Archive for the ‘Printing Projects’ Category

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Printing in the Service of the Law

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

A Custom Letterpress Calling CardPrinted in two colors with a blind stamp of the client’s logo in the background, this business card is printed on 160 pound stock. The deep impression of the blind run lends the 3 dimensional air of Art Deco architecture to what might be considered a 2 dimensional medium.

The card is undersized by a little bit, it measures 3.5 by 1.75 inches, which helps it stand out in an understated way.

The client, Kenneth Kunkle offers legal services to creative professionals and he worked closely with The Nomadic Press to come up with a design that had both the look of a serious professional and a hint of artistic flair.

Posted in Business Systems, Printing Projects | No Comments »

Texas to a T

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Custom Letterpress Business CardMatt board isn’t just for framing pictures anymore.

A wedding planner and a wedding photographer, who together run a business in Texas, recently hired The Nomadic Press to print their business cards. They wanted something very thick stock so we all decided to use matt board.

The color choices are a little limited when you use matt board but the results are a lot of fun. This card is printed 1 over 2 so the printing costs are reasonable. The thick edges are colored silver (I gave them a bid for gilding the edges with silver leaf but the cost was a bit prohibitive). 

The design they supplied is tasty, and it is telling of the fantastic work that they both do professionally. If you are thinking about getting married soon, think about Texas.

Posted in Business Systems, Printing Projects | 1 Comment »

A Business Card or a Calling Card

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Business or Calling CardIt used to be that one would go visiting and leave behind an indication of having called. This was the calling card.

Usually it was imprinted with just a name and perhaps the name of the club that one was a member of. If the person you were visiting was not at home when you called, then the calling card was left on a silver tray for them to take up upon their return.

The position of the card’s placement on the tray, and the bending over of one or another of the card’s corners, held deeper meanings.

These days, the modern business card is printed with a persons name and title, the name, address and logo of their business, their telephone and fax numbers, email addresses, twitter addresses, and facebook and linkedin information. Whew.

In practice, there is so much information contained on a modern business card that it is a wonder that they have remained  2 by 3.5 inches in size and have not ballooned to the size of greeting cards.

The custom business card shown here is understated in its simplicity. Printed in one color, it has an abundance of white space which shows off the letterpress impression nicely and lends a calm and professional air to the image of this company.

Now where did I put my silver calling card tray?

Posted in Business Systems, Musings, Printing Projects | No Comments »

Itsy Bitsy Letterpress Printing

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Custom Letterpress Calling CardOh man, is the type on this card small or what.

The red type in this image has a lower case x-height of about 2.5 points. It works just fine in a body of text, but I would not wish this point size on my fiercest competitor in a line of stand alone type.

Photopolymer plates work amazingly well with small type, but lines of little type, all on their lonesome, seem to fare poorly. Especially the “dots” in email addresses which tend to suffer under the heavy impressions called for in modern letterpress printing.

Whenever possible, I have the graphic designers that I am working with boost the point size of the “dots” in the design of email addresses by at least one point. In the end it is not noticeable but helps everything hold up a bit better in the printing process. 

Dotting your ‘i’s and crossing your ‘t’s has long been a euphemism for sweating the little stuff and for making sure that attention is being paid to the details. Here at The Nomadic Press, I am crossing my eyes and dotting my coms.

Posted in Business Systems, Printing Projects, Type | No Comments »

Custom Business Cards

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

 

Business Cards from the Past

Business Cards from the Past

While sorting out some of the letterpress work produced during the last year I came across this business card in the archives. Werner Design Werks did the design and The Nomadic Press produced the letterpress printing.

The work created at Sharon Werner’s design studios has always been beautiful and this custom letterpress piece is no different.

Though this example is nearly a decade old, it already looks as though it is 60 years old. And yet . . . it also looks like it came off the press yesterday. It is both crisp and faded at the same time.

Werner Design Werks is one of those volcanic design companies that Minnesota’s tectonic environment seems to give rise to. They came out of the ground on fire and have not begun to cool down yet.

It has always a pleasure working with them.

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NASA Rover Maps Blotter Surface

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Deep Letterpress Impression and Blotter PaperThis week NASA continues its attempt to get their rover free after it broke through the surface of a sheet of 190 pound blotter paper and got stuck. This photograph shows a detail of the paper’s surface as seen from the onboard camera.

Actually, this is one of the pictures that photographer John Noltner took of Nomadic Press work. It shows, in wonderful detail, the texture of the paper and the depth of impression that can be achieved when working with such heavy, soft stock.

The ampersands in circles are printed using transparent ink, which does not impart a new color but rather changes the way the light comes off its surface. 

The blotter stock is a very long and loose fibered paper that is also a bit inconsistent in its thickness. These qualities make it a pleasant paper to work with that is full of nice surprises. Which is to say that it can be a bit unpredictable (but in a good way).

It is a fairly cheap paper too.

Let’s talk.

Posted in Cards, Printing Projects | No Comments »

Letterpress Holiday Cards

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

Well, the mad rush is almost over and the myriad holiday cards that are part and parcel of the season’s work are about complete. Every year I think that I should take some time in July to print the cards for my family’s use.

The problem that I run into is the same problem that I expect all of the designers who hire me at the last minute are confronted with. How does one find cold and snowy inspiration in the middle of summer? 

It is, understandably, difficult. So, go ahead, enjoy the weather this coming summer and I’ll be ready (again) for the December holiday rush of 2010.

 

Letterpress Holiday Cards

Posted in Cards, Miscellany, Musings | No Comments »

Letterpress Birth Announcement

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Letterpress Birth AnouncementSome deep impressions and some lighter impressions work together in this piece to give this it a multi-layered look.

Since the depth of the impression can be controlled, just as the color of the ink and the position of the image can, designing for letterpress involves 3 dimensions.

Posted in Announcements, Printing Projects | No Comments »

Printing onto Blotter Paper

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Letterpress Printing onto Blotter PaperThere are a lot of tasty, thick papers that can be used to nice effect when printing with the letterpress process.

Shown here is a sample of printing which has been done on 190 pound blotter paper. The irregular rate of ink absorption reflects the rough nature of the paper’s fibers. The rougher the paper is, the more erratic the transfer of ink from the printing plate to the sheet will be.

Rough, long fibered paper will suck ink up at different rates at different places on its surface. The resulting printed image will have a degree of “pin-holing” which will be quite apparent on the large print areas though almost unnoticeable on the small print areas. 

The result is quite appealing.

Posted in Printing Projects | 1 Comment »

Wedding Invitations

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Nomadic Press Wedding InvitationsWhen I was helping to plan my own wedding (nearly 20 years ago now) I had the opportunity to create the greatest wedding invitation in the history of weddings. I was a budding letterpress printer and had just started my printing company, The Nomadic Press, and my best friend (and bride-to-be) was a graphic designer. 

She was sewing her own dress and I was printing the invitations, so we had a bit of money that we could spend on materials. With all the confidence of youth, we believed that we had lots of skill and talent to apply to the design and production of our invitations. For weeks (and on into months) we worked on design after design and made mock-ups until our tables were buried under the empty shells of a myriad of glue-sticks.

And still the first guest had not been invited to the big event.

Finally, a friend of ours sent us an invitation to our own wedding with a note that gently reminded us that if we did not get some kind of invitation out soon, then it was unlikely that people would be able to fit our wedding into their schedules.

We settled for a nice invitation, not the best in the history of marriage, but good enough. Like the example that accompanies this post (which I printed for Scott and Deborah), not the best ever, but quite nice all the same.

Oh, the woman I married is still doing graphic design, I am still a letterpress printer, and we are still happily hitched to each other. Ahhh, letterpress.

Posted in Invitations, Printing Projects | 1 Comment »

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