Two letterpress jobs

I deviated in the last two posts and started writing about food all of a sudden. I think it might have been for good though, as its probably the other big thing I'm passionate about apart from design. Unfortunately all good things don't come in three's as now I'm switching back to design for a moment. Food will feature again, but for now something about paper.

Still here? Good.

I'd placed two letterpress jobs at the marvelous Glasgow Press right at the end of 2011, so thought it a good time to talk a little about those jobs now they're both cold off the press.



My good friend Kirsty Anderson (aka A Wooden Tree) needed a hand getting her labels printed to go along the magnificent stuffed stags heads she creates. I almost don't know how to label Kirsty. Textiles artist, designer, creator (should be fun if we get onto business cards), but one thing is for sure is she's one of the nicest people I know, so I wanted to get her the best possible print for her luggage tags.

Having already selected a more unusual recycled brown stock known as Cairn Almond, Glasgow Press set about mixing a spot brown for a special deep impression into the board. Printing brown on brown is a little daunting, but their judgement based on my Pantone selection was excellent.

I can't take any credit for this design as it was all Kirsty, just the simple matter of redrawing the artwork in vector form and some minor adjustments to the kerning and this was good to go. The stags heads are beautiful works of art, and they deserve a suitable tag to go with them.

From a favour for a friend

Kirsty recommended me to photographer Claire Cox got in touch about working on a new identity. Claire shoots weddings, but also commercial jobs so needed something that wouldn't date, and suit both audiences. We went through a few initial ideas where this near finished design appeared. Moved away to a script based logo for a while then came full circle in favour of something set and customised in good old ITC Avant Garde.





The print is a little different in this case, as we wanted to work out one of the most economical ways of producing letterpress cards. Dan at Glasgow Press suggested the cards were printed 'two up' meaning a single block is used so cards are printed two at a time. This is fairly normal for cards on a single stock, but in this case the cards were printed onto duplexed card (GF Smith Colourplan White / Pale Grey) meaning we split the order and received half and half on each colour.

Sound confusing?

Basically, The logo side was printed half on white, half on grey. The contacts details the same. Obviously this approach doesn't work for all cards, but in this case a single colour ink and subtle colour change in cards meant we were able to produce twice as many cards for a significantly lower price.



Great clients, great printers, both ended in excellent pieces of work.