We’re hearing lots of buzz lately about playwright Tony Kushner and the three-stage celebration of his work that’s running at the Guthrie Theater right now. If you were one of the lucky ducks who attended last Friday’s world premiere of The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, you were gifted a commemorative bookmark as you left the theater. We know because we printed them. The design was inspired by artwork being used to promote the play. We letterpress-printed vibrant orange and green inks on lemon-yellow railroad board (think super-thick construction paper) for a colorful but slightly industrial look. If you missed the opening-night give away, you may be able to purchase one of the bookmarks in the theater’s gift shop. This is such a great idea for a business promotion, or a wedding favor – unique, tactile, functional, something the recipient is sure to hang on to.

We worked on a similar project for the Guthrie Theater last November – click here to read about the bookmark giveaway we printed for opening night of the C.S. Lewis play Shadowlands. It’s an honor to work with such a prestigious institution, and we’re glad that our olde-timey bookish ways can occasionally fit in with the workings of a modern arts powerhouse. We’re thrilled that our friends at the theater so liked the first bookmark that they came back for more. That’s really the biggest compliment of all, customers so satisfied that they choose to work with us again.

If you dine at Nick and Eddie (right next door to Lunalux) your meal will be served on a large white plate decorated with the restaurant’s name in black. That simple dinner plate was the inspiration for the design of their gift certificates, which we made this winter. We letterpress-printed the text in black ink and blind-embossed the plate image on super-soft bright white stock, because we wanted to create a really striking texture. Opening the card reveals standard gift-certificate fare: to/from/amount blanks, the restaurant’s location and hours, and the certificate’s unique number (forgers beware!). Imagine if you received a card like this, tucked inside a deep red envelope – we think the gift certificate itself is so beautiful, it’s almost a present even if you couldn’t redeem it for fancy food!

We printed business cards to match, too. The typesetting mimics the gold and black lettering on the restaurant’s big front window. Like the gift certificates, the cards are printed on 100% cotton Lettra cover. Simple, urban and luxurious. And while we’re tooting our own horn, we’ll give some love to our neighbors too. We love Nick and Eddie because it always feels like there’s something happening there, whether we’re enjoying a raucous Saturday-night burlesque show or reading the new City Pages at the bar on a quiet Wednesday. This newest kid on the block has brought some much-needed energy to the neighborhood! And now that our favorite chef Steven Brown is working there, we love it even more.

Click here to learn more about our custom business card and business stationery offerings, or browse our blog archives to read about other recent business stationery projects.

As a graphic designer, it can be enlightening to revisit old projects. Preferences, skills, habits and trends can shift dramatically over years, so looking at stationery or invitations we created on 2003 can be both fun and traumatic. Sometimes a printed piece will withstand the test of time quite well, but other times I cringe a bit at old work – What was I thinking? Why didn’t I do it different, smarter, prettier? So when a long-time friend of the studio came in last fall to ask us to reprint cards we’d designed five years earlier, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I still really like what we created for her.

Gail has been a regular customer since we worked on custom-designed letterpress-printed business cards for her back in 2003. We created a logo with her initials, and used that logo on business cards. The composition was unique, and we printed on cotton watercolor paper so the cards felt very luxurious. Last fall, as she prepared to relocate her business office, she asked us to update the cards and create matching letterhead and envelopes as well. She still loved her old cards, but asked me to experiment with new layouts and fonts. After looking at an array of nice ideas, we came to the conclusion that the five-year-old layout was the best of the bunch (Jenni pats herself on the back). We switched up the font and the paper, and brightened the ink color a bit, but it looks remarkably similar to the original. The cards, along with the new monarch letterhead and envelope, are all printed on high-quality natural white papers in a punchy green. We even printed a small stack of business cards in red ink, because Gail really liked the color but didn’t think it was quite right for the whole system.

The history of this project makes me extra-proud that this design has won an award! We submitted Gail’s stationery to Mohawk Paper’s quarterly Strathmore Letterhead Design contest, and for the the second quarter in a row, we were awarded the bronze prize (Jenni pats herself on the back again). You can see Gail’s stationery, along with the quarter’s other winners, at the Mohawk website.

If you attended opening night of Guthrie Theater’s “Shadowlands” production earlier this month, you received a commemorative bookmark as you left the building. Guess who made those charming little treats? Lunalux! We were approached by the theater with a proposal that was right up our alley: please take a quote by C.S. Lewis (the main character of the play) and make a beautiful bookmark (cuz he’s an author, get it?). We create postcards in this same vein on a regular basis for our store mailing list, so we enjoyed applying the same aesthetic to a project for another business.

Wise words from the author of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” were paired with an old illustration of a wooden wardrobe, and letterpress-printed in blue-green ink on pearl white cotton paper. We imagine the bookmarks look equally lovely peeking out of a paperback or tacked to a memo board. The Guthrie folks were so pleased with the design, they even had us print some bookmarks without the opening date, to be sold in the theater’s gift shop – so even if you missed the freebie, the bookmark can still be yours! Check with the gift shop for availability, of course.

Clients continue to be increasingly interested in increasingly thick card stock for business cards. Used to be that we’d show off a sample printed on 110# cover, and people would flip over the heft of it. Fast forward to 2008, and that same 110# cover only impresses half of the people, half of the time. I understand this shifting preference; letterpress printing can look incredible on thick paper, you can make a significant impression without it showing up much, if at all, on the back of the card. In recent weeks, we’ve printed a couple of cards on Strathmore 500-series 4-ply bristol board, and the results have been pretty exciting.

Photographer Jess Cress came to us with a type-based logo, and a pretty clear idea of what she wanted the finished card to look like, so developing the layout was a breeze. She’s very decisive, so when we met in person to pick inks, she zeroed in on this unusual color combination real quick like. We’re tickled by the finished results; the combination of the simple, sparse design with the hefty stock is quite striking (click on the picture, above left, for a larger view). When Paul Hollis saw Jenn’s card on our sample book, he immediately knew THAT was the paper he wanted us to use for his cards. But unlike Jenn, he didn’t have a very concrete idea of how he wanted the finished piece to look. So we enjoyed developing this unique look for him! An ornate pattern is blind-embossed on the back of the cards to give it a subtle yet striking texture, and the basic contact information for his business is pressed into the front of the card with rich black ink.

It’s always fun to help clients develop printed collateral for their business, whether it’s a simple business card project or a comprehensive suite of cards, stationery, notecards, envelopes and mailing labels. Interested in learning more about our design and letterpress services for business? Check out the custom section of our website, or read about other recent business projects in the archives of our blog.