For designer and event consultant, Ilaria Ceresoli and her business Just a Dream, we printed these super-deluxe foil + letterpress business cards on 100% cotton Somerset paper.
Since Ilaria designed these with foil and a blind deboss on both sides, we printed the front and back on separate sheets of 330g Somerset paper, then duplexed them after printing so that the impressions didn't get flattened.
Our 2015 Letterpress Halloween Card
Whoa. Check out this hot-off-the-press Halloween card — designed and printed right here at our Portland studio. On the outside it features a medium gray ink and a 50/50 mix of transparent and opaque white on 65# Neenah Astrobrights Cosmic Orange. And on the inside it's the same gray ink plus a custom orange on 90# Pearl White Lettra. All hand duplexed of course.
Oh, and what exactly is going on inside? It's 15% off any business-related custom printing now through the end of November. That could mean business card, holiday cards, letterhead, or maybe some letterpress coasters for your company's New Year's Eve bash.
We mailed these out to a select bunch of loyal customers, but figured the whole world should be clued in too. The whole world reads this blog, right? Probably.
With our help, they combined the modern typefaces and sleek black / white / silver color scheme of our Ontario style with the classic floral motif from our Blossom design.
Letterpress printing on black paper can pose challenges. Most letterpress inks are transparent, so they're not going to show up on a black background. One exception is silver. Silver ink is mostly opaque (about 80%), so if you're sneaky, you can print a silver ink run on the black paper to create a lighter base, then print any color you'd like on top.
For Alex Jackson Studio we started with thick 4-ply black museum board and a silver ink run. Then we added the red rose artwork and a subtle yellow stamen, leaving a super-thin silver outline and tiny silver veins. On top of the red, we printed a gray halftone gradation to create shading (check out our halftone blog post if you're not sure what that is).
This technique requires really tight registration, but it allows for an effect you don't see often with letterpress. Our PDX sports fan coasters were done the same way. More photos of Alex's cards are below.
Barry Mills served as president of Maine's Bowdoin College from 2001 until this past July. Upon his departure, the college asked us to print his manifesto as a 6" x 15" letterpress poster.
Since we use a Chandler & Price platen press, which isn't really designed for larger pieces like this, we actually printed this two-color piece in four separate runs. That way we could get a nice even and deep impression into the 600g Lettra paper.
Beautifully simple business cards for Hime Hiko. We printed these with our Midnight and Fire Truck inks on 300g Fluorescent White Lettra. Design work by Montréal firm Sept L'atelier.
If you thought the letterpress save the dates we printed for Randi & Ben this spring were cool, I think you're gonna like the follow-up.
This was truly a collaborative project. Randi designed the two-sided invitation and sleeve, and sent the specs off to us.
We printed the front of the invitation on 300g Pearl White paper with midnight ink and gold foil, and the back with gold foil on a separate sheet. Then we duplexed the two sheets by hand, let them dry, and trimmed off the edges. This allowed us to get a two-sided piece with heavy artwork and no impression show-through.
Randi designed the sleeve to double as a direction card. We printed those with midnight ink on a 4" x 15" sheet, then scored, folded, and glued them.
Randi finished off the set on her end with gold string and a custom wax seal. Photos of the completed invitation are below.
