Beast Pieces » system

Bahamas Letterpress Wedding

admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:56:57 +0000

This massive custom wedding system is exquisitely graphic. It was designed by the groom, Scott Peiffer. More of his design portfolio here. What is especially nice about this invitation set is the uniqueness of each card. Care was taken to bring together lots of different textures and graphics – beautifully combining, flourishes, coral patterns, florals, silhouettes, crests and even a bulldog.

We letterpress printed all the cards on a sheet together in two color on Cordenons Canaletto Grana Grossa Bianco 111lb C . It is a 20% cotton blend stock with a textural finish. The A7 folder is sized to fit inside an A7 envelope. It is letterpress printed in a coral pattern with a tone on tone blue ink and then die cut. The folder stock is a bright color 100lb cover stock from French Paper‘s Poptone line. The Save the Date Envelope is also a matching stock color, printed tone on tone.

Design Camp System Gettin’ Around

Erik — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:56:58 +0000

Toot toot! Our Design Camp system for last summer’s event (designed and letterpress printed by SOF) has been making the rounds in the local and national design competition circuit- and lucky for us, doing quite well.

So far we got in at the AIGA MN show, the AIGA National show, and Print’s Regional Annual- and we couldn’t have done it without our copywriter on the project, Riley Kane, illustrator extraordinaire Jenna Brouse, Jeff Baker at Shapco and Dave Lundell at Anchor, Aleks Stancevic and for the Minn. AIGA for givin’ us the darn thing in the first place.

It took about 3 months to design this sucker from the ground up and another month (thereabouts) to mash pretty paper with big greasy machines until this came out:

Hey, Nice Ensemble

admin — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:14:00 +0000

You know what they say about too much letterpress – you’ll eventually go blind. That is exactly what happened to our design friends at Spunk Design Machine. They created this stationery system for Ensemble with a beautiful and subtle pattern that we letterpress printed blind (a plate striking the paper with no ink). Imagine, a design for a financial company that is both fun and elegant. Which makes sense for Ensemble because they cater specifically to creatives running small businesses by managing benefits and financial operations.

For the letterhead, the blind pattern runs on the text weight sheet along the top edge of the paper. That pattern also prints in color on the back of the No.10 note card (a flat card sized for a No. 10 envelope). A pattern like this is a great way to get some color into a letterpress print job without running a big solid color block. Since this card and the business cards are on the same paper and print the same color, we can run them together. We run a lot of jobs with a this card and a business card on the same press sheet. That gives the client way more bang for their print dollars.

BBDO – Letterpress CD Packaging, Coasters, Cards

admin — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 04:25:06 +0000

We print for other creative companies both large and small. Our friends in Designworks at BBDO in New York made up this gem of an identity system for their new post production suite called The Kitchen at BBDO. The system blends some fun patterns and crisp tiny type onto coasters, business cards and a CD package. And it was among the projects we printed that won a feature in the Print Design Annual.

It is a misconception that letterpress is only for small projects. We are not scared to run a big press sheet and handle large volume work. The 4 panel, 2 pocket CD package ran 2 up on our full size 18 x 23 sheet and was custom die cut and converted. The coasters and business cards ran together on a second sheet. And the details still look edible.

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.