Design + Print: Yellow-Edged Business Cards

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.

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.