Carl Richards is probably the one person you would love to have coffee with. Maybe even a beer. Or tapas. Well, quite frankly you want to be with Carl Richards anywhere that there is ready access to a cocktail napkin and a pen. Carl has created a name for himself in the world of finance and investing by being, well, it’s simple: honest and succinct. He makes financial concepts easy to understand with the quick gesture of a sharpie on a napkin. Which almost sounds like something out of a MoMA exhibition: *insert pretentious curatorial voice* Sharpie on Napkin. However, in all actuality, Carl is an artist. This is also where we get involved, in case you were wondering why it is that some lowly printers know such a prestigious being.

Over time we’ve been printing 8″x10″ prints of Carl Richards’ financial napkin concepts and they are now a show, Visualizing Finance, at the Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah. We also printed a limited edition letterpress cover for his book, The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways To Stop Doing Dumb Things With Money (Portfolio/Penguin, January 2012).

So, if you’re in Utah, we suggest you take a stroll up to Park City to check out his show. If you’re not around this neck of the woods, lucky for you, Carl Richards is a regular contributor to The New York Times Bucks Blog. You can see all of his financial concept napkin sketches here.

Since it’s the first month of a new year (I suppose that’s a but redundant, whatevs) we are going to run a special. Especially if your own work bonus was lack luster. We’ll try and make it a feel like you got a little more than just a company mug for your hard work all year.

If you sign off on a custom business or calling card order – CUSTOM ORDERS ONLY – by the end of the day January 31, we’ll bump an extra 100 cards into your order. Hooray! So, if you order 250 cards, 350 will automagically show up at your doorstep. If you order 500, you’ll receive 600. And so on and so on. Pretty sweet!

Click here to request an estimate! Don’t forget to mention this post for your bonus!

Also, keep in mind that the estimating process goes much more smoothly when you have a clear idea of paper, color, and design. If you need help designing your card we can help with that too.

Happy New Year!

Okay, mind blown, maybe that’s an exaggeration. However, it’s pretty cool when the world of today can still dance with the world of yesterday. A perfect example of this is the use of QR codes with letterpress. It works! So, whether you have one for your business or perhaps a promotion, it’s pretty slick.

It’s December 1st, ok, well it’s technically the 2nd. We know, people all over the place are always astonished that yet another month has passed, and “how did this happen?” and “time flies” and…well, we’re pretty sure this is a symptom of age. When we were young, it was like the world and its time was the slowest moving thing. We waited, got ready 2 hours early for prom, waited for our parents to pick us up after school, it was an eternity the year we spent waiting to be 16, and Christmas and our birthday couldn’t come faster.

We’re old. Time flies, even when we’re not having fun.

So, it’s now holiday season. We want to get back to that place where we couldn’t wait to wake up early, unwrap presents, eat copious amounts of butter & sugar laden goods, and wrap ourselves in scarves and hats and still feel frozen. Bring on the nostalgia! (forget that some of us around here grew up in Southern CA)

We think that in our seasoned age, we need a tinge of darkness to reassociate ourselves with the glory of all things childlike. And, in some cases the darkness was just an inherent latency of all things child-like. Innocence, such a thin veneer. Think about Grimms’ tales – horrific, but our child minds only chose to see the straw, the coal, and the bean, as cute and laughable. Prime example: the master of dark, absurd, and slightly deadpan, Edward Gorey.

In our own sense of naughty & nice, we have some holiday cards available in our Seraph Store: www.seraph.bigcartel.com.

Happy December!

Sorry for the Skate or Die tangent. However, today we’d like to talk about a service we offer that is pretty radical: Die-cutting. Die-cutting can be a great way to create a custom card shape, hang tag, invite, etc. There are some limitations to keep in mind. Intricate designs can become too fragile for a die and we’d recommend the Leslie Harris card (shown in the gallery below) as an example of a card that is on the high end of the scale as far as intricacy goes.

So, if you have an idea for a custom card, don’t let its shape hinder your creativity. Maybe Rodney Recloose would want a mohawk-shaped card? Or maybe skate deck shaped?

A while ago we did a small favor for our friend Kyle over at Baltimore Print Studios. He so kindly repaid the favor ten times over by sending us some really great gems. We love it when the world works like this. You buy lunch today – we will buy lunch another day. We wish the world worked out so well all of the time.

Firstly, they sent us an awesome Birthday announcement (of sorts) of a fold-your-own Vandercook. Pretty sweet. We wonder if anyone that received one has actually assembled it?

They also sent us some radical, hand-inked, Clean Hands Make Clean Prints, prints.

Lucky for you, Baltimore Print Studios also have an online shop. So, if you want to grab a Clean Hands Print for yourself, you can. Also, Happy Belated Birthday to Baltimore Prints!

Tyler asked us to print the covers for his new zine, Acid Math. We printed some on a white stock and some on a silver stock. We ran it on the Vandercook Universal with a split fountain with purple and metallic silver inks. Sexy.

Contact our local friends at Copper Palate Press to get your hands on this psychedelic ephemera.

Aside from our normal edging practices (almost any uncoated pantone under the sun, almost), we recently were tasked with 2 strikingly unique edging tasks. So, you know, don’t ever be afraid to ask – maybe we can, actually, achieve your dream edging.

The first is from our friends at Big Cartel. They wanted the cards edged only so much that it coincided with the ribbon design of their card.

The next fancy edging spree comes from Fuel Marketing. They wanted a new flashier card, pretty sure flame colored edging fits that bill. Voila!

So, we’ve decided to implement a routine installment that highlights certain customer’s amazing use of our “supply your own design” option for our $95 Business Card. Not to say that any designs that come through are less astonishing, but, let’s face it – every now and again, we see a certain card that strikes our fancy. For this reason, we want to share. Maybe it will strike your fancy and inspire you to create a kick-ass design for yourself.

Our first We Love What You Do comes from design studio, NowTwist. We ventured to their site and it’s pretty great as well, no surprise.

We printed these 2 color prints for designer, Ross Moody of 55 Hi’s and we think they look pretty neat. We printed them on our Vandercook 4 and oh what a joy. If they bring you joy and happiness too, go grab yourself one here!

*quote from Marilyn Monroe