Hannah came to Lunalux over the summer in search of cards for her new business. Another designer had created a few logo variations that she liked; we made minor adjustments to optimize their look for letterpress printing, and incorporated the logo into business cards and correspondence cards. Hannah was really drawn to the colorful work on display in our shop, but it was important to her that the cards would be taken seriously by corporate contacts in the insurance business – the chunky Copperplate lettering in the logo and the clear communication of her contact information served this end well. But she didn’t want to cards to be boring or stuffy. The sunny yellow ink and modest but playful dots at the bottom of the cards brightened things up a bit and reflect her warm, vivacious personality. Initially she just planned to get business cards; by the end of the design process, she’d added notecards and envelopes to the order too.

The HDH Alliance business cards and notecards are letterpress-printed on bright white 130# Strathmore wove-finish bristol cover. HDH loved the idea of adding yellow edging to the cards, but with an eye on the bottom line, she decided to opt out. We were eager to see what it would look like, though, so we edged a little stack for her as a gift, and kept a stack for our samples too. Up to now, we’ve only done painted edges on much thicker card stock, so we were happy to see that the effect is still stunning on cards of this thickness. It’s relatively subtle on a single card, but seeing a stack of them with their perfect golden edges, they look delicious!

You can read about other personality-filled business stationery projects we’ve done in our blog archive; it you’re thinking about business cards or stationery for your self, you’ll find general information about our design and printing processes on the custom section of our website.

Last week we were asked to create invitations for the opening night of Thom Pham’s Wondrous Azian Kitchen, a much-anticipated new restaurant in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. Sometimes when clients approach us to turn around jobs in a matter of days, we simply can’t accommodate them because we’re so busy. In this instance, we were lucky enough to have a little wiggle room in our production schedule, so this invite went from concept to finished product in just 48 hours. Chris from Twincy, the agency that helped Pham concept and promote his new venture, asked us to incorporate the rooster graphic, use perforation somehow in the design, and find typographic inspiration in the restaurant’s high-profile neon sign. And here’s what we came up with. The buckslip invite measures 3.875 by 9.25 inches, and fits into a vibrant red open-end #10 envelope. The invites were printed in blazing red and orange inks in 130# bright white bristol cover, and we used our ancient step-down perforating machine to create the pin-hole perforation for the tear-off ticket.

Photographer Josh Hackney came to Lunlaux with an existing logo for his business, and asked us to develop a memorable tag/business card. We agreed right away that the composition should be very simple, and the wow factor would come from the use of  luxurious materials. So we printed these jumbo cards (they’re 2.5×3.5 inches, instead of the standard 2×3.5 inch business card format) on super-thick 220# Lettra cotton cover. The perfect shade of pale blue-green ink (we decided to call it Sea Glass) looks dreamy on the slightly textured bright white stock. The card is so thick that when you hold it in your hand, you can’t help but really pay attention, to turn it over and study the way the type bites into the paper. It’s in that moment that the best detail catches your eye: painted edges. We’ve only recently started to offer edging service, and this is our favorite deployment of the process yet. Edging works best on the thickest of stocks, where you can really see the color. The cards were gorgeous before we did the edging; the last little touch of color really outs it over the edge though! We drilled tiny holes in most of the cards, so they could be attached to his new bags with lovely grosgrain ribbon, but some were left intact to be used as business cards. The business stationery package was rounded out with correspondence cards and coordinating envelopes.

Are you considering adding a little letterpress to your business collateral collection? You can read more abut our design and letterpress services for business stationery in the custom section of our website. You can also browse our blog archives to read about other business stationery projects we’ve worked on in the past.

I’ve worked with Lucas Saugen in a variety of ways over the past four years. As a rollergirl, I’ve submitted to his photographer’s gaze in various derby-related photo shoots. And he availed himself of our services a couple years ago when we printed his bare-bones business cards, which he rubber-stamped with his trademark red star. So I was happy to see Lucas at our doorstop this spring, on the hunt for ideas. He wanted swag to promote his photography business. Something useful, small, unique. The winning concept: matchbook-style notebooks. He restricted his creativity to our pre-existing notebook covers (over-runs from a wholesale project), composing around blue cardstock that had already been cut and scored to fold down to a 3.5×5-inch notebook. We sourced lovely and affordable stock for the interior pages: Strathmore elements lined 70# text, with its super-smooth surface. His logo and business contact information is letterpress-printed in red ink. We assembled the books for him too, binding about 20 micro-perforated sheets into each cover with our heavy-duty step-down stapler.
If you want to see some of Lucas’s work head to Pizza Lucé in downtown Minneapolis; his beautiful, eerie urban landscapes are on exhibit there through the end of August 2009. Or check out his work on his website: www.saugenphotography.com.

Since we quietly launched our website redesign on April 19, we’ve been enjoying a steady stream of compliments regarding the new look. If you haven’t taken the time to click around a bit, we hope you do – there’s lots of good stuff to see and read here! The site was redesigned by our friends at Dragonfly Networks, and we were happy to return the favor by creating remarkable business cards for them. In addition to letterpress-printing their basic contact information in navy ink, we also ran the cards through the Heidelberg a second time to print a dragonfly wing with no ink. We love the juxtaposition of the structured block of text with the curvy, organic wing. The cards are printed on soft 100% cotton Lettra cover, which takes the deep letterpress impression so perfectly, and trimmed to an unusual size (1.625×3.5 inches, rather than the standard 2×3.5), which makes them stand out even more. We can’t say “thank-you” enough to Mark and Nick at Dragonfly Networks for giving our website a dramatic and much-needed face-lift. They built a custom WordPress theme for us, full of hand-coded bells and whistles like drop-down menus on the top navigation, and dynamic sidebar content. They translated our napkin sketches and off-hand suggestions into a real hum-dinger of a site. We’re still discovering and ironing out the occasional kink, but overall we’re pleased as punch!

More recently, we printed similar calling cards for a client who’s on the prowl for a new job. Jenn supplied the design, we just did the heavy lifting (i.e. printing). Normally the Lunalux blog features projects we designed in-house, because that’s what we most like to do. But these cards turned out so great, and fit so perfectly into this blog post, we couldn’t resist sharing. Like the wing on the Dragonly cards, Jenn’s initials are printed without any ink. And we used Lettra cover again. Click on the image to the right to view a larger picture of the cards, along with the photopolymer plates we used to print them. If you’re thinking about getting new business cards or calling cards, you can read more about our design and printing services by clicking here.