Brief 3: Testing letterpress business cards

Deciding on colours for the business cards was tricky to find three that worked well together but that could be ordered from GF Smith. Since they don't do orders small enough for this brief I instead managed to order enough free samples to cover roughly 100 business cards.

In the end, we went with Adriatic Blue, Pastel Pink and bright white as these compliment each other nicely without being too obnoxious and bright.

My plan for the business cards is to emboss one side so that it feels tactile but subtle. Then for the reverse side with the details, use ink and a slight emboss to ensure legibility of the important contact details. Possibly using a black ink or maybe a slightly different shade of the colour of the paper to enhance the emboss without the ink being too much of a sharp contrast to the colour of the paper.

Blocks set up in a chase, ready for test print/ emboss

First test print - not embossed enough, too light. Needs more pressure.

First decent enough test print. Now I have an idea of the pressure needed to apply to get a sharp enough emboss that it doesn't require any ink.

First colour, first side done.

Mixing inks to find a shade that is slightly darker than the colour of the paper to enhance the slight emboss on the reverse side.

First tested on the manual press to ensure that the colour ink works well with the paper.

still needs to be trimmed but first printed business card, done.