Design + Print: edged business cards

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.

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: award-winning design stands test of time

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.

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.

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