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.
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
I almost missed the anniversary! It was September 28, 2005 when I was 25 years old that I bought a 5x8 Kelsey tabletop press, having zero training or experience with letterpress. And it was just six weeks later on November 14 that I was apparently confident enough in my abilities to go ahead and claim the domain name for my new “business”. Not a whole lot of thought given to the name! Parklife Press — I liked the album and the alliteration sounded punchy.
Two months after that, on February 3, 2006, I bought the 10x15 Chandler & Price press that I still use today for the majority of jobs that I ship.
Below I’ll post some images from the past two decades that started in Davis, California, then to Carrboro, North Carolina, and then to Portland where I’ve been for the past 11 years.
Davis, California 2005-2006
Carrboro, North carolina 2006-2014
Portland, Oregon 2014-2020
Portland, Oregon 2020 and beyond
PARKLIFE PRESS BUSINESS CARDS OVER THE YEARS
See you in 2045!