Just click the pic below to download all 191 bitmaps!

ps. if you have a copyright claim on any of these, just shoot us an email and we’ll remove anything protected by copyright from the collection. these pieces are intended for inspiration only, use at your own risk.

Some of you may remember their save the dates highlighted in our blog post, The New Full-Color.

The couple wanted their printed materials to be a balance of playful & classic. Early on we landed on a truly vintage postcard for their save the dates & when it came time for the invitations months later – Julianne’s love affair with her shoes was still stuck in my mind. The meeting lasted less then 5 minutes. I quickly sketched a scene of the couple standing side by side with a bright popping yellow, highlighting Jewel’s shoes. Not your typical wedding invitation scene, but typical isn’t what the couple wanted.

I am especially in love with the tri-fold wrap. 110# Pearl White Lettra Duplexed to French Paper Lemon Drop, we experimented with a type of die cut that allowed the wrap to fold and expose the yellow paper underneath creating a tri-colored edge. A subtle detail that the most aesthetically sensitive recipients will surely appreciate. Ad a wax seal and the wrap is complete.

A collaboration with our friend & officemate, the talented Brian Boesch of Itchy Illustration, Julianne & Phil’s save the date and wedding suite are amongst our favorites that we’ve designed and printed this year.

click to enlarge

SEE: The new incarnation of the Mama’s Sauce Business Card.
1-color black letterpress on 110# Florescent White Lettra duplexed to 140# Black Muscletone.

When you give the negative space in your design some room to breathe, surround it with enough coverage, and then build just the right counter you can really make a pillowy fluff that’s somewhat like a hybrid emboss.

All of the white type is knocked out from the plate, which affords us the chance to put as much ink on the plate as we want. That coupled with just the right impression allows us to get near 100% opacity on the color wash and create an inverted effect from the standard letterpress deboss. Had there been positive text along with the knockout, it wouldn’t be possible to get quality results on just one plate, as positive type can’t be slathered with ink. Why can’t we put as much ink on positive type as we do with knocked out? Science. We don’t know the science. It just is.

Lesson to take from this: Big color washes belong on their own plates. You can knock type or imagery out of that plate/color and not affect opacity much, but don’t even think about adding in positive area text or imagery on that plate/color unless you’re willing to either sacrifice opacity overall or severely bleed out the positive images… Want solid washes and good clean positive type on the same color? Then be prepared to pay to plate the two separately. There’s no wrong way to do it, I mean shoot, there’s something to be said for lowering the opacity on certain wash areas… We just want you to be prepared and in the know.

Signed,

-J. Walter Weatherman

Here’s snap shot of the first sheet we ripped…

A few of my favorites.

You design something like this and send it over for a letterpress print on some tea-stained paper and I’ll be well inclined to give you a seriously hooked-up price on it!

Click to make them big. Enjoy.

We designed this save the date with the idea of the recipients getting something authentically old in their mailboxes. Something not just designed to look old, but authentically printed to feel like a save the date just found after aging decades in the wedding album of a couple married fifty plus years.

Printed on 140# French Muscletone – this save the date was both a blast to design and print!

run on a 1950 Heidelberg Windmill. the front ran through 4 times (CMYK)

the back of the print is a 1-color black letterpress print

look at those beautiful halftone dots!

Having made the switch, we feel more focused than ever. There’s a power to keeping processes to a minimum. It allows us to put sufficient time into what we love doing while staying the size that we want to be. It’s easier for us to manage a smaller foot print with less moving parts (unless you count all of the moving parts on a press!)

An example of our focused energy can be seen in the redirection of our website. Education, portfolio & connection have become this website’s primary focuses. Through our Tips & FAQ & Paper’s Explained pages, we hope to educate the good people of the design community on the specifics of designing for the processes that we handle – Letterpress & Screen Print. We hope that educating on these old world processes will help bring understanding and therefor breakdown any fear that may exist in the unknown. From there we hope that our portfolio (currently only visible on our quote page), will serve as inspiration for your designs. And then there’s connection. Of course we want to hear from you about working together, but we also want to continually grow our education sections – so please feel free to ask for tutorials to be added on anything relevant to designing for spot color work.

If you are at all interested in Screen Print or Letterpress, please take some time to visit the Tips & FAQ as well as the Paper’s Explained pages. Read them in their entirety. I dare you. If you do, I promise that you will a better designer, more education enthusiast, and/or satiated print nerd upon completion. If you’re not, then you’ll at least be able to tell us why not and what we’re missing. So there’s your invitation. It’s not pressed, but I do hope you take it, read it, and share it.