Has it only been six years? In 2020 we worked on our first project for Neiter Creative: a set of super simple but striking business cards for their client, NOVO, a Nashville design + build firm. Since that first job we’ve collaborated with Neiter on over 90 projects (!) — holiday cards, product tags, magazine sleeves, presentation folders, and more than anything else, business cards. In this post I’ll feature just a few favorites that capture Neiter’s minimalistic, powerful, but approachable aesthetic.

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Novo

As with most of the pieces you’ll see in this post, Neiter Creative designed this as a duplexed card — two separate sheets of card stock letterpress printed first, then glued together, and then trimmed. That means the front and back can be printed on different stocks, and it also means there’s no hint of letterpress impression show-through on the opposite side of the card.

FRONT Tonal letterpress on 300g Keaykolour Sombre Grey (sadly discontinued!)
BACK Black letterpress on 300g Lettra Fluorescent White

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KATIE DAVIS DESIGN

Another hallmark of Neiter’s business card design: European sizing. Notice that the ratio is a little more stout than an American card. To me this ratio feels more balanced, especially in a vertical orientation.

FRONT Pantone 645U letterpress on 320g Savoy Brilliant White
BACK White foil on 270g Colorplan New Blue

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HOLLAND INTERIORS

I love this one, particularly the way that the swooping logo follows the contour of the tonal letterpress background impression.

FRONT Tonal letterpress + Bronze foil on 300g Gmund Chocolate
BACK Pantone 2449U letterpress on 320g Savoy Natural White

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Kara Adam Interiors

Such a great paper color combo for this duplexed card: teal and navy stocks, both made by German paper mill Gmund. For the Kara Adam logo we used matte pigment foil instead of letterpress ink which gives a super opaque almost chalky look to the impression.

FRONT Matte Navy foil on 300g Gmund Dark Teal
BACK White foil on Gmund Dark Navy

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Meg Lonergan

XL cards for Meg Lonergan Interiors. We printed a batch on pillowy 100% cotton Lettra Ecru and another on Gmund Sun Glow. Thanks to Jo Neiter for these amazing photos!

FRONT Black letterpress on 300g Lettra Ecru and 300g Gmund Sun Glow
BACK Black letterpress on 300g Lettra Ecru and 300g Gmund Sun Glow

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Jay Baker Architects

The rare Neiter single-ply card! White and black matte foils on Gmund Used, a German-made 100% recycled paper.

FRONT Matte White foil + Matte Black foil on 300g Gmund Used Blue

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NICOLE ZARR

This card for Nicole Zarr is duplexed with two layers of the same stock so that we’re not seeing any impression show-through and the impressions aren’t flattening each other.

FRONT Pantone 2320U on 300g Lessebo Sunflower
BACK Pantone 2320U on 300g Lessebo Sunflower

Simple and lovely black letterpress on Natural White Savoy paper for Sally at IBA Inc. We printed letterhead on Savoy’s 80# text sheets, flat notes on 118# cover, and thick edge-painted business cards on 184# double-thick cover. Check it out!

We printed a ton of these amazing coaster last year and it’s not even humid here! If you want to take a few of them off my hands, shoot me an email with your mailing address.

The detail is pretty damn nice. For the front we started with a transparent tinted letterpress background floral pattern, then layered white gloss foil and then a metallic foil — color variable depending on the paper. For the back we used the same floral pattern plus a dark gray letterpress ink on 100% post consumer white folding board.

Oh, and the little chipboard packets are letterpresses as well.

Letterpress and sunshine! Spring in Portland is no joke — vibrant like just about no other place I’ve been. And there’s nothing better than natural light to bring out the texture of our work.

Above we’ve got black and tinted white letterpress on pillowy 2-ply Lettra paper for SF design firm BAMO. More carefully curated springtime/letterpress pairings below.

Espresso ink on Colorplan Harvest paper for Tyson Terrain.

Reflex Blue on 500g Brilliant White Savoy. Design by There There Co.

Gold Satin and White foils on Colorplan Ebony paper for Spring Mountain Vineyard.

White foil on Keaykolour Biscuit.

Black and tennis-ball green letterpress on Brilliant White Savoy

Today we’ve got two different takes on letterpress labels.

First off, for Yay For Earth, a 6-color (!!) label on Savoy cotton paper with custom adhesive, finished with a die cut. These require super tight registration and steady inking so all the details line up and come out crisp. Thanks to @fioikeue for the wonderful artwork, and to Stevie at @yayforearth for working with us over the past couple years.

Next up, some teeny-tiny client-designed labels with gold satin foil on Gmund Dark Teal paper that we printed last summer for @solpothecary. As with the YFE labels above, these have custom-applied adhesive and a kiss-die-cut.

Tonal letterpress! Think of it as the sophisticated cousin to blind letterpress. Rather than use no ink at all, with a tonal letterpress impression we ink the plate with a little bit of color — usually a mix of transparent white ink plus a dab of the paper color. Sometimes it’s barely noticeable (see the Cedarly card below) and sometimes it’s got quite a bit of pop (more like the Harvest wedding invite). Take a look…

We worked closely with Samantha and Devon to come up with this invitation design for their New York Botanical Garden wedding. The color scheme and primary typeface are nice and bold, but the tonal letterpress details are super delicate. We printed on thick custom duplexed Colorplan stock so that it would hold up nicely to the heavy impression.

PAPER Custom duplexed 700g Colorplan Forest
INK Tonal letterpress
FOIL Gold Satin