Studio On Fire // Design & Letterpress Blog
These cheeky promotional cards, designed by the folks over at Measure, are a great example of how fluorescent and metallic inks appear when printed on white paper. Day-glo pink and metallic silver ink were letterpress printed on Crane Lettra Flo White 110c that we duplexed after printing for a finished thickness of 220c. One card then received two perforation lines, allowing it to break down into smaller cards.
We designed this wedding invitation for the lucky couple that won our giveaway with Martha Stewart. It’s only too fitting that the couple we chose to work with will be jumping fires on their wedding night. Besides complimenting our studio name, their scheduled wedding night activities (get your mind out of the gutter) lends perfectly to the orange and white color palette featured by Martha Stewart.
Juan and Irma will be getting married in Madrid on the 24th of June, the night of “San Juan,” traditionally a night when friends and family gather to build bonfires and leap across them in celebration of the summer solstice. (We did some intense Googling and it appears that in many parts of Spain this is a party night not to be missed). They wanted to keep the invitations informal (reflecting the backyard bbq reception), to the point where it doesn’t even use the word wedding–we had to imply celebration and union strictly through the design.
With fire as a central part of the celebration, a matchbook format for the actual invitation seemed only natural. The whole letterpress printed suite is designed in physical layers, causing the viewer to interact as they unfold the invitation setting the stage for the matchbook sitting in the center of a custom frame. The invitation itself is a two and a half inch by three and a quarter inch matchbook that opens to reveal french folded text weight sheets (spanish on the front, english on the back), an intimate piece meant to directly reflect the fires that will be sparking that night.
The copy inside reads “Celebrating the arrival of the summer solstice (amongst other astronomical events),” so we created custom illustrations based around the sun, the moon and the stars to give the suite a celestial feel.
The wrap features the graphic sun inspired emblem with a smattering of stars making their way to a moon icon on the inside flap.
Several diecut papers and a pop of edge coloring create a custom built A7 size frame surrounding the matchbook invitation for mailing.
These cards were designed by the Thorburn group here in Minneapolis. They are letterpress printed with a silver ink on both sides of a custom duplex black and white stock.
Custom pasting of a duplex of paper stock is a good way to make a project with look and feel unique. It’s very often the best way to get both the colors and stock thickness desired for a project. And lets face it – most of the stocks available from paper companies as pre-duplexed options are pretty fugly colors and/or texture combinations. This stock is Wausau Royal Complements Eclipse Black 100lb cover pasted to 100% cotton Neenah’s Crane Lettra Flo White 110lbC. For production, these two papers were pasted together, then letterpress printed.
As an end note, I worked at Thorburn several years before the jump to full time operations of Studio On Fire. Check out the Thorburn site here for some solid design work.
These business cards were designed by fashion and luxury photographer Zachary Goulko. (be sure and check his portfolio for additional inspiration) His layout is simple with diagonal linear pattern and a flashy metallic copper edge color.
We letterpress printed them with 2 colors – a copper metallic ink and a tonal white ink. We used Wausau Royal Complements Bright White 100lb Cover paper stock. The card press sheets were printed then pasted together with an extra sheet in the middle to produced a triplexed sheet for an extra thick custom 300lb cover stock. They were trimmed and finished with the metallic edge color. These are lux with a definite presence.
These extra fine business cards were designed by Merge Creative and Touchpoint. Once in hand they require a good touching and groping session. They wanted a card with an OMG factor and this is certainly one of the most elaborate cards we’ve put together. The paper stock has a surprising skin-like feel. It is from the Appleton Coated Curious Collection. We custom duplexed the card from two colors. The black side is Skin Black 141lb Cover. That is pasted to Skin White 141lb Cover for a total thickness of 280lb Cover. With that kind of heavy, this card definitely has a thump factor.
Production went something like this… The black stock is hot foil stamped in a clear gloss foil and a mirror finish metallic silver. The white stock is letterpress printed in metallic silver ink. Then the black and white sheets are pasted together in register into a heavy duplex sheet. Those sheets are covered with a protective mask on both sides. The masked sheets are laser cut into the custom shaped business cards and the protective mask is removed.
This was an update to the look and feel of the orange Touchpoint business cards printed over a year ago. Those were on Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 165lb. The production of them was elaborate as well. Those cards were offset printed with and orange solid, foil stamped in clear and metallic silver, letterpress printed in silver, masked and laser cut to final size.
These cards were designed by Brew Creative as part of a brand upgrade for Neve, a premium ski and fashion sportswear company based in Boulder, Colorado.
We letterpress printed these cards on two sides using Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 165lb cover with red and gray inks. The cards are finished in a matching red edge color.
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.
Space 150 is a Minneapolis based company that has made some waves in the creative community by reinventing its identity every 150 days. This version was designed by Evan Nagan. We’ve produced many previous Space 150 business card versions as well – see some of them here and here.
Like the previous versions we’ve printed, these business cards take some tricky production. They are printed three color offset on one side (flood of black, purple and blue) and 2 color letterpress printed on the reverse (blue and tonal white). They have a unique two color gradient treatment on their edges. The paper is Wausau Royal complements 100lb Bright White which is custom duplexed after offset printing to a final thickness of 200lb cover. For a great edge color effect we recommend a thickness of 160lb or greater. The thicker the better.
It’s a big task! Each identity version is cards for nearly 70 people…
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.
With beautiful pattern and subtlety, Jeff at Telemetry Studio designed this identity and stationery system for Arzu Studio Hope. Started by a former Goldman Sachs partner, Arzu is a social entrepreneurship company that works at a grassroots level to better the lives of women in Afghanistan.
We letterpress printed multiple elements for this stationery system using gray ink and contaminated opaque white ink on Neenah Classic Crest papers. The business cards are 165lb Solar White, a smooth stock with a with enough thickness for some impression on both sides with minimal show through. We printed on pre-converted envelopes opening the flaps, printing envelope face and flap at the same time, allowing the pattern to wrap from front to back. The pressed pattern in this system is elegant and understated, creating real tactile inspiration.
These are the brand new cards for Dita Eyewear in Los Angeles. Bryan Crabtree designed them and did a nice post over on his blog too. The blind flourish on the light side and the diamond pattern on the black gives these cards a tonal and elegant look.
We first printed these as two sheets, a natural color and black stock and then pasted the sheets together after printing. This step eliminates show through of the impression when printing a two sided design. We’ve found that the gluing of the sheet after it is printed does flatten back some of the impression, so we start with a heavy impression initially. The lighter color stock is Wausau Compliments Natural White 100lbC and is printed with a blind pass and black ink. The black stock is Wausau Eclipse Black 100lbC and is printed with PMS 8001 silver and black ink. The final thickness is 200lbC, about the thickness of a US dime. After printing and gluing, the cards were die cut to the final shape with angled corners.
In our custom letterpress work we see an almost daily request from designers for white inks and/or light colored inks printed on dark colored paper stocks. Since white ink and light colored inks are not completely opaque, the ink will print on the paper with some transparency. This ink transparency is more evident the darker the paper color. This issue represents a learning curve for folks coming to letterpress print production for the first time. White ink does not turn out bright white and light colors will not print lighter than the stock color they are printing on. Metallic inks are a notable exception and will print opaque on colored stocks.
These card design offers a look at what letterpress printing CAN do. These business card were designed by Aadvark Brigade, Chris Straley Photography, and JDH Group. The designs shown are printed on the same black paper stock – 200lb Wausau Eclipse Black.
- The Straley card is black and silver ink.
- The Aardvark card is Opaque white and silver inks.
- The JDH Group is black, silver and metallic blue overprinting the silver inks.
The final cards turned out great and offer a nice comparison of how the various inks letterpress print side by side. Notice how the white ink has almost a blueish appearance. The black ink gives a nice tonal effect and a metallic color overprinting silver offers some additional opacity to the color.
