WEDDING LETTERPRESS

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MIN-***-LPI

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Wedding Letterpress

Product Kind Description

We use an antique Heidleburg press to print all of our letterpress products. Modern letterpress printing entails attaching a photopolymer plate to a printing press, inking it, and pressing paper against it to form an impression. Each letterpress color is impressed one at a time. Films and plate are made for each unique color.

NO BELLS & WHISTLES:

Backers
Silhouettes/Shapes
Skinny Wrap labels
Envelope liners
Fancy RCP/RAP

PAPER TYPES

Premium 100% Cotton: Elegantly thick with a rich, pronounced texture that is perfect for a deep letterpress impression. 100% cotton rag paper, meticulously crafted in a luscious soft white tone. 500 gsm, 39 point thickness. The paper tone is our Recycled paper.

100% Cotton Paper: With a creamy off-white hue and vellum texture, 100% Cotton Paper is a fine textured stock that provides a slightly more subtle letterpress impression. 320 gsm, 20 point thickness. The tone is similar to our Signature paper.

Samples: Letterpress samples are only available in our Premium 100% Cotton Paper.

WHAT ARE PANTONE COLORS?

The Pantone Matching System (PMS) assists designers, printers, and ink makers by creating a standard method of determining how colors will appear when printed. There are many different formula guides issued by Pantone, but for our purposes we deal with their Solid Uncoated book.

Inks: We have developed a Letterpress Palette with 59 Pantone Spot Colors (or inks) for our customers to choose from. Custom colors are not offered.

Each letterpress wedding invitation is available in 1, 2 or 3 color printing, each with at least 3 color palettes to choose from. Matching accessories are available in 1 or 2 color printing, depending upon the number of colors selected for the invitation.
Each design has 3 or 4 pre-selected color palettes available. Custom color palettes can be selected by clicking on the rainbow icon on the personalization page.
Custom spot color palettes are restricted to the colors available within the Minted Letterpress Palette. Customers can substitute as many custom colors as are available in the number of printed colors suggested.
- Ex. You’ve selected a 1-color design. To substitute the color used in this design with another color shown here, please enter the color name below.

ENVELOPES

RAP is offered on the same products for both Letterpress and Digital, the Invitation, RSVP card and Thank You Card. However, for letterpress, we are using Euro-Flap envelopes instead of Square-Flap and as such need to adjust the placement of the RAP.

Letterpress envelopes cannot be purchased on our site. If a customer is requesting their flat printed RSVP card with letterpress envelopes, a dummy order will need to be placed.

Euro flap envelopes: Soft white envelopes, with pointed flaps are included in each order of invitations or RSVP cards. Soft white is the only envelope color option; it is equivalent to our standard square flap envelopes.

• Available in black ink only. RAP is digitally printed and not letterpressed.

• All letterpress RAP files can be found in the LPI folder in product files.

Be sure to follow the minimum font and stroke guidelines.
Placement of RAP ...
- INV 1” from the top
- RSVP centered to art board
- TYC .75” from the top

File setup

ACCESS LETTERPRESS FILES IN PRODUCT FILES

All letterpress files are found in Product Files. When proofing letterpress, ignore the WTP file. MBO converts colors to CMYK and at times does not retain the stroke on text or overprinting attributes settings.

Be sure to have the letterpress spot color and bridge color swatches uploaded to your swatch gallery.

BASIC PROCESS

The basic way of setting up and editing your .ai files is no different than proofing completely custom items. Keep file setup as simple as possible, so we don't risk the order getting stuck in Proof Created.

LAYERS

Name each layer with your Pantone Spot color values with no spaces, (e.g. 7764U). This means you will have as many layers as you have colors, no more, no less. All items on any given layer should be of the same Pantone value.

Separate each color into different layers.
Name each layer with the Pantone spot color used in that layer.
Guides can be kept under a layer.
Editable text visibility should be off. It should also be Pantone spot color and aligned with outlined elements. This is for the benefit of reproofs.

MINTED LETTERPRESS PALETTE

Since there is no color info associated with spot colors, they will appear black in a PDF. MBO will create proofs for you that customers can easily view.

If you ever need to send a PDF to a customer through email, be sure to convert Spot colors to CMYK by selecting your artwork and choosing:
Edit > Edit Colors > Convert to CMYK.
Spot colors will appear in the swatches palette with a small dot in the lower right.

When working on a Letterpress designs, be sure to use only the Letterpress Swatch Palette that has been provided to you. You can load a new palette in the swatches dialog box by selecting:

Swatches > Open Swatch Library > Other Library

Pantone Bridge Colors

Pantone Bridge Palettes are conversion charts created by Pantone for their color libraries. Color bridge is used to select and specify solid pantone colors, to determine how a Pantone color will appear when reproduced in CMYK. These swatch libraries exist within Illustrator. Please note that not every spot color has a CMYK bridge equivalent.

OVERPRINTING

When two colors overlap it is called overprinting. Ink colors will multiply when printed over each other.

Dark colors may be overprinted over lighter colors.

Be mindful of when colors overlap. Make sure that the Overprint Fill and Overprint Stroke boxes are checked under the Attributes tool. Most letterpress product files have the checkboxes selected, but when we alter designs, it can change the settings. You can check overprinting by selecting: Window > Attributes.

Example: The Matte Gold layer is coming through with parts of the ‘and’ missing. This is called knockouts. A knockout is a portion of an element that has been removed. The bottom color is knocked out of -non printed- the area where the other color overlaps. This is a common error that occurs when proofing letterpress. Our printers will place the order on hold until we send them a corrected file that allows overprinting.

product limitations

LINE THICKNESS

Lines that are too thin will wash off in the plate-making process.
ALL LINES should be .75 point or thicker. No hairlines!

TYPE SIZE

Stick to our minimum font size guide. Letterpress excels at printing type and handles most fonts very well, but type that is too small will wash off in the platemaking process.

Don’t use type smaller than our minted guidelines
Outline your fonts when submitting your files.
Don’t track or kern too tightly.
When in doubt, add a 0.1 stroke!

BLIND DEBOSS

If the customer's wedding letterpress card is 1 color and the pantone choice is Blind Deboss, the DA needs to let the customer know that the card won't actually be printed in pantone ink.

If the customer meant for the card to be printed in ink, the DA should ask the customer for another pantone color from our wedding letterpress swatch library instead of Blind Deboss.

REVERSED TYPE

Rarely, type will be reversed in letterpress. If you do have a design with reversed type, keep it at a higher font size. Consider adding a stroke to compensate for ink gain.

Reverse type should be 2+ points larger than the usual minimum font size.
Consider adding a stroke.

INK COVERAGE

Heavy ink coverage (areas larger than ½ inch) can be difficult to achieve. Heavy ink can cause buckling and bulging of our lighter weight paper. When heavy coverage is in the same color as something much lighter like type, it often will have to be printed in a separate sun.

Avoid heavy ink coverage when possible.
Be mindful of when heavy coverage is in the same color as thin lines or type.

TRAPPING

When you have two colors that are next to each other, but don’t overlap, it can be problematic. Trapping involves adding space (sometimes called spread) during the print production process to eliminate misregistration on the press.

Build in space so that colors don’t touch each other or overlap.

mbo - Order change

If a customer requests a color change, the DA can make the adjustment as long as the new color request is from the Minted Wedding Letterpress swatch library. The DA also needs to remember to change the layer name to the new spot color.

If the customer requests to add a color, use the note template "Adding another color to letterpress order" from mntd.space. If and when the customer approves the additional fee, ask your lead to make the financial adjustment for you.

common reprint issues

• Layers labeled incorrectly.

• Incorrect spot color

• No CMYK in the art file

MINIMUM STROKE: COMMON FONTS

The most common error is not enough stroke on the text causing text to "break."

Engravers: 0.3 pt.
Burgues Script: 0.3 pt.
Mrs Eaves: 0.2 pt.

logo

Wedding Letterpress cards does not have back-of-card printing, so we do not have the ability to add logo.

visual examples

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