16 Letterpress Techniques to Brighten Your Custom Design

Sometimes you just need a little inspiration and advice to get the best results for your letterpress printing design. Before ordering your custom letterpress business cards, wedding invitations, stationery, hang tags or packaging, you should know about everything that’s possible with modern custom letterpress. These techniques will help you to be more informed, and will make it easier to get an accurate price quote.

1. Die Cutting

A precision punch is hand-machined and is used to cut unique shapes from paper. This cookie cutter technique is capable of hairline registration and fairly tight details.

These letterpress tags were trimmed using the die cutting technique.

2. Edge Painting

The edges of the cards are colorized using a proprietary technique. Many printers have different methods for achieving this look. Our method allows a close match to the Pantone color system.

These business cards for photographer Cindee Bae were edge painted. They were printed on bamboo paper.

3. Duplexing

Two paper stocks are glued together to make a thicker version of one stock, or two have two unique textures in one piece.

4. Flood Color

Ink is flooded over the entire surface of the print. Letterpress does not excel at printing fine details in flood color, but big details can be “knocked out” to create interesting effects.

These business cards, for graphic designer Greg Christman, were printed with a flood color, and edge painted to match. The black was printed over the yellow.

5. Reverse Printing or “Knocking Out” text.

Similar to printing a flood color, reverse printing is a flood with text or graphic in the negative space. With deep impression, the text can look raised from the surface because the area around it has been compressed (aka debossed). This is only useful for bigger type or graphics. Fine lines will get filled in and will not look good.

The text in the logo is "knocked out", meaning the type is created by the white space within the graphic. This is about as finely detailed as you want to go with this technique.

6. Metallic Ink

Ink that contains actual metallic flakes takes on a metallic finish. The metallic effect is enhanced on smooth paper. On uncoated, textured stock, the effect is subdued but still quite interesting. You can choose from silver, gold, copper, or color tints. There is an entire Pantone metallic swatchbook with hundreds of color variations.

7. Deep Impression over Light Impression

Letterpress is known for the deep impression, but it can be used with a light impression, or no impression at all. One technique is to print a subtle background texture, and print deep impression text on top of that. This way, you get the graphics but do not deform the sheet.

First a light green was printed with no impression. Then the text was printed on top. The pattern appears subtly behind.

8. Overprinting

With the overprinting technique, two letterpress colors are precisely aligned over top of one another. The result can be a third color from a two-color project.

Using transparent ink, the magenta is overprinted over top of the cyan, resulting in a third color.

9. Scoring Thick Stock

The ability to perform a press score differentiates letterpress from other processes. Using a steel rule and matching creasing matrix, we can create a sculptured hinge in thick paper, so it folds without cracking.

10. Foil Stamping

Using a specially modified press with heated plates, a thin film of foil is drawn over the plate. When pressed into paper, the image is transferred from the film to the paper. A variety of interesting techniques and special effects are possible with foil stamping, also known as foil printing. Foil comes in hundreds of colors and finishes, including matte, glosss, reflective, and textured.

11. Emboss + Deboss

“Deboss” means to press into the sheet. “Emboss” means to press out of the sheet. Debossing is done with one die, just like printing. Embossing used a male and female counter die to sculpt the sheet. Sometimes this is done with heat to help stretch the paper into shape. A “blind deboss” is printing with a deep impression without ink. We prefer the term “inkless deboss.” The other seems insensitive to blind peope.

12. Envelope Lining

We cut a special liner to go inside an envelope, to give it an extra special feeling. It’s most valuable using inner / outer wedding invitations. The inner envelope is not glued, so the liner does not get torn. You can use a solid color, a print, or a pattern.

13. Business Card Sleeves

Die cut and assemble a custom sleeve to go over your business card. The possibilities are endless.

14. Halftones

Letterpress is best for printing solid lines. However, you can also print photographs using the halftone technique. This is another great tool for the creative designer.

This photo business card was printed with a halftone. The image is made of tiny dots.

15. Multi-Up Printing

Save time and money by printing multiple things at the same time. This is great for business cards. We can print as many as 6 business cards at one time, for only one press run fee.

16. Hairline Registration

Letterpress is great for tight registration work. With hairline registration, you can place two elements against one another for interesting effect.

The dark green text is aligned within the light green text using hairline registration.

 In Conclusion

We hope you have learned a lot about what’s possible using the letterpress printing process. There is a lot more that was not covered here. The best thing you can do is call us for a free consultation. Just call 800-213-6408 to talk about your project. You can also e-mail info@riseandshinepaper.com any time. We hope to talk to you soon.