Bob and Dawn Davis Photography and Design — Letterpress, Die Cut Business Cards from Studio Z Mendocino

Some of the most respected and talented, not to mention insanely good looking and darling, photographers and teachers in the industry, Bob and Dawn Davis had Studio Z Mendocino make up their latest iteration of business cards. The brand and design was already established but we needed to do some modifications on the design to make it really work as a letterpress piece of art — to make it swing and to make it sing…The backs, especially, needed an update, which, between Dawn and me, came out much nore interestingly than what they’d had before. It took a good deal of negotiation and trial and error to get to this place. Sometimes the limitations of letterpress printing are hard to understand, but having worked in this medium for over 35 years, it seems I can spot trouble coming and head it off at the pass. Sometimes it takes massive amounts of creativity to make a design really work, and sometimes it’s a cinch. This already beautiful branding just needed some fine tuning and the WoW factor swung into the stratosphere.

We printed them on super-lux, super-thick 600 gram Cranes Lettra in two colors, a smoky blue and a warm gray, then die cut them outside the front inside rule. Deep impression and beautiful materials and infinite skill and care made everyone so happy about these amazing business cards. Especially the adorably cute and talented couple who gets to pass them out!

See more of their own comments on their blog.

 

 

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Gerald Carvalho’s Golden Mean Business Cards, Designed by Ross Tanner, Printed by Studio Z Mendocino

Super intensely talented photographer Gerald Carvalho did everything right. He hired Ross Tanner at Flosites to design his new brand. He hired Studio Z Mendocino to print them. A triple whammy of beauty-making folk. And now he says, “I love these cards so much that I hardly hand them over to any random people until I absolutely love them LOL “

The golden color of his iconic “G” logo on the front is echoed along the sides with identical golden (not metallic) edge painting. We used, of course, Cranes 600 gram Lettra for the thickest, richest “hand.” Deep impression and impeccable typography convey a sense of Gerald’s artistic skill and attention to detail. These photos alone bear out his talent.

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Photographer Gavin Wade’s “Reverse Letterpress” Business Cards

We’ve been getting questions about “reverse letterpress” lately and I wanted to show you this effect. Usually, images printed by letterpress are made by pressing a raised image (i.e.: type or a polymer plate) down into thick, fluffy paper. The surrounding background, then, is whatever color the paper is. With reverse letterpress, the background is inked and pressed onto the paper, and on the plate or die the type is a void, meaning the paper shows through as the type color on the printed piece, as you can see above. The example here is with the amazing wedding photographer Gavin Wade‘s fabulous oversize business card, the logo designed by Ross Tanner at Flosites: we mixed his new beigey-taupe color scheme as a Pantone color and reversed the plate so that we could ink it up and press it onto 600 gram Cranes Lettra. His chic logotype sticks up out of the background slightly because we have to use pressure to transfer the ink onto the fibrous paper.The effect is a tactile, luxurious take on an ancient technique that brings it all up to the moment.

It’s an interesting turn. The back of the card uses the opposite technique, the usual way letterpress is applied, with the letters pressed down into the paper…so there’s this sort of interactive little surprise when you turn the card over.

The advantage is, you can get your logo color custom mixed and printed on one side, which gives some extra verve to the presentation. It’s a little more expensive to accomplish. With cards this luxe, the impression you leave when you pass them out is incalculable.

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Wedding Photographer Susan Stripling: Ultra Less-Is-More Business Cards and Stationery by Studio Z Mendocino

Susan Stripling is a wedding photographer whose astonishingly beautiful images, skill, inspired imagination and devotion to the craft have landed her in the midst of some of the most amazing nuptials ever. She just had Studio Z Mendocino do her new business cards and stationery. Susan has photographed weddings throughout the US, the Caribbean, South America, Finland, France, and the Bahamas. She’s been published in Inside Weddings, Martha Stewart Weddings, Grace Ormonde Wedding Style, Bride and Bloom, Modern Bride, The Knot, Professional Photographer Magazine, The New York Times Style section, Rangerfinder Magazine, Capture Magazine, Elegant Bride, in Trade Publications for Nikon USA, and Town and Country Weddings. Susan’s teaching career has developed as well; she has been seen at past Digital Wedding Forum conventions, gives private and group workshops throughout the USA, and has spoken at WPPI. Busy Susan, had Infinet Design devise her double-S monogram and we foil stamped it in gold onto her lux stationery wardrobe: business cards on very thickest Cranes Lettra 600 gram cover stock, and script cards in the same ultra-thick paper (think thank you notes, quick messages accompanying samples, etc., etc.) that fit into spectacular Cranes number ten envelopes with rather monumental square flaps. This is the blockbuster envelope we love to stuff:

Here is the script card:

Because it is foiled in a single color, with the monogram/logo on the front of the business card and only the website address on the back, overall costs were kept to a minimum, but the finished pieces carry all the gorgeousness and panache anyone could possibly desire.

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Love By Serena: Letterpress Business Cards With Pearl Foil and Tiffany Blue Edge Painting — Baltimore Photographer Meets Studio Z Mendocino!

I’m hardly even going to say anything about these cards because Serena Severtson made such a complete and articulate blog post about branding as it relates to business cards this morning. I am just going to let that do all the talking: click HERE for her post.

These are photos Serena took of the beautiful letterpress business cards we made for her using her own design, and my suggestions and input about materials and other questions — a great collaboration. Pearl foil gleams up the dove, gray and Tiffany blue inks give the lowdown, and Tiffany blue edges finish them off with elan. They are smashing on super-thick 600 gram Cranes Lettra. Best of all, Serena LOVES them! Go see!

Wonderful to work with the very talented Serena to such a great result!

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Black & White & Edgy: Brookstreet Pictures Letterpress Business Cards with Black Edge Painting

Brookstreet Pictures, Ottowa and LA movie company, had designer Chad Harber design their new business cards, and Studio Z Mendocino printed them. They are amazing: Black gloss foil on the front of the extra-thick 600 gram Lettra white card stock for the logo — so that got a little shine — and matte black ink on the back for the contact information. We finished them off with round corners and black edge painting.

Fabulous, edgy, chic and professional, deluxe business cards for a very edgy movie company.

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Alexia and James Letterpress Wedding Invitations — Modern Classics for Mendocino Wedding

Alexia and James got married in Mendocino last month in one of the great celebrations the town has seen. We were so happy to work with them on their invitations, which they wanted to be very luxurious and traditional, but with a modern flair. We kept a very muted palette of cream, cappuccino and chocolate brown, and of course printed everything by letterpress on our thickest, yummiest paper, 600 gram Lettra Pearl White. The motif of a graceful olive branch held it all together beautifully.

Everything about the wedding was so romantic, happy, fun and gorgeous. The whole wedding party went out on the headlands then paraded through the village back to the big white tent at the MacCallum House for dinner and dancing to a totally get-down funk band. Very much fun working with this beautiful couple on their amazing day.

Their folding thank you notes finished the wedding suite and they got lots of extras so they could use them long into their marriage for many purposes…invitations to dinner, thank you notes, quick messages to loved ones, announcements of important events, condolences, congratulations and happy birthday missives. There are still times when a nothing but a hand written note on real paper, with a stamp, in the mailbox, will do. Yes, really. And it’s great to have some beautiful paper to grab when the moment strikes. No more going to the store to look for that perfect message: you make up your own and put it on your own personalized informal, which is what this smaller folding note is called.

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Fabulous and Chic Letterpress Business Cards for Meier Ferrer, LA Furniture Designers

Meier/Ferrer designs contemporary, modernist furniture that has been featured in a slew of national and international magazines. Their look is clean, hip and ultra-chic, which matches perfectly the design Andrew Cinnamon did for their business cards, and which Studio Z Mendocino printed on our venerable 1952 Heidelberg letterpress. It’s that meeting of the centuries that I love so much: the Twenty-first to the Fifteenth, to be exact — Thank you, Mr. Guttenberg for giving us the means to impress all these five hundred years.

We printed deeply the hard-edge typeface Andrew adapted for this purpose onto super-thick 600 gram Lettra paper. Dense black ink. One side only. And let the typography tell its own story with no fanfare other than its own audacity. We also made script cards for them. Four by nine cards that fit into a #10 business envelope or can be paper clipped to a sheaf of design mock ups with a little note. Love love.

 

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TRIBE! Seth Sirbaugh’s Incredible Charcoal-Gray-&-Orange “Sandwiched” Letterpress Business Cards

Seth Sirbaugh is a terrifically talented graphic designer whose new letterpress business cards carry the message of the new “tribe” brand he’s developed, in the most stylish way imaginable. We did two versions, which you see pictured above. The first was the more complicated. We used French’s Gray Durotone 80# cover, a mottled, slightly gnarly-in-a-chic-kind-of-way sheet. It’s not very thick, so to add substance (and mystery), Seth had us make a “sandwich,” laminating the backs and fronts of the gray Durotone, with a “filling” of pumpkin-colored Durotone. You can see the little, subtle, yummy orange stripe when you turn the card sideways.

The fronts of the cards were printed in black glossy foil with the “tribe” logo and the uber-hip tagline, “design. cultured.” I love that. The backs have the contact information foiled in white opaque foil. With darker colored papers, white ink will not block out the background color entirely. There is always some bleed-through, so to alleviate that, we always use opaque white foil, which is much more opaque.

The entire laminated card is still not as thick as, say, 600 gram Lettra, which we use most often here these days for our most premium jobs. He didn’t want them to take up that much room in his wallet. At first. But then there was a small crisis, which I won’t go into right now, which allowed us to make another, smaller batch of cards on white 600 gram Lettra. On this run, we edge painted them in the same pumpkin-y orange. And, oh la la, baby. How can he decide which version to pass out?

Working with a designer of the professional caliber of Seth Sirbaugh is a pleasure beyond pleasure. Collaboration is always necessary on a job (jobs) like this one. He had the vision and I acted as mediator between that and making the vision into something he could hold in his hand and be proud and assured that it represented him well. When the crisis occurred, Seth was gracious in the extreme. Often, with letterpress, patience is a virtue, and Seth’s virtue showed up in the form of little wings sprouting from the shoulders of his tee shirt.

It’s not usual to get to give a design two entirely different treatments like this, so as a way to show off the amazing versatility of letterpress’s many virtues, there could not be a better example. The entire mood is changed, the vibe, maybe even the clan, in these two very different versions of the same design.

We all wanna be in Seth’s groovy tribe!

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Fabulous New Branding for Danny Kash Photography: Edge Painted Letterpress Business Cards, New Logo Design from Studio Z Mendocino

Danny and Loreta Kash are the principles and great talents behind Danny Kash Photography, which operates out of Connecticut and is available for worldwide destination shoots. It was an incredible experience working with them to develop their new brand because they were so specific about the tone they were looking for, and at the same time so ready to listen to my ideas and inspirations. It was an ideal collaborative experience. Loreta was amazing…she sent me a kind of vision board to work from…showing colors and passions and attractions, moods, and just things that made her heart beat faster. She is so organized and creative at the same time. Look how fab:

It was always fun to confer with them on the phone, always excitement, curiosity into the mysterious process of creation. When I sent them this design, we all just KNEW: this was IT. They definitely wanted this gorgeous pale Caribbean blue-green color, and there were other accent colors we considered, like a sunny orange-ish shade, but in the end we opted for a charcoal gray as the second color.

We deeply impressed the type into 600 gram Cranes Lettra, with the contact information on the back to keep the brand really pure and important. This is my favorite way to make a card really sing. The edges were painted in the same watery-green-blue color, a little accent that pulls the WoW factor up several thousand notches, as we all know.

O, EDGE PAINTING!!!

And yummy shots of the business cards by Danny.

The flowing lines and swooshes of the “dk” monogram set an elegant, celebratory mood behind the classic-yet-slightly-quirky Roman typeface. It’s a fresh, distinctive look for two very special people. And it is always a big treat for me to participate in redefining a company’s graphic look from the ground up. An honor, and a super-fun and exciting adventure. I love the creative trance that brings me to a finished product like this. Do you like it?

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