Screen Printing Solids May 31, 2009
Quite often we get clients who want a large solid color printed on their business cards. While some solids can work with letterpress (it depends on the design), sometimes its just best to go another way. These cards we recently printed for Jacob Pierce are a perfect example. The front of the cards had an normal amount of coverage so using letterpress wasn’t an issue, however Jacob wanted the entire back of his cards to be flooded with black ink.
Since there was no white on the back to show the impression, we decided to screen print the back of the card. Screen printing puts down quite a bit of ink so the black is completely opaque, which is more difficult with letterpress. The best part is that the texture of the cotton paper shows through the screen printing so both sides of the cards have the same texture.
We also edge painted these cards with a bright hot pink color to match the front. From any angle these card really stand out.
Jacob made use of quite a few fonts on his cards, the most interesting was the sketch font used in his email and phone number above. Since we letterpress print from polymer and magnesium plates, we can print any design (and font) you have on your computer.
These look great! I love the details that you put into them.
Comment by Laurie — June 2, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Very interesting, do you screen print one at a time, or print a large sheet, cut, and then letterpress? Very nice!
Comment by Sean — June 2, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Thanks! You can do it either way depending on the design, but for these cards we screen printed larger sheets and letterpress printed the front and then cut them down to size prior to edge painting. The end result was really amazing.
Comment by Alexandra — June 2, 2009 at 11:06 pm
This is my first visit to this blog and its just fantastic, These have to be the most detailed business card that I have seen in a long time I just love the color and detail, look forward to coming back again
Comment by Mandy | Print n Ink — June 22, 2009 at 3:37 am
This is my first visit to this blog and its just fantastic, These have to be the most detailed business card that I have seen in a long time I just love the color and detail, look forward to coming back again
Comment by flatbed printer — June 26, 2009 at 2:14 am
Hi Dolce, what gsm do you estimate these business cards to be?
Comment by Alan — July 8, 2009 at 10:32 pm
These business cards were printed on our special 600gsm cotton paper, works really well with edge painting.
Comment by Alexandra — July 9, 2009 at 8:49 pm
I am just noticing people using edge coloring more and more and I’ve never knew about it! Can you tell me how the process works??
Comment by Nic — August 31, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Hi Nic, Thanks for reading the blog. It took us a while to perfect this technique so unfortunately we are keeping this method proprietary. You might want to check out a local college or university that offers printmaking and see if they offer any classes. Thanks and good luck.
Comment by Alexandra — September 2, 2009 at 12:26 pm