Tag Archive for 'thick'

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Serious Foodies Business Cards

We just love folks that can blur the line between the disciplines of design and illustration. Jessica Hische is certainly one of those rarities. Be sure and check out her site for more great hand lettering and typography. She designed these business cards for new project by Mischa and Jacob DeHart called Culinary Culture – A Site for Serious & Aspiring Foodies.

We letterpress printed these cards on 220lb Crane Lettra, 100% cotton stock. They are printed three colors on the logo side and two colors on the text side. Additionally, the logo side needed the dark red run as two passes – something we often do in letterpress when there is a solid area of color and text on the same plate. The heavy ink density needed to cover a solid versus the light ink density for text lets the type remain crisp and the solid run as saturated as possible. (That means this piece of paper ran through the press six times – four on front, two on back.)

And of course they just wouldn’t be complete without some edge coloring. These have a contrasting green edge which is nice and noticeable on the thick 220lb stock. We usually recommend edge coloring be applied to stock heavier than 160lbC. Coloring can be applied to thinner sheets, but the effect is more pronounced with thicker paper. _0000_culinary_culture_business_cards

Published on June 29, 2009 in Letterpress. 10 Comments Tags: 220lb, business, card, cards, cotton, crane, culinary culture, Design, edge, edge coloring, edges, handlettering, heavy, illustration, jessica hische, Letterpress, letterpress business cards, lettra, painting, printer, printing, serious foodies, thick, tipping, type, typography.

Round Juggling Business Cards

Fuel is a great creative shop in Iowa that sent us this unique business card design for Whatsup Juggling. It is letterpress printed on thick 220lb Crane Lettra cotton paper. The inks are orange, blue and a custom contaminated opaque white. The card was then die cut into 2.5 inch circles. We then tried to juggle them. Business cards are really hard to juggle.

Some production notes: The original intent was to have the white printing be a blind (inkless) impression. However, where those blind areas of text line up to one another from one side of the card to the other, there is a push back on the impression. When there is no ink to even out the visual appearance, legibility can suffer where the impression overlaps from side one to side two. Putting a white ink down contaminated with a bit of silver ink helps even out the look and gives the general appearance of a blind hit. Check out the pics for comparison. Still subtle, but with a hair more contrast than a true blind impression.

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Published on June 24, 2009 in Letterpress. 3 Comments Tags: 220lb, blind, blue, business, cards, circle, contaminated, cotton, crane, Design, die cut, diecut, double, double sided, Fuel, fuel inc, impression, ink, inkless, iowa, juggling, Letterpress, letterpress business cards, lettra, orange, round, thick, two sided, unique, whatsup, white.

Flooding Letterpress Ink

This post shows a card we letterpress printed for Grass Fed Cattle Company designed by a good friend and design mentor over the years – Michael Skjei. We love the commitment to local farmers and free range meats. If you are local, give these guys a try.

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We seem to be getting an aweful lot of requests to print business designs with floods of solid color. It can work on letterpress – with a couple big caveats.

Will the color be consistent?

We will have a wider range of ink density variation in the print run than an offset press. We do not have computers sitting on press monitoring this, it is all by eye. We matching to a print at the beginning of the run and keep it as a target, adjusting as we go to keep everything as close as we can. But there will be variation.

The heavier the ink density, the more difficult it becomes to hold the detail of fine typographic detail. So if you are flooding, more robust type works better.

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Will my color print solid?

This depends on the type of stock and the color. Lighter colors and smoother paper stocks generally print with less “saltiness” in a solid area of coverage. Since letterpress prints with pressure, we are much more subject to the texture and formation of the sheet of paper to achieve an even solid.

Will there be impression on the text?

Generally, no there will not be impression. Letterpress works best with text and artwork that is pressing into the sheet. If you are looking for impression while flooding a color, this is not a great use of letterpress. Notice how the logo and gray ink have impression, the green flood of color does not.

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Is the cost the same?

A flood of color takes much more time to set up on letterpress than a card that has text only. Generally, this involves making ready the ink fountain and double the amount of makeready sheets to get color up to speed. Since we charge based on press time, printing a flood of color will cost more than printing a text only design.

However, most small offset printers can’t make a 160lb or heavier sheet of paper run through their press. So that leaves letterpress as a viable method to print to handle these heavier stock thickness. You have to get on a much larger offset press to touch that kind of stock thickness, which means also means bigger quantities and costs.

So yes, we can print solid colors IF you are comfortable with the variations that are inherent to the letterpress process.

Published on May 18, 2009 in Letterpress. 4 Comments Tags: 165lb, beef, business, business card, cards, color, Design, flood, grass fed cattle company, heavy, ink, Letterpress, paper, solid, stock, thick, typography, variation.

Back In Black

I’m back after a helluva week with some crazy virus. I miss writing this thing!

This is a sweet little business card designed by Andrew Young at Exclamation 101. The information wraps the card from front to back. We letterpress printed them on a thick two ply black museum board. Weight wise, it is about 200lbC which gives virtually no show through. We really like the finish on this sheet too. The impression takes with a nice crisp bite and the black is very dense compared to commercial papers. The metallic silver ink offers great opacity on the black stock.

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Published on May 15, 2009 in Letterpress. 5 Comments Tags: 2ply museum, andrew young, black, board, business card, exclamation 101, heavy, impression, ink, Letterpress, silver, thick, two sided.

Electric Green Edges

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Edge coloring is an amazing addition to a letterpress project. These are a couple thousand cards stacked up, just completed for GS Design in Milwaukee. They designed these for their client Dohmen. The radial dots are a nice contemporary design on the face of the card and the sides are a matching vibrant green. They are printed in two PMS colors on thick 165lb Neenah Solar White.

We can match edges to any printed PMS color. And the effect looks at it’s best on stock 160lb or thicker. It’s taken us a few years of practice to get the edge coloring production process just right, so we are purposefully a bit elusive about exactly how we do this. It has something to do with unicorn tears and hens teeth. ;) The effect is much more subtle when seen as a single business card and always makes people take a closer look.

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Published on April 20, 2009 in Letterpress. 12 Comments Tags: 160lb, 165lb, accent, bright, business, card, color, coloring, contemporary, cover, edge, green, heavy, Letterpress, letterpress services, paint, pantone, paper, pms, printed, printer, printing, stack, stain, stock, thick, typography.

Bingo, A Meat Raffle And Letterpress

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If you aren’t sure what a “meat raffle” is you should really look it up to fully understand the heritage of this design. It’s good to see a fine establishment carry on this noble tradition. Our friends at Fame created this cuss-worthy design for Continue reading ‘Bingo, A Meat Raffle And Letterpress’

Published on April 19, 2009 in Letterpress. 9 Comments Tags: 60, 60pt, a10, bar, beer, board, brown, coaster, dark, darts, Design, dive, envelope, ephemera, Fame, fameretail, foos ball, gold, heavy, ink, invitation, invite, Letterpress, letterpress services, meat, metallic, minneapolis, minnesota, orange, party, point, pulp, raffle, Sam Soulek, sizing, stock, thick, typography, vintage.

Four Friends Letterpress Business Cards – Pt 1

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This is a big post with lots of images so be sure and see Part 2 as well.

We’ve been an online friend with French designer Fabien Barrel for a while. He’s been kind enough to show our press work on his Graphic Exchange website. His site is a finely curated collection of designers and projects from all over the world. Be sure and see it next time you need some graphic inspiration.

Fabien collected three other friends that also wanted letterpress printed business cards. Fabien Barrel designed his card and the card for So Goods. Fred Dauzat designed his card and the card for Limited Press. We letterpress printed these cards together with Continue reading ‘Four Friends Letterpress Business Cards – Pt 1′

Published on April 7, 2009 in Letterpress. 0 Comments Tags: blind, Business Cards, card, fabien barrel, france, fred dauzat, french, graphic exchange, heavy, impression, ink, Letterpress, letterpress services, limited press, minneapolis, minnesota, paper, so goods, stock, thick.

Four Friends Letterpress Business Cards – Pt 2

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This is part two showing the production of business cards on our Heidelberg Windmill. Be sure and see Part 1 showing the finished cards.

We start with a high resolution film negative. The negative is used to expose the plastic plates. The plates are attached to an aluminum base and placed into the press. The press uses air suction to pick up a sheet of paper on the left side and deliver it into the press for printing. The printed sheets are automatically stacked in the delivery pile on the right side of Continue reading ‘Four Friends Letterpress Business Cards – Pt 2′

Published on April 7, 2009 in Letterpress and Printing Tips and Tricks. 4 Comments Tags: 10 x 15, 10x15, blind, Business Cards, card, fabien barrel, france, fred dauzat, french, graphic exchange, heavy, Heidelberg, impression, ink, Letterpress, letterpress services, limited press, minneapolis, minnesota, paper, press room, printer, printing, so goods, stock, thick, Windmill.

A Tasty Food Stylin’ Business Card

As the name would imply, a stylist has to have style. This morsel was designed by Westwerk Design and was just featured in the Minnesota AIGA award show. And check out Lara’s site for some really succulent looking food photography.

The letterpress printing is tasty too. The card was printed four colors on the front and a single color on the back. However, we washed up the press four times and did all four single colors on the back as well That gives a nice variety to the presentation of the card on table display on photo shoot sets and studio events.

A heavy ink flood is not the greatest application of letterpress – there is no impression to the information side of this card. We even held on to the tiny 5 point type reversing from a solid. And yes, that many color changes certainly adds up cost. But hey – this job hand eight wash ups!

There is a practical reason to do this kind of solid on a letterpress if you are happy with the more mottled (salty looking) and varied way a letterpress lays this much ink. The reason is stock thickness. Offset printing, which is the best process for printing solids, is usually limited by the thickness of paper for smaller press sheets. To run a thick stock (these are 165lb Neenah) on an offset press gets expensive because you usually need to hire a larger size offset press to handle the stock thickness and have a big press sheet. That just doesn’t make sense for a short run business card project. And most smaller offset presses which could less cost just can not take the stock thickness rattling through the press – if they can get paper to feed through at all. Putting the card stock on a letterpress makes paper feeding possible for a short run job. Offset printing – eat me.

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Published on March 25, 2009 in Letterpress. 4 Comments Tags: 165lb, AIGA, award, business card, color, Design, flat, flood, food stylist, ink, Lara Miklasevics, Letterpress, letterpress services, minnesota, neenah, offset, paper, printing, thick, westwerk.

Hey, Nice Ensemble

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.

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Published on March 12, 2009 in Letterpress. 1 Comment Tags: blind, business card, Design, ensemble, envelope, impression, letterhead, Letterpress, minneapolis, No. 10, pattern, printing, services, spunk, spunk design machine, stationary, stationery, system, Tea Slip, thick.

Six Degrees Of Colored Paper

Since letterpress doesn’t do a great job flooding a page with ink, designers must come up with production alternatives to bring in big areas of color. One of the things that can be done when designing for letterpress is combining different colored paper stocks. This works especially well for projects with multiple pieces that need to coordinate – like stationery systems, wedding invitations, etc. Our previous post on the Ocean House system shows a splash of color added to the back of everything via offset printing. Adding a contrasting paper stock for pieces like envelopes and cards can be a more cost effective production solution to still add color to letterpress and avoid offset (or “flat” printing as people call it when comparing to letterpress)

This system designed over at Space150 by Jason Strong brings color to the system by adding a couple contrasting papers. We printed the same letterpress ink color on the white stock and then the burgundy colored stock for the envelopes. This creates a tone-on-tone effect that remains legible and adds a nice texture. A smaller note card in a pink stock also matches the pink ink used throughout the pieces. The business cards are on thick 220lb Crane Lettra, which does an excellent job eliminating the impression show through of a two sided card.

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Published on March 11, 2009 in Letterpress. 1 Comment Tags: 220lb, Business Cards, colored, crane, envelope, envelopes, flood, jason strong, Letterpress, letterpress services, lettra, offset, paper, space150, stationary, stationery, thick, two sided.

Secret Agent Man Letterpress Business Cards

The thickness of these cards allows them to also serve as a secret weapon. When your primary audience for business card hand off is art directors and designers, your card had better be memorable. A 55 point coaster board makes them fantastically textural and unstoppable. Clockwork Active Media Systems designed these for photographer rep Jeff Cerise – aka Secret Agent Man. They are hot off the press.

One thing to note about Coaster Board – it does not take a sculptured impression like other softer sheets. The surface will break. One of the detail photos below shows the surface cracking that will occur with to much pressure. This is likely especially in interior areas of artwork and must be watched for and adjusted to avoid this breakage. However, the finish of the stock is nice and pulpy – a definate stand-out among more typical paper mill stocks. We also like the “salty” look to the dark ink color on this stock. Gives it an aged / weathered appearance.

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