The Nature of Letterpress

Here are some things to keep in mind when printing letterpress. The art of letterpress is an old printing technique where each piece of paper is hand fed into an antique 1912 Chandler and Price printing press. Because of this hand made nature, each piece will be subtly unique in it’s own way- there will be slightly variations with inking, color, impressions and positioning. These variations are to be expected. No two pieces will be exactly alike, making each piece all the more unique and endearing!

With handmade papers, please book your order in as early as possible. Because handmade papers are usually at high demand, the stock is usually low. If you have a handmade paper order in mind, we suggest booking your prints in earlier so that we can make sure we have your paper in stock. Please note that each sheet will vary slightly in size, texture, color, and weight. Because of their unique nature, the impressions might slightly vary sheet to sheet. To see a photo sample of our paper stock please head here. If you would like to order a physical sample package please email us and we can arrange that for you.

Guidelines for Printing

To prep the files for letterpress, please make sure you have these details in line:

- All parts of the file are vectorized
- Fonts and lines are outlined
- The minimum line weight for the thinnest parts of your artwork are at least 0.35pt
- All artwork is separated into it's color ways
- All artwork is filled with 100 Black
- File is sized according to actual final print size in inches
- Selected Pantone Uncoated colors are indicated with a guide. If you don't have a Pantone book, please let us know and we will try our best to match it to your desired color
- Final files are either a high res PDF or AI

A few things to note:

- Letterpress inks are transparent, so please not that lighter colored inks cannot be printed on darker colored paper
- Blind impressions, where no ink is applied to make the indentation, is still be considered as a color as a very light transparent grey will be applied for better visibility and readability.
- Regarding printed colours, please allow a 10% colour variation from your chosen Pantone colours, as this is industry standard. Because the colors are mixed by hand there will be a slight variations.

Once submitted, please expect 2-3 weeks for printing and at least an additional 1 week for shipping. The shipping cost will be calculated upon finishing off the print. The full payment for shipping is required before the parcel will be sent off.  If your project needs to be rushed, there will be a rush fee added to your order.

Thank you! We can't wait to print these for you!