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.

The typographic design is nice and bold, making the blind (inkless) impression really stand out. These business cards do something that does take an extra production step – heavy impression on both sides that lines up from side to side. To get this blind type to look really look good and provide enough sculptural to keep it readable without ink, it needed to be printed as a single sheet, then pasted back to back after printing so the impression on one side wouldn’t flatten the impression on other. The cards were printed on 110lbC Crane Lettra, then glued together for the final 220lb thickness.

So why is the business card tricky? It is custom duplexed stock, letterpress printed, laser die cut and edge colored. We custom duplexed Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 110lb Cover up to a 220lb thickness. Then we letterpress printed them several up on a press sheet. A larger press sheet means we can economize the laser cutting by doing more at a time. The laser cutting can leave some scorch marks, so the sheet is masked with a paper tape that peels off after the cutting is complete. Then the sheet is trimmed up into cards and edge colored in black. That 220lb thickness shows off the edge and has a nice smooth surface. The poster is on Crane Lettra 110lb Flo white, pressed in a single PMS blue.

Wedding invitations need not be all typographic. This is a nice change in pace from most invites that tend to focus more on type than image. And we love letterpress printing lots of color, so this artwork does the trick. It was designed by Sheraton Green over at CSA Design.  The peacock image comes from the CSA Image collection – an easy $40 bucks to license for wedding invites.

Since CSA also designs all the French Paper stuff, they sent over 140lb Cover Poptone Sweet Tooth paper stock. We printed four PMS colors, with some really beautiful overprinting happening inside  the illustration. These kind of solid areas are always a challenge for letterpress. Note how the solid areas are a bit “salty” in the ink coverage.