• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • What We Print
    • Letterpress Business Cards
    • Letterpress Wedding Invitations
    • Our Process
    • Capabilities
  • Gallery
  • Pricing
    • Custom Price Quote
    • Wedding Invitation Price List
    • Letterpress Business Card Price List
  • Journal
  • About
  • Contact

Rise and Shine Letterpress

Rise and Shine Letterpress

Custom Letterpress Printing for Designers and Brands

Menu
0
  • What We Print
    • Letterpress Business Cards
    • Letterpress Wedding Invitations
    • Our Process
    • Capabilities
  • Gallery
  • Pricing
    • Custom Price Quote
    • Letterpress Business Card Price List
    • Letterpress Wedding Invitations Price List
  • Journal
  • About
  • Contact

Business Cards

The Importance of Branding your Business

December 31, 2018 by Rise and Shine Letterpress

A Letterpress and Gold Foil Business Card

Creating a captivating brand is essential for any business, whether you are a new startup or an established organization. Here are our top five reasons why branding is very important for your success:

#5. Consistency

By having a consistent brand image, your customers know what to expect from your company. They can identify your products or services as authentic and the real deal because they are dressed in the uniform of your brand.

#4. Recognition

You can see your friends from across a crowded room. You want your customers to perceive your brand the same way. If you speak with a consistent “voice,” your brand personality will develop an identity of its own. For example, you know an Apple device without having to see the logo. They have an unmistakable presence, and so can you.

#3. Employee Satisfaction

These days, employees need more than just a job. They want to work for something, or toward something. This isn’t an easy thing to accomplish for a business, and there is a long road ahead to create that kind of progressive workplace. But the very first step is to create an identity that is the framework for the rest of your team-building efforts.

#2. Value

They say a business should have an exit strategy*. If your business is just you, there is no way to make a separation between you and your business one day in the future. A brand has its own identity, and its leadership can be transferred one day as your grow. *Our business totally doesn’t have an exit strategy, and we think that’s ok, too. Even though we have a brand, we (Ryan and Leslie) do way too much of the hard work to ever sell Rise and Shine Letterpress.

#1. Trust.

This beats everything else, or maybe it sums up all of these points into one perfect word. Your brand is a shorthand for everything your company does and stands for. Your brand is your second face, and trust me, you could get punched square in the brand-nose if you’re not careful. But if you act in good faith, with reliable, authentic work that pushes toward something, you’ll get a kiss instead, on the brand-cheek!

One of the cornerstones of any brand is how it is expressed in print. A business card, a hang-tag, or just a thank-you note that you send to your customers can go really far in making your brand real. Learn who we are to see if we’re a good fit for your brand.

Filed Under: Branding, Business Cards, Letterpress

10 Techniques to Inspire your Letterpress Business Card Design

December 27, 2018 by Rise and Shine Letterpress

Duplex Business Cards Edge Profile

Creating a captivating brand is essential for any business, whether you are a new startup or an established company working on modernizing your style. As your business grows, so should your brand. And an eye-catching business card is the cornerstone of any successful branding venture.

However, if you think of a business card design as just the text and graphics, you could be missing an opportunity to elevate your style and impress your customers. You may also want to consider the importance of the physical production of your business cards. Where will they be printed? What kind of paper will you use? What method of printing will be used to create them? These factors can be just as important as the graphic design itself. That’s why we have identified these 10 techniques to help inspire your thinking about your new cards.

Letterpress Business Card with Deep Impression

Technique One: The Deep Impression

Letterpress printing is truly done on a “press,” meaning it uses pressure to push ink onto the paper. You can use this to your advantage by adding light and shadow to your design, along with the added texture. It’s impossible not to run your fingers across a letterpress impression.

Letterpress Business Cards with Blind Deboss

Technique Two: The Blind Deboss

Why use ink at all? When combined with soft, textured cotton letterpress paper, a blind deboss can add a subtle touch of texture that gives you a clean white-on-white appeal. One important tip is to only use blind deboss for bold design elements – important details should always be printed with adequate contrast for easy visibility.

Thick Cotton Letterpress Business Cards with Edge Painting

Technique Three: Edge Painting

We can all agree the third dimension is pretty cool. After all, the world would be pretty flat and boring without it. Why shouldn’t your business card be in on the fun? You can add an exciting splash of color with edge painting. Go subtle with a color that’s close to the paper color, or go bold with a neon fluorescent. It’s up to you! Fourth dimensional edge painting coming soon, as soon as we learn how to transcend time and space.

This example shows neon pink edge painting on 220lb (600gsm) Crane’s Lettra paper.

Duplexed Business Cards

Technique Four: Duplexing

Duplexing is the process of mounting two layers of paper together to create a double-thick sheet. There are many interesting ways to use duplexing in your design.

Many designs call for a solid color on one side of the business card. Instead of printing the color, you can achieve a deep, consistent color by using paper that is dyed in the paper-making process. A great example of this are some of the paper varieties from French Paper Co. They are made with bright, intense colors that would be difficult to achieve with printing ink alone. But what happens if the other side of the card needs to be white? That’s where duplexing shines. You can easily mount a red paper to a white paper to create a custom card that’s unique for your design.

Another use for duplexing is for printing a deep letterpress impression on both sides of a business card. With a deep impression, bruising on the back of the sheet can be unavoidable. Instead, you can print the fronts and backs on separate sheets, and mount them together after printing. The bruising is concealed between the two sheets.

The duplexing process is can be done precisely, but we do not recommend using on designs with a border on both sides of the paper unless absolutely necessary. Some customers have expressed concern that the glue may come apart, or may not line up exactly with the front of the card. The glue we use is specifically designed for this process, so it will not come apart in normal use. And the gluing is done before the cards are trimmed. After trimming, the glue line is barely noticeable.

Foil Embossed Letterpress Business Cards

Technique Five: Foil Embossing

Letterpress is known for pressing the artwork into the paper. What if you wanted to raise it? That’s where embossing comes in. Embossing is often used interchangeably with debossing, so let’s clear that up first. Debossing is what it’s called when the artwork is pressed into the paper. An emboss is a raised image. It’s done with a two-part die. The paper is sandwiched between the two dies on the press, and it is sculpted with heat and pressure to create the raised image. There are several different kinds of embossing, such as foil embossing like the image above, or blind embossing, where there is no ink or foil and the color is the paper color. It’s a really cool process that is definitely worth exploring, but it does tend to be one of the more costly options.

Die-Cut Letterpress Business Cards

Technique Six: Die-Cutting

Don’t be a square, or a rectangle for that matter. Die cutting can help you add a unique shape to your business cards. Picture a cutting die like a really heavy duty cookie cutter that’s strong enough to punch through paper. It’s just like that! It’s locked into the press just like a printing plate, but instead of printing, it uses the pressure of the press to punch the cards out precisely in the shape of your design. To design a die-cut card, start with vector die lines. A die maker can usually use a PDF file. The process is a fairly accurate and will allow your printed artwork to align cleanly with the cut edges.

Die Cut Business Cards on Colorful Paper

Technique Seven: Colorful Papers

Now is an amazing time for colorful papers. There are so many interesting papers out there to accentuate your design. Colored papers can be an interesting design choice when you want to add a lot of color without the expense of a multi-color print. The blue cards above are stamped with copper foil on Neenah Classic Crest Patriot Blue. You could even use multiple colors of paper throughout the press run. Or duplex two different colors together to create your own combination.

Copper Foil Stamping on Chipboard Business Cards

Technique Eight: Foil Stamping

Foil stamping is very similar to letterpress, and it is done on the same type of equipment. The difference is that it uses a film of metallized foil instead of ink. The press is equipped with a special electric heating attachment that heats a metal die between 200-300F. The heated die, combined with the impression, transfers the foil in the shape of the design. In this example, we used bronze and black metallic foil on black French Poptone Black Licorice paper to create a striking appearance. And it’s not just gold and silver foil stamping. There are many colors available in both metallic and pigment shades.

White Pigment Foil on Black Paper

Technique Nine: White Pigment Foil

Foil stamping doesn’t have to be a metallic color. We often use white pigment foil stamping to print business cards that print white on dark black paper. There are also clear foils, and pearlized tint foils.

Simple Foil Business Cards

Technique 10: Simplicity

Just because you can, doesn’t always mean you should. There are many possibilities with letterpress printing, but in the end, ink on paper is the classic. Don’t be afraid to create a simple design that embraces the elegance of fine typography, beautiful paper and and generous white space. After all, this has been the tradition for 500 years.

Filed Under: Business Cards

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • The Importance of Branding your Business
  • Printing Techniques: Add more color with letterpress overprinting.
  • How to choose paper for your letterpress project.
  • 10 Techniques to Inspire your Letterpress Business Card Design
  • What is letterpress, anyway?

Categories

  • Branding
  • Business Cards
  • Letterpress

Need help? Call Us at (800) 213-6408

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Footer

NAVIGATE

  • Meet Us
  • Get a Quote
  • Contact Us
  • Gallery
  • Wholesale Fulfillment

Instagram

Is holographic foil a trend or is it here to stay? #holographic #holographicfoil #foilcards #holographicprinting #designresearch
Just a quick shout-out to Photopolymer, the magic material that makes modern letterpress possible. This is how we can print your digital designs on our vintage letterpress machines. If it weren't for Photopolymer plates, we would be hand-setting movable type like Johannes Gutenberg. Of course, there are craftspeople who still do that with amazing skill and dedication. But we've always approached it from a old+new perspective. The level of detail that can be achieved with Photopolymer is amazing, and it lets us print with the deepest impression possible. Cheers for Photopolymer! #letterpress #digitallettering #photopolymer #digitaltypography
When @neenahpaper came up with Epic Black Eggshell they must have had silver foil in mind. The smooth foil and textured paper is an amazing combination. #blackpaper #epicblack #metallic #corporateevents  #tradeshow #foilprinting #invitationideas
The Kluge press is a Rube Goldberg-esque contraption, but it works miracles for foil stamping. You can print practically any paper on it, even handmade paper with deckle edges. #kluge #metallicprinting #foilcards #machineshop #metalworking #mattesilver

Follow

Recent Posts

  • The Importance of Branding your Business
  • Printing Techniques: Add more color with letterpress overprinting.
  • How to choose paper for your letterpress project.
  • 10 Techniques to Inspire your Letterpress Business Card Design

About Rise and Shine Letterpress

We work with graphic designers, illustrators, agencies and stationers to create unique prints using specialty techniques. Our goal is to unite our experience and well-appointed workshop with your unique concepts. From small batches to large runs, we can express your design in print.

Copyright © 2019 · Rise and Shine Letterpress · Custom Letterpress Printing for Designers and Brands · Theme by ZIGZAGPRESS