Beast Pieces » tone on tone

Point Form Business Cards

admin — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 02:51:22 +0000

We recently printed these business cards, designed by the fellows at Point Form, a Canadian design collective.

A little tricky production was in order with their design. The paper we used is a 100lb French Poptone Sweet Tooth custom pasted (duplexed) after printing to 100lb French Poptone Lemon Drop for a final 200lb Cover stock. Pasting sheets after printing can add a little cost, but with a two sided card it is the best production move because we don’t need to worry about impression show through from a heavy letterpress imprint. Note that there is no indentation from one side to the other.

Villainy Black Business Card, Gold Edge

admin — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 12:49:28 +0000

These cards designed by Villainy and Associates really make you stop and turn the thing over in your hand. The understated typographic design gives the letterpress production value emphasis. It’s simple and pseudo executive – flashy without being too flashy.

We printed letterpress metallic gold for the information and letterpress varnish on the logotype. We like using a varnish on dark stocks for a tone on tone effect. That gives a slightly better legibility than a totally blind, inkless impression. The stock is a thick 200lb Wausau Eclipse Black with metallic gold edge coloring.

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.

Tone-on-tone white and black inks

admin — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:41:08 +0000

We have a lot of requests for blind (inkless) impression with letterpress plates. However, a tonal ink is often something we suggest rather than a truly blind impression. If the stock being printed does not lend itself to deep impression, the artwork needs some legibility or the art work is on both sides of the sheet, a blind hit can be ill advised. The amount of impression needed to clearly read a completely blind hit will create impression show through on the reverse side of the printed piece. One of the ways we get around this is to mix a tonal ink, shown here on both black and white business card samples. By printing a tone, we can lessen the impression and dial up the legibility a bit.

The black stock is 200lb Wausau Eclipse Black. It is letterpress printed with a black and silver ink mix.

The white stock is 220lb Crane Lettra Flo. White. It is letterpress printed with opaque white ink contaminated with 877 silver.

Woodgrain & Crest Letterpress Wedding

admin — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:40:26 +0000

When we posted the Save The Date card by designer Nick Brue a couple months back, we were super excited to see what he had in mind for the design of the actual wedding invitation. Finally, here is his design that just recently left the pressroom:

This invitation set is housed within a mini custom die cut pocket folder which neatly organizes the various cards. The folder is printed with a tonal custom woodgrain pattern using a clear varnish ink on letterpress with heavy impression. A belly band is fitted to the exterior of the folder with a custom die cut shape. Two slits on the back side of the belly band interlock and buckle things together without glue or a sticker. Everything fits neatly into a standard A7 size envelope. Inside the folder the rsvp and reply envelope sit together and a details card is tucked behind.

The paper combination is beautiful as well. All of the invite cards and the band were letterpress printed together on a press sheet of 110lb cover weight Crane Lettra Pearl White, 100% cotton. (We’ve actually been printing lot more weddings this year with tonal whites rather than bright whites) The envelopes are The Cement Green color from French Paper Construction. The folder paper, also from French is the 100lb C Hot Fudge color from the Poptone line.

Costwise – adding a custom printed folder with a die cut belly band will easily double the cost of an invitation. Pieces like these take much additional production time and each die cut requires an additional press run. So although there is not a lot of color going down on the invitations- printing and cutting multiple elements, hand assembling mini folders, using multiple paper stocks, printing envelopes – production costs add up quickly. But the beauty from those production details add up to the spectacular elegance in this design.