size is 18 x 24. It was a hand drawn sketch, scanned and converted to a bitmap tiff to preserve the sketch texture. It was printed with a split ink fountain. Our split fountain had fluorescent orange ink on one side of the press and light blue ink on the other side, creating a nice purple gradient in the middle.
Tag Archive for 'printer'
Sublimio is a multidisciplinary design studio in Italy. They designed these cards for an engaging visual and tactile design experience.
We printed a larger message card and business cards. The message card is very subtle with a blind impression only on 110lb Crane Lettra stock. The business cards use blind impression on one side and black on the other, completed with black edge coloring. They are on 220lb Crane Lettra.
“Show Through” is a term we use to describe heavy impression from printing one side of the paper bruising the sheet and showing small distortions on the reverse side. Show through is an important consideration when a design will be letterpress printed. The double thick 220 lb Lettra is great for a project that is a two sided design because it offers virtually no show through. Note that “virtually” is a key word here. If a heavy impression is desired, there will be some show through. Generally the thicker the paper, the more minimal the show through. But even with a thick stock, impression can knock back the impression from a previously printed side affecting its appearance. In the case of this business card we printed the flood of blind pattern first with heavier impression, then the black text side of the card with a bit less impression. Balancing this impression on a two sided design depends on the nature of artwork being printed. Talk with us early in the design process to work through these production decisions.
Tactile design can use a lot of different production processes. This card is both blind embossed and letterpress printed. Many people incorrectly use the term “emboss” when speaking about letterpress printing. “Emboss” actually refers to a raised area accomplished by use of a two part die with a form and a counter form. Letterpress printing with heavy impression is closer to a “deboss.” A deboss is pushing down into the paper. (remember “d” for down = deboss) Letterpress plates can use ink but embossing and debossing dies do not use ink. They must be used blind, registered to preprinted artwork or used with foil stamping / blocking.
Letterpress equipment can be used for embossing, debossing and letterpress printing, with the correct dies. Unlike embossing and debossing, letterpress plates do not use a form and counter form. A letterpress plate is inked and pressed down into the sheet. See an image below with the polymer plate and its corresponding print and note the difference from the copper embossing die with a white and blue fiberglass counter form that made the circular design embossed on this card. These are two very different types of plates and printing effects, but run on the same Heidelberg windmill press.
Considering each side of the page is an important design consideration with tactile production processes. With letterpress plates, the amount of bruising or “show through” on the back of the print depends on the amount of pressure applied during printing. However, this definition on the reverse side of the sheet is different on embossing dies because there is a counter form that pushes into the sheet.
When an emboss is specified there are a few other considerations we would mention. Smaller sized artwork, say 12 point type and smaller offers very little raised definition. Paper thickness is also a concern. We like really thick stocks for letterpress printing, but when embossing that thickness makes it even more difficult to get good definition in smaller details. This paper was 134lb Crane Cover Flo. White, it is 100% cotton and offers a soft and sculptured impression.
Published on February 16, 2010 in Business Cards, Letterpress and Printing Tips and Tricks. 0 Comments
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.
This is a nifty little letterpress card and a7 envelope designed by Duel Purpose in Austin, Texas. It is printed in three colors, the overlapping bold graphics make unique areas of overprinting ink. The stock is 100% cotton 220lb Crane Lettra, with a matching Lettra envelope. Hand written correspondence on these are sure to any leave digital message in the lurch.
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.
This is our letterpress poster for the Toys In The Attic show opening at the Soo Visual Arts Center on Dec 4th from 6 to 9PM. The show features both custom toys and toy inspired posters. Proceeds benefit Toys For Tots. Hey, that’s tomorrow night! We hope to see you there.
These beasts are in fact our toys. The graphic beasts are constructed from various press parts and form into a crest that commemorates ten years of printing here at Studio On Fire. The dog latin phrase reads “Iron Beasts Make Great Beauty”. It is printed in fluorescent and dark silver inks on Crane Lettra Flo White 220lbC at 13 x 13 size.
It was ten years ago this month back in 1999 that the first C&P was lowered into the then basement studio. More to come on our own ten year anniversary party soon.
Thinktopia®, an idea generation company for some of today’s leading brands, commissioned this striking poster from illustrator Federico Jordan. Federico explains “The skull reflects our existence and interior vision: our vanitas.” He created this image for Thinktopia that explores the Shakespearian Yorick, San Jerónimo and mesoamerican skull racks called Tzompantli. There is an article on the back of the poster from Patrick Hanlon at Thinktopia that speaks about branding. (This poster print will serve Thinktopia as a new business tool – a mailing to prospective clients) More companies could learn from this – send out something cool to start a good conversation. We would say that an illustrated letterpress print is guaranteed way to get someones attention.
The 18 x 23 size poster is printed letterpress in four colors on Crane Lettra Pearl White cotton stock in both 110 and 220lb thicknesses on our Heidelberg Cylinder – quite possibly one of the most difficult jobs run in our shop recently. It was difficult because of the amount large areas of solid color, the thickness and size of the stock, and the tight registration. There is no overprinting of any of the colors, so all four color plates lock into each other with little forgiveness for shifts in register created by sheet distortion. Sheet distortion is physical stretching of the paper created under heavy impression. Each pass through the press creates slightly more distortion. So by the time we got to color number four, there was some colorful language as well. The 110lb stock ran pretty well but the 220lb stock is a bear to auto feed – especially five passes through the press.
AIGA Minnesota put together a short video about our studio on their emerging designers web site. Check it out:
emergingdesigners.minnesota.aiga.org
“Studio On Fire is a design workspace and letterpress printer in Minneapolis, MN backed by in-house modern letterpress printing capabilities…”
Thanks AIGA Minnesota. And a massive thanks to SevnthSin for putting this together. (You made my rambling sound coherrent!)
A bilingual wedding can be challenge. The bride needed invites in English and the groom needed Spanish. The simplest solution for this wedding in Mexico was both English and Spanish versions of the invitation. We designed and letterpress printed them with a textural yet refined style – a geometric border with a simple hand lettering for the couples names. The stock is Canalleto Grana Grossa 111lb Cover (20% cotton) and is printed in three match colors. The overprinting creates additional dimension and colors in the flower and vine motif. To integrate the invites closely with envelopes, we matched our ink colors to existing envelope colors from French Paper’s Poptone color line – orange fizz and limeade. Salud!
These cards were designed by Reddoor Creative in LA. Finely designed and printed business cards speak volumes about a business or an individual – and there are no half measures here. These cards are letterpress printed 2 pms colors each side plus a blind hit. The paper is custom duplexed Fluorescent White 268lb 100% cotton Crane Cover Kid Finish. We’d say they have a “thump factor”.
Duplex means pasting two sheets of paper back to back. In this case, we had the sheets pasted AFTER they were printed. We started with a press sheet for the front of the cards and another press sheet for the back of the cards, each sheet being at 134lb Cover weight. What this accomplishes is deep impression on both sides of the card with out show through from a heavy letterpress impression. Custom duplex pasting a sheet is the best way to achieve that heavy impression both sides and get a nice thick card with the artwork on both sides looking top notch. After pasting the press sheets together they were trimmed to size and edges were colored to match the printed pms. Coloring the edge of paper that thick really makes the most of the edge coloring effect.
I think I want to buy a house from this guy.
