Tag Archive for 'reverse'

Painted Pretzel Packaging – Kisscut Labels

Yael Miller designed these beautiful labels for a new company called the Painted Pretzel. She is also a contributor at another site we love – thedieline.com And these hand crafted gourmet pretzels are worth the letterpress labels. Here are some details on the production:

We printed an 8.5 x 11 sheet of Strathmore Ultimate White Wove crack and peel label stock. Unlike many kinds of label sheets, this stock takes a great letterpress impression. This sheet was printed with five spot colors and a kiss cut in tight register. (For letterpress, that’s six times through the press) The kiss cut is a die cutting process which is also able to run on the letterpress. The same as die cutting, but care has to be taken to cut only through the label and not through the backer sheet that peels away.

The printing of this sheet was an intensive bit of letterpress. With floods of color and fine type everywhere the ink density had to right on for everything to print crisply. Note how there is a salty look to the color, more so in the brown ink. This is so we didn’t over ink the fine type elsewhere on the brown plate. There is even a good example of a letterpress halftone on the pretzel in the center. Mmmm.

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Rhymesayers Cards – Metallic Color and Heavy Ink

These guys are certainly one of the hottest Minneapolis record labels. Rhymesayers Entertainment sent us this business card design for a raw and painted letterpress look.

Production turned out sweet, but it has some letterpress challenges.

Colored Metallic Ink on Black Stock

This card is printed on a custom duplexed paper – French Construction Black glued to French Speckletone. On the black side we printed a red metallic ink. Metallic ink colors on in letterpress or offset printing are opaque BUT as color pigment such as red is added the ink becomes more transparent. The look is more subtle than a foil stamp.

Large Ink Area with Small Type Reversing Out

In modern letterpress application, clients want to see impression. As a general rule, reversing small type out of a larger graphic is not the best use of letterpress. The type is not getting “impressed” – the graphic around the type is. So, if you are looking for letterpress impression with your text, don’t reverse out of a field of color. Note how the small information text and the logo on the black side of the card have more visible impression than the logo inside the spatter mark.

An additional challenge with a large area of ink coverage becomes holding onto small detail within the graphic and running the ink heavy enough for good dense coverage.  On this card, the raw and heavy ink was desirable, the look is a like a heavy paint on chipboard. You can see how the heavy ink begins to “squeeze” a bit on both the logo and the information type. Sometime to get crisp type we can run a large graphic separate from small text even though they may be the same ink color. This allows us to run a heavier film of ink for the graphic and get solid coverage, then run a lighter film of ink for the text and get crisp type.  However, that does mean an additional set up and press run.

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