Stationery Saturday: blind-embossed notecards

Stationery Saturday is back in 2011. This weekend, Saturday February 5, we’re printing without ink on luscious cotton card stock to create a stunning, subtle effect. We’ll be working with bold sans serif lead letters on our hand-cranked Vandercook proof press, so adventurous customers can try their hand at printing. We’ll have 5-by-7-inch Lettra cards in three shades of white, and a rainbow of colorful envelopes to choose from. The name or phrase of your choice, up to 15 characters, will be letterpress-printed on ten cards for just $29.00. You can watch as we set the type and crank out the cards (and ask all the silly questions you want along the way), shop and nosh on home-made cookies while we do the printing, or place your order and make arrangements to pick up your finished cards at a later date.

Seeing as it’s just a week before Valentine’s day, we think this makes a fantastic gift for your sweetheart. And it’s such a good deal, you will probably want to pick up a set for yourself as well.

You can read more about our monthly personalized-stationery-letterpress-printed-while-you-wait events, including other upcoming dates, on the Stationery Saturday page. If you want to spread the word about this unique event, you can invite your friends via the event listing we’ve created on the Lunalux Facebook page. And if you’re itching to get your paws on some of these cards but can’t make it to our Minneapolis studio this Saturday, don’t fret – you can order online through the Lunalux shop at feltandwireshop.com.

New website for us, new business cards for them

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.

Design + Print: good stuff for Nick and Eddie

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.

Design + Print: heavy-weight champions

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.

New holiday cards designed by intern Carrie

As a normal human being, it drives me a little bit nuts that stores are exploding with holiday swaggery for two full months before Christmas proper. But as a store owner, I understand why this is – people want holiday cards and gifts, and they want them 6 weeks ago! So even though our hearts swell with love for the crisp leaves and earthy smells of autumn, we’re putting all of our holiday cards and wrap on the shelves as soon as Halloween is over! And we’re excited that this year’s holiday spread will include cards created by our newest intern (click on the pictures for larger views).

For the past few months, Carrie has been packing wholesale orders, setting type for Stationery Saturday designs, updating sample displays in our store, even making coffee on occasion. She’s also an avid knitter, and you can read about her creative exploits on her blog. Here at Lunalux, We finally put her designs skills to good use (she is a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s design program, after all) on a series of modern holiday cards that we’ll be selling exclusively in our studio store this winter. They’re elegant, asymmetrical designs that make excellent use of negative space.

The snowflake card is letterpress-printed without ink on a bright white wove-finish card stock. Geometric shapes pressed deeply into the paper create striking shadows, really capturing the spirit of a brilliant white winter snowfall. My favorite is the ornaments, printed in rich black ink on a sparkling white card. The card feels very festive and wintery, without relying on traditional Christmas colors or motifs. Carrie’s most excited about the holly cards, which she printed in lime green ink on soft white wove-finish cover – it’s a fresh take on a very classic holiday icon.

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