After months of operating as a commercial print shop, one question began to ride on our nerves here in the shop. Even in encounters unrelated to our print trade, it would seep out of the lips of acquaintances and strangers alike. The question was always “Do you have a business card?” And our response? “Well, we’ve been meaning to do something about that…”
I am a printer, afterall. So it’s a bit embarrassing to not have your own printed card!
Well, with it feeling like years had passed since we ordered a plate for printing business cards, we finally got down to brass tacks and took our good intentions to press. You might think that printing my own work would be the most tedious of all exercises, but honestly it’s sometimes fun to take a back seat to the process and just see how things turn out after a pass through the press. No elaborate press checks, no Pantone swatches to match… just an afternoon spent working an antique press.
In the end, things turned out rather nice with a set of business cards printed on scrap Holyoke fine cotton paper. We used a reverse in the plate for this project, so the “raised” areas in white are actually the natural texture and color of the paper. Areas in black were printed with standard Van Son rubber base plus ink. You can notice on these cards one of letterpress’s characteristic “weaknesses,” which is the salty or marbled appearance of large solid areas. But, far from hurting the final look of this project, the marbling helps to honestly present the medium the card was produced in.
Some edges got a little fuzzy on these cards, as they were cut down by hand, but hey– at this point it’s nice to just say “Yes!” when people ask that familiar question.