Studio On Fire // Design & Letterpress Blog
This wedding invitation for Andy and Drew is certainly a unique format. It was designed by Drew Hodgson for his wedding in Palm Springs, CA. The bold colors and contemporary shapes make the design both modern and masculine. The invite is actually a folder enclosure that opens to reveal the invitation text on the flap. The folder opens further to Continue reading ‘Modern Graphic Type Wedding’
A good narrative is behind good relationships. That’s why a booklet telling a little bit of the couples story is extra special as a wedding invitation. This invitation was designed by Craig Duffney at BBDO in New York for his friends Amy and Adam. He did excellent work making two sets of illustrated capitals and graphics. One corresponds with the bride, the other with the groom and they co-mingle in the invitation layout.
Planning out the production of a little booklet takes some extra finesse beyond the standard wedding stationery. The format here is an A7 size booklet with a soft cover and french folded pages. The cover is a heavier 110lbC Pearl White Crane Lettra. The gutt is lighter weight 80lbT Pearl White Crane Lettra. Both were letterpress printed in two colors, a lighter green corresponding with the bride and an olive green with the groom. The pages were scored, collated and top stitched inside the cover with a cream colored thread. Then a final trim was taken from head and foot. We also produced an RSVP card and matching folding thank you cards. This is certainly among the more elaborate invitations we’ve produced, yet the final appearance remains simple and striking.
Sometimes it’s possible to get an oversize sheet on an undersized platen letterpress. What is important to keep in mind is the distance between the arms on either side of the platen. As long as the sheet is smaller than that dimension, it could fit.
This is a long 4 x 18 inch card that needs to fold in half to 4 x 9 inch and fit into a standard #10 envelope. We are set up in this photo to run a 3 point matrix score, but this works for printing as well. To fit this sheet size onto our 10 x 15 size C&P platen press required a special McGill gauge pin for the side guide that fits between the tympan bail and the side of the platen. It extends beyond the platen and adds the couple inches needed to get the sheet to land inside the working area. It is a good solution to handle smaller hand fed jobs.
These guides came with equipment we purchased several years ago and we can not find more. Although, it could be rigged up from hardware store material pretty easily. If anyone has a source for these guides, please share! Someday we’ll just get a bigger hand fed press, but then there will be an even bigger sheet.
Letterpress seems pretty far removed from the slickness of the iphone. Yet even the most technically focused business can benefit from the tactility of letterpress business cards. In fact, we would argue that they are the perfect counterpoint. Marko Karppinen & Co is a software developer in Finland specializing in iphone and ipad applications. We designed and printed this card for their ten person company.
The back of the card is printed with a heavy blind (inkless) letterpress impression. The front side is printed with gray ink plus accent yellow bars. A key production step to virtually eliminate show through and have heavy impression on both sides was to print two separate sheets and paste them together after printing. For this step we use Potdevin pasting and rotary presses. The pasting machine applies glue to the back of a sheet. That sheet is then paired with the sheet for the reverse side of the business card and run through the rotary press to firmly squeeze them together and eliminate any air bubbles. The stock is 110lb Neenah Classic Crest Solar White custom duplexed to a thick 220lb weight. Special finishing is a yellow edge color. A well crafted card indeed.
Fathom, the recent release LP from Taiga records, is a subtle and textural object of beauty and a sensory experience. The drawings were perfectly suited for letterpress and translated crisply to the printed edition. This is the description from Taiga:
“Douglas Quin’s Fathom brings together four extended underwater soundscapes—two each from the Arctic and Antarctic. The recordings have been gathered over a period of 15 years, capturing an extraordinary palette of sonic voices, events, spaces, and textures. To the human ear, these soundscapes are haunting and otherworldly; yet they are very much of this world—out of earreach. The tracks are minimally edited and are his first field recordings to be archived in vinyl. Included with the release is a sealed envelope containing an insert with specific locations, animals, and other elements heard, giving listeners the option to absorb sound with or without association. The envelope is printed with liner notes and comments from Dutch journalist and music critic René van Peer. Mastered by James Plotkin, cut direct to metal and pressed on 200 gram virgin-vinyl, Fathom comes packaged in custom letterpressed materials and is presented as a limited edition of 1000.”
There was clear, white, and black vinyl versions released. Only the black is still available.
The packaging is pressed in gray and a tonal white ink. We letterpress printed the outer sleeve on a custom duplexed stock – gray on the interior, white on the exterior. We were able to print on a preconverted inner envelope which accompanies the vinyl and containing the insert.
Space 150 is a Minneapolis based company that has made some waves in the creative community by reinventing its identity every 150 days. This version was designed by Evan Nagan. We’ve produced many previous Space 150 business card versions as well – see some of them here and here.
Like the previous versions we’ve printed, these business cards take some tricky production. They are printed three color offset on one side (flood of black, purple and blue) and 2 color letterpress printed on the reverse (blue and tonal white). They have a unique two color gradient treatment on their edges. The paper is Wausau Royal complements 100lb Bright White which is custom duplexed after offset printing to a final thickness of 200lb cover. For a great edge color effect we recommend a thickness of 160lb or greater. The thicker the better.
It’s a big task! Each identity version is cards for nearly 70 people…
These two posters came to us from agency friends at Bailey Lauerman, illustrated by the ever fabulous Rilla Alexander of Rinzen. This TUNE project was sponsored via federal grant by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. Bailey Lauerman launched TUNE which uses music to inspire young women to make better choices and live healthier lives. There are 8 selected artists out of 150 entries, and their music was written and recorded specific for this project. Songs are free to download from the TUNE website.
We printed the posters with a split ink fountain using florescent pink and blue inks which blended to a nice purple in the middle. We kept the lateral ink distribution setting at maximum spread for a good blend in the poster. It was printed on French Paper Poptone Whip Cream 140lbC.
This is an iphone video of the job on press. Lo res, but you’ll get the idea of how the fountain looks.
This poster was letterpress printed for the Artcrank poster show here in Minneapolis, which opened this last weekend. Since much of this show tends to be image and graphic heavy, we wanted our poster to stand apart with lettering only. It is an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Considerations by the Way, 1860. The full sentence is actually, “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air’s salubrity.” (But “salubrity” is such an odd word and just didn’t work well in the design.) The lettering started as a hand drawn sketch, then refined in Adobe Illustrator. We printed with a photopolymer plate on Crane Lettra 300gsm Florecent White at 18 x 24 size. They are on display now at One On One in Minneapolis.
They sold well at the opening night and are still available. There was some confusion about them being sold out. They are $30, to be purchased at One On One Bike Shop.
You can also buy one, now for sale on our studio site as well. Cost is $40.
Vista Caballo is a ranch retreat with a special connection to horses in Dove Creek, Colorado. We worked with Thinktopia to design this stationery system for the client. They already had a logo design and needed stationery developed using the existing mark.
One of the things often overlooked in design is the choice of materials. This is something we strive for in our own design work. Material selection can be a central component for building the look and feel of a brand. In this stationery system we use a variety of brown toned papers to compliment the tactility of the letterpress printing and echo the desert landscape of the location. Kind of like making a color palette, instead we made a material palette. Each piece is printed with the same brown PMS color.
Letterhead is French Paper Speckletone Kraft, Envelope is French Paper Speckletone Chocolate, Business cards and Note cards are Crane Lettra Pearl White 220lb, Labels are Strathmore Soft White crack and peel stock, Journal covers are Fibermark Suedetex Tan 25pt with Smart Genesis Husk 70lbT gutt.
Richness of materials makes this stationery unique.
This wonderfully typographic calendar is the work of Sonner, Vallée u. Partner in Munich, Germany. It is a true information architecture project, letterpress printed on thick cotton paper. Check out their online portfolio for some crisp and polished typographic excellence.
We printed on Crane Lettra Pearl White 220lb (600gsm) cotton stock in two colors -with deep impression text you can’t help but touch. The sheet is a large 420 x 297 mm.
With beautiful pattern and subtlety, Jeff at Telemetry Studio designed this identity and stationery system for Arzu Studio Hope. Started by a former Goldman Sachs partner, Arzu is a social entrepreneurship company that works at a grassroots level to better the lives of women in Afghanistan.
We letterpress printed multiple elements for this stationery system using gray ink and contaminated opaque white ink on Neenah Classic Crest papers. The business cards are 165lb Solar White, a smooth stock with a with enough thickness for some impression on both sides with minimal show through. We printed on pre-converted envelopes opening the flaps, printing envelope face and flap at the same time, allowing the pattern to wrap from front to back. The pressed pattern in this system is elegant and understated, creating real tactile inspiration.
This seems like a good Friday post – drink coasters. And not just any drink coasters, augmented reality drink coasters designed by our friends at Atomic Playpen. These ephemera inspired coasters were sent out to Atomic clients in a metal case. There are four coasters inside, each with a different marker on the back side. The instructions direct you to their anniversary website where you hold up one of the markers to your webcam and enjoy the action. (If you don’t have a coaster from Atomic, you can still print a marker at the site and give it a try.)
We letterpress printed them on 60pt blotter board with very dense black ink coverage so the marker would work properly. The sheet was then die cut into the four coasters. So cheers, we’ll have another round and add it to our beer wall.
