It's been a while since my last post. I've been pretty busy designing and printing for the Central Florida Pregnancy Center's annual banquet. I did take on a client in the midst of the rush, which was a "ground-up" design project. An original design, from the ground - up.
Heather is a professional pianist, accompanist, and performer. I mentioned my Letterpress shop to her about a month ago, and described some of the features of a business card produced by hand and by century old iron presses. She decided these were just the thing she needed.
The design itself is very simple: a top view of a grand piano, creating an interesting white on black and black on white juxtaposition. The curve of the piano creates a classic self balancing image. The neat thing about using Lettra is that with a little deboss, Heather's name and the piano keys "pop" up in a manner that can only be duplicated by engraving. This creates a very tactile card. But it also creates an extremely tricky card to print.
The image is cut to full bleed on top, side, and bottom. The very end of the piano comes very close to a bleed. The margin I am dealing with is from 1/32 to 1/64 of an inch. However, hand feeding a press can often produce variances equal to these fractional margins. Letterpress is a hand wrought process, not an automated machine process [that is, if you are hand feeding and inking your press!]. It is not unusual for an image to vary side to side ever so slightly. Thus, cutting down these cards was a very slow process. My 1908 Craftsman Cutter is accurate to a fault, which made things a bit easier. I don't know what I'd do without that cutter!
One hundred and fifty "Piano Cards".
Thanks, Heather, for the opportunity to do something creative for ya!
-gary.
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