Tag Archive for 'thick'

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Multiple Colored Paper Business Cards

One of the best ways to get lots of color in a letterpress project is to print a colored paper. For these business cards Cricket Design Works in Madison, WI chose three colors for some extra vibrant variety in their design.

The paper is all custom duplexed from French Paper Poptone colors. We love the color options and small quantity availability of this paper line. These cards are printed on Gumdrop Green, Wild Cherry and Blu Raspberry each pasted to Poptone Sweet Tooth White on the opposite site for a 200lb heavy weight. The cards were printed with a metallic silver ink first, then overprinted in black. The same artwork and ink colors were used for all three business cards on the press sheets. (Everyone received all three colors.) This made the project more budget friendly since all we had to do was change out paper stock while running the prints – no extra wash ups or ink color changes.

Published on June 29, 2010 in Business Cards. 3 Comments Tags: 200lb, blue, Business Cards, cricket design works, custom, french paper, green, heavy, ink, Letterpress, madison, metallic, overprint, poptone, red, silver, sweet tooth, thick, WI, wisconsin.

Shine Advertising Knife Wrap Ephemera

This ephemera was designed by the folks at Shine Advertising to dress up a pocket knife mailing sent to their clients as a promotional item. You might ask if that is really letterpress? Yep, actually that’s four color process plus two spot color letterpress printed one pass at a time. That means that lil’ piece of paper went through the presses seven times. (six color passes and a letterpress matrix score) Certainly not a typical use of letterpress, but that’s why it was so fun to print it. Laying down color one at a time means a little guess work as you build the color density for the final image, but fun to watch it unfold. The process printed picture was from CSA stock images and worked pretty well to break out into plates even though it started as a heavily line screened image. The plates were printed with a 90 line per inch screen on Mohawk Loop Husk 160lb Cover.

Also be sure and check out the flash light wrap we printed for Shine last year.

Published on June 21, 2010 in Letterpress and packaging. 0 Comments Tags: 160lb, advertising, art, color, CSA, Design, ephemera, four, heavy, husk, impression, knife, Letterpress, mohawk, packaging, paper, pocket, pocket knife, process, shine, spot, stock, thick, wrap.

iphone app developer letterpress cards

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.

Published on June 18, 2010 in Business Cards and Letterpress. 1 Comment Tags: 220lb, app, apple, application, blind, business, card, cards, classic crest, color, colour, developer, duplex, duplexed, duplexing, edge, finland, gray, grey, heavy, impression, iphone, Letterpress, machine, marko karppinen, minnesota, MK&C, neenah, painting, paper, pasting, potdevin, press, printing, rotary, solar, thick, tipping, white, yellow.

Bahamas Cocktail Party Invitations

This is a letterpress printed invitation for a destination party, complementing a custom wedding system we printed a while back. These are also designed by the groom Scott Peiffer.

The card is a thick 200lb Wausau bright white. It was printed on a cylinder press with a light blue flood of ink with a red ink mixed to match the envelope color. We printed the same red ink on the envelope flap for a tonal effect. Note the nice pop through details of the paper left white.

Published on May 26, 2010 in Letterpress and Wedding. 5 Comments Tags: 200lb, a7, bahamas, bright, card, cocktail, color, envelope, flap, flood, heavy, ink, invitation, invite, Letterpress, match, paper, party, pointed, red, rightsidedesign, scott peiffer, thick, ultra, wausau, white.

Six Speed Biz Cards – Crushed AND Burned

Six Speed sent us this design for custom letterpress business cards. They are a specialized events marketing company here in Minneapolis. And what could be a better business card job really – crushing AND burning all on the same press sheet.

The cards were letterpress printed on 200lb Eclipse Black Wausau with silver ink, then the press sheet was laser cut. The laser cutting was used due to the complexity of the cutting die and the size of the print run. Laser cutting does a really nice job, especially on darker stocks were the edge burn is less evident. With lighter colored and white stocks, a mask is sometimes sometimes required to prevent burning marks on the face of the sheet.

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Published on November 24, 2009 in Business Cards and Letterpress. 4 Comments Tags: 200lb, black, burn, Business Cards, custom letterpress, cut, cutting, dark, Design, die, eclipse, ink, laser, laser cutting, laser die, marketing, minneapolis, notches, paper, pattern, performance, press sheet, printing, shape, silver, six speed, thick, wausau.

Eight Hour Day Letterpress Holiday Card

Not that a heart felt email blast or animated web message for the holidays isn’t all well and good, but as you may have guessed we are suckers for a good old fashioned ink on paper. The next few days, we’ll show some previous custom holiday projects we’ve letterpress printed in the hopes of inspiring your own letterpress holiday projects. The holiday card seems to be one of those notorious last minute tasks for creative types. We are already heavily into estimating custom cards for many designers. And as much as we love rushing last minute projects, earlier is always better and leaves many more production options available. Word to the wise, ask us early for an estimate on your project.

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Who says typographic characters don’t make delightful tree ornaments? This card was designed by Katie and Nate over at Eight Hour Day. The green combined with hot pink makes a unique holiday color combo. The card was die cut to produce two parts for a desktop Christmas tree, to be decorated further with objects on your desktop. It was letterpress printed on thick Fox River Blotter stock from Neenah Paper. Since the paper is produced without any surface sizing the blotter sheet has a more mottled appearance in how the textured surface accepts a large solid ink area like the green tree. This gives the printed piece some additional tactile quality. Fa la la la la, ooolala.

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Published on October 28, 2009 in Holiday and Letterpress. 0 Comments Tags: blotter, card, cards, christmas, custom, Design, die, die cut, eight hour day, flourescent pink, fox river, green, greeting, heavy, Holiday, Letterpress, neenah, paper, pink, printing, score, tactile, thick, tree, type, typography, unique.

Aphro Chic Blotter Business Cards

Abbie at Passing Notes is a master of refined print design. Her type is always exquisite and these cards for her client Aphro Chic were a pleasure to print. They are on a thick 60pt blotter stock with a flood of bold geometric pattern on the back and two color letterpress on the front. The blotter sheet has a pulpy appearance with lots of soft fiber texture. We printed the business cards along with a note card on the same press sheet so the print dollar went a bit further. The business cards were edge colored in a PMS match yellow for the perfect finishing accent.

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Published on October 21, 2009 in Business Cards and Letterpress. 5 Comments Tags: abbie, aphro chic, blotter, board, bold, Business Cards, CA, California, Design, edge, edge color, edge coloring, fiber, geometric, heavy, Letterpress, note, note card, passing notes, pattern, printed, printing, refined, San Francisco, soft, stock, texture, thick, typography, yellow.

Blotter Board Letterpress Business Cards

Caryn Gutterman designed this business card for photographer Scott Regan. We are suckers for letterpress printing the unique, custom and out of the ordinary. And these business cards are no ordinary cards. If Scott Regan hands you a business card, you will KNOW he’s handed you a business card. The thick stock is 60pt blotter stock. It is a little more textured on one side than the other. The texture of this stock is deep – reminds us of the finish on an egg carton, kind of raw and porous in appearance. It takes some work to print a solid letterpress, even more work on this stock. It’s not a fine surface like cotton sheets, but it’s soft and takes a nice impression which makes it attractive for letterpress. The paper just drinks up the ink and leaves paper fuzz everywhere – guess that’s why it’s a blotter stock. But the result is really beautiful. There is an uneven nature to the way the ink lays on the heavy formation of the paper. We printed the gray ink first, then the tightly registered yellow logo. The card was trimmed and edge colored in a PMS matching yellow. We like the simple modern design combined with the raw material – people will hang onto this card for sure.

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Published on September 9, 2009 in Business Cards and Letterpress. 4 Comments Tags: 60pt, blotter, board, business, card, cards, caryn gutterman, color, custom, Design, edge, egg carton, formation, heavy, Letterpress, modern, painting, paper stock, scott regan, solid ink, textured, thick, tipping, unique.

Degree Six – Garment Tags and Business Cards

We like our printing aprons, but sexy and sustainable clothing fits nicely with letterpress too. We were asked to designed and produced these new garment tags and business cards for new LA based label – Degree Six Clothing. And they are sexy indeed, but in an earthy conscious sort of way.

They create garments with consciously produced fabrics, so for our part we used a fully recycled material for the project. Notable is the 100% recycled 80pt book board. Also, the cards are long and narrow – only half the size of a typical business card. We worked with the Hot Snot screen printing shop to put down our fluorescent green plant pattern on sheets of the book board. Since screen printing ink is opaque, we got a nice bright green color on the darker colored board. Then we letterpress printed metallic 877 for the text. Screen printing does well on a lot of things, but it does not like tiny type. The tags were hole punched, trimmed to size and edge colored with the signature fluorescent green Degree Six color. The board thickness is great for flashing a glimpse of the accent edge coloring. Can wait to see them in stores soon.

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Published on August 27, 2009 in Design and Letterpress. 8 Comments Tags: book board, bright, business, Business Cards, cards, clothing, clothing label, colored, d6, d6 clothing, degree six, Design, fluorescent, garment tags, green, half size, heavy, hot snot, labels, painted, recycled, screen printing, tags, thick, tipped, typography.

AIGA Minnesota – Studio On Fire Tour

Last night we had a rockin’ time showing off our studio space and letterpress shop to Minnesota AIGA members. A big thanks to Minnesota’s AIGA chapter for giving us the opportunity.

We talked about the relationship of letterpress and design, did some Q&A, drank some Pabst Blue Ribbon and wrapped up the event with a little coaster project on press. Take a look at the coaster sheet – it’s 60pt Ahlstrom blotter paper. We pre printed a couple colors before people arrived. Then, we had a different color set up on both of our Vandercook presses. Everyone got to pull a couple prints, then we die cut the sheet into the set of four coasters. Lots of paper touching and good times had by all. Thanks Kayd Mustonen for taking some pics to share.

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Published on July 31, 2009 in Design, Letterpress and News. 6 Comments Tags: 60pt, ahlstrom, AIGA, blotter, board, coaster, coasters, demo, Design, impression, Letterpress, minnesota, MN, pressroom, printer, printing, Studio, studio on fire, thick, tour, type, typography, vandercook, workshop.

Letterpress Ninja Business Cards

Next time the public transit looks a little sketchy, you’re leaving the bar late and alone or your co workers simply won’t shut it – here is a gift we now ship with each custom project we letterpress. With tongue planted ever so firmly in cheek we present our very own 220lb, 100% cotton throwing star business card. It may not be deadly, but it will get the point across.

NOTICE: It is all fun and games till someone loses an eye. Don’t throw it at anyone unless you intend to use deadly force.

Published on July 14, 2009 in Letterpress. 19 Comments Tags: business, Business Cards, card, cards, crane, heavy, Letterpress, lettra, ninja, paper, pearl white, star, stock, thick.

Birds of Sadness Letterpress Poster

We designed and letterpress printed this poster for the Sweet Hair poster show featuring 37 Minneapolis artists. All prints are hair-inspired, handmade and created just for this show. A portion of proceeds benefits Locks of Love. It hangs at the Art Minion Gallery in Northeast Minneapolis until mid July. If you love hair, check out the Sweet Hair site.

Our 18 x 26 poster is a single color printed on 220lb Crane Lettra Pearl White. The type intertwines with a .30 point stroke that flows throughout the poster, making a nice deep impression on the cotton stock. The quote is a Chinese proverb that reads “You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from passing over your head, but you can prevent their making a nest in your hair.” If there are any left when the show comes down at Art Minion, we’ll sell them on our site.

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