Printed with three inks (brown, yellow and a tonal warm gray) on Wausau Royal Compliments Natural White 100c, each print measures 12.625″ x 9.625.”

Just want one? Too bad, they only come as a set. Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter for an exclusive discount promo code.

And they took some time to print, seven passes through the press to be exact. Due to the card volume, we printed them on  larger 13 x 20 press sheet 15up. They are printed on two paper stocks. Side one on Wausau Royal Complements Eclipse Black, printed with black, varnish, dark silver, light silver. Side two is Mohawk Via Scarlet Red printed with varnish, black and light silver. To hide impression show through we pasted them together after printing, adding thickness and rigidity with another 100lb cover sheet in the middle. The final three ply paper thickness is 280lbC. We trimmed the sheets down and edge colored them in a metallic silver.

Also check out the striking Squarespace business cards we’ve posted about previously.

A word about letterpress poster image size… We get a lot of designers that are surprised by the cost to print at this size. This is not silk screen printing and comparatively, the costs are nowhere near similar. Printing poster size things with letterpress can be an expensive adventure. One way to keep the cost down is to limit the image area since plating is charged by the square inch. (For example, a single plate at 18 x 24 will run about $250, just in plating costs for EACH color) On this poster even though the paper trim size is 18 x 24 the image area is only 11.5 x 16 making plating costs a bit more reasonable.

See a previous poster we printed for the Rollergirls here.

Last years card for Baker was a die cut bird ornament as well. The same production specs, but featuring a punch out owl.

Also in the last few months, we worked through the letterpress printing of the new Baker identity on their business cards. And is was quite the undertaking. They have an interesting post about the process of icon development here. Each employee has their own icon and each card has four color ways. With over 60 employees that was a lot of icons and business cards! They are a custom duplexed 200lbC black and white stock in an undersized narrow card format. (1 x 3.5 inches) BAKER is printed in silver on the black side and the white side receives the four different color variations.

BAKER is a Minneapolis based Branding + Design firm specializing in package design. On the web: bkrdsn.com or tweet: @bkrdsn

The Studio On Fire Letterpress Calendar is a favorite project in our shop for nearly ten years. It’s been worked on by many contributors from all over the world. Each year Studio On Fire puts together a loose theme, color palette and paper choices, then we invite 5 other designers / illustrators to participate. We design 2 months, and each contributor designs 2 months. Its always nice to have a large cross section of stylistic approaches within a little package that sits on your desktop. And this year is no exception. 2011 participants include Studio On Fire Adam Garcia, Brian Gunderson, Jessica Hische, We Make It So, and Aesthetic Apparatus.

This years calendar is a departure from the usual graphic illustration in our previous versions. Our theme this year was “Letter Form Genus”, with many contributors incorporating type and lettering. We’ve not had a distinctly type related theme before, so this was extra fun. Some favorite details you’ll find are: a moustache wearing a monocle, a spider wearing a thong, a monkey skull on a snake skeleton, a hidden giraffe, and bacterial letter forms spelling “grow kindness.”

The calendar is printed all together on a large 26 x 20 size press sheet. It is trimmed down into 12 months on 3.25 x 5 inch cards. This year, the paper for the months and the outer wrap was a light brown Wausau Winter Wheat 100lb Cover. We design the tri fold outer wrap using bits and pieces of each months design, all mashed together and printed in a long strip.

The stand was a custom duplexed paper made from dark grey Fibermark Eviva Stone 100lbC and copper Stardream 111lbC paper stocks. Our easel stand design has a clever fold-out angled leg that reveals the inner metallic paper color. The grey stock is letterpress printed in one color metallic silver.

These are now available on our studio site.

We’ve been doing this calendar for almost ten years now and have been fortunate to have some really great people involved. See a couple previous years here: 2010 Calendar, 2009 Calendar, 2008 Calendar.