This is one of the most ambitious projects we’ve ever taken on. In 2020, Pasxa Wines in Walla Wall asked us to produce labels for their first vintage for about 5000 bottles. Since then we’ve worked with them each year as their production has more than doubled and this past December we finished work on labels for their fourth vintage.

Close-up of Pasxa letterpress wine labels

Each label goes has a total of seven (!!!) letterpress inks. We use soft and supple 100% cotton Somerset paper, a stock that’s designed and manufactured for fine art prints. After printing, we hand-apply an adhesive backing then die cut the press sheets. At the winery, the Pasxa folks place the labels on each bottle manually.

This year we expanded our custom adhesive capabilities to make the process faster and less expensive while increasing the adhesive strength. We’re not able to put our letterpress wine labels on rolls, but our new process makes application quite a bit less onerous than previous iterations of this job.

Photos by Gritchelle

letterpress labelsTravis FriedrichMay 7, 2024wine label, somerset, soft white, adhesive, die cutComment

Business Cards for Silvergrin and Sespe Creek Distilleries

Foil and letterpress business cards for Silvergrin Vodka

The first of two business cards we printed for clients of the incomparable designer Chad Makerson Micheal. This one’s kinda nuts: A duplexed card with three letterpress inks plus sliver foil on the front, three letterpress inks on the back, glued and die-cut. Super tight registration on the inks and foil all around.

PAPER Duplexed Gmund Matt 46
INK Black, PMS 2035U, PMS 2327U
FOIL Silver Shine
FINISHING Duplex, Die-cut

This next one for Sespe Creek is another duplexed card with three letterpress inks both front and back. Such an awesome level of detail in Chad’s designs — perfect for letterpress printing.

PAPER Duplexed Gmund Matt 50
INK Tinted White, PMS 3015U, PMS 2035U
FINISHING Duplex, Die-cut

Photos by Gritchelle

business cardsTravis FriedrichApril 10, 2024gmund, die cut, blue, black, red, foil stamping, duplexingComment

Embossed & Letterpressed Business Cards

Embossed and duplexed business cards for Portland’s Wildwood House!

If you’re printing a two-sided business card and you don’t want to see the reverse of your embossed image on the back of the piece, we can duplex two sheets after embossing to hide the embossing. For this set, we embossed 350g Colorplan Pistachio, printed black letterpress on 300g Lettra Fluorescent White, glued the two together, and then die-cut to finish the card.

It’s also a good idea to die-cut an embossed & duplexed card rather than trim it on a standard guillotine cutter. That way the emboss doesn’t get mashed by the cutter clamp.

PAPER Duplexed Colorplan Pistachio & Lettra Fluorescent White
INK Black
FINISHING Die-cut

Photos by Gritchelle

business cardsTravis FriedrichFebruary 13, 2024colorplan, pistachio, lettra, fluorescent white, lemonade, emboss, duplex, die cut, blackComment

Letterpress Labels: Grandiflora

One of the nicest fake products we’ve ever designed! We created this label to help illustrate our new line of Letterpress Labels & Tags.

We printed this one with pale yellow and black inks on Pearl White cotton paper, then added peel-and-stick adhesive and a custom die cut.

Photos by Gritchelle

letterpress labelsTravis FriedrichFebruary 7, 2023wine label, sticker, yellow, black, die cut, bottleComment

Red Flooded Business Cards

Solid floods of color can be tricky with letterpress. But if you play your no-pun-intended cards right, you can get great results. Lighter/brighter colors tend to print more evenly. And die-cutting the cards rather than knife trimming can help keep the raised unprinted paper from getting squished or scuffed.

For these square cards we printed for Birmingham Developer, Ford Waters, we printed on separate sheets of 300g Fluorescent White Lettra, then duplexed and die cut. Design was done by long-time Parklife friend, Chad Martin of The G Brand.

business cardsTravis FriedrichFebruary 16, 2016duplex, square, die cut, red, flood, fluorescent white, blackComment

PDX Sports Fan Letterpress Coasters

Looking for the perfect gift for your beverage-sipping Portland sports fan friend? Well shoot, these aren't for sale. But if they were, they'd be perfect... if not a little pricey.

We printed the Timbers side with two inks on 300g Fluorescent White Lettra. On the opposite side, we printed a modified Trail Blazers logo with silver and red inks on ridiculously thick 4-ply rich black museum board. Then we duplexed the two sheets by hand and die cut them to 4 inch 80pt thick circles.

Silver is one of the few letterpress inks that's opaque; most non-metallics are transparent. So we printed the full Blazer logo in silver to create a light-colored base, then printed red ink on top of the silver for half of the logo. If we'd just printed red on black, the color would be completely lost.

coastersTravis FriedrichFebruary 18, 2015coasters, portland, black, fluorescent white, duplex, silver, trail blazers, timbers, die cut, sportsComment

Trio of New Business Cards

Parklife Press is grateful to have earned a lot of repeat business for business cards — new hires, change of information, and promotions all require updates and re-orders. But seeing and working on cards for new clients is always fun, and here are a few new ones to show you.

Using the "dessert first" philosophy, we open with this confection of a card for Seaside Macarons of La Jolla, California. The logo and design were custom-made by Parklife Press. The card features three custom inks printed on 450g Wild stock (a brown, a cheerful robin's egg blue, and a lighter tint of that blue, used as the pattern on the lower half of the card).

Next we have Broker/Realtor Van Fletcher, of Raleigh. Each side is printed with two custom inks. The sides are then glued back to back (a process called "duplexing"), trimmed to size, then edge-painted. The front features a two-color logo with key illustration and the back has two letterpress inks printed on top of a flat offset-printed flood. This gives the back a textured, almost quilted appearance. They are truly luxurious cards.

And last but not least, we have these art deco inspired cards for Leyla Gans of Morrisville. The cards are eye-catching for many reasons, perhaps most notably the die-cut rounded edges — the angular graphic starburst design is balanced by the card's contours. They're printed in Midnight and Gold inks on 500g Radient White Somerset stock.

Photos by Sarah McCarty Arneson

business cardsSarah ArnesonFebruary 25, 2014custom ink, duplex, edge painting, custom design, custom logo, 450g, wild, 500g, radiant white somerset, gold, midnight, offset, die cutComment