Our Trade Terms are the conditions under which we accept your job, and outline our house policies, disclaimers and payment terms.

You should read these terms, along with the rest of the FAQ. The FAQ is incorporated into the Trade Terms as an appendix providing definitions and disclaimers regarding our liabilities and responsibilities to you.

We may make special offers regarding payment, costs, and other characteristics of our trade, which may supersede the terms outlined on the website, but in lieu of other notice, the current Trade Terms will apply.

Printing on Balck, Ink color, Pantone® matching, transparency, opacity, metallic inks

Pantone colors are used to specify ink color. However the Pantone standard is designed for offset lithography, not for letterpress. We use the Pantone formula mixing book as a reference and a guide, and we take every available step to match the swatch specified. HOWEVER, we are not responsible for slight variations from the swatch book in the final printed piece! See our Trade-Terms for specific disclaimers.

In particular, since each mix is done by eye, different jobs will inevitably be noticeably distinct in color. It's the same as buying paint for your kitchen! If you'll need more, buy plenty to begin with!

Since Pantone inks are transparent, printing on off-white or colored stock will inevitably affect the color of the final impression.

Opaque inks may be specified for printing on black or other colored stockbut no guarantees of any kind are provided.

With any relief printing process, the ink layer is very very thin (since otherwise, it squeezes out of the impression and looks horrible!) The brilliance of the color comes 99% (well, a lot, anyway) from reflection of light off the paper, returning back through the ink. So with a colored stock, not even black, the impression will always be subtle, with very little brilliance. This effect can be used with very beautiful results, subtle, rather mottled colors, overlaying each other in larger type and block matter. For small text and fine line, we don't find it very successful.

Although the inks are "opaque" there's simply not enough pigment in the ink layer!

There is also hot-stamp film and foil, which is done on a letterpress. We currently out-source hot-stamping, although it seems that every other request we get lately is for printing on black stock ;-) For large jobs, any Pantone color may be specified for hot-stamping, and for metallics (see below) it is the only option which provides a true 'specular reflection'.

Film-stamping has the advantage of being perfectly opaque, but the disadvantage of looking high-tech (plastic) and rather impersonal, also the color choices are limited in small quantities.

Actual metallic inks tend to be  problematic, since they depend on the gloss of the surface behind them to become reflective. Since our fine paper stocks are 'high-touch', ie, soft 100% cotton or rag fiber, we avoid metallics. The other option "metallic film hot-stamping" is also rather garish against the fine papers we prefer. Hot-stamping is similar to what you might find on a book cover.
We are happy to quote hot-stamping as part of your project.

Having said that, we've recently been impressed by the quality of a new silver metallic ink on dark stocks. This ink is extremely opaque, and on dark stock has a brilliance impossible to achieve with standard opaque inks. On lighter stocks it simply seems gray...

Solids

Letterpress is at its best with line art and typographic elements. It requires extra effort and often additional cost to make sure that solid areas - over 3/16 inch - are seen as solids. Smooth surface papers help quite a lot with this. We also will make use of fine-arts printmaking techniques such as dampening the paper to produce a perfect ink-film. However, for reverses, and solid coverage we often recommend the use of offset lithography which we offer through our local commercial print partners.

Another option is the use of duplexed stock, where two sheets of different colors (often white with another color) are bonded into one heavy sheet in a special process. Our Bugra colors are available in any combination of 22 colors, as double, triple and even quad weight sheets, with no minimum. 

We can also have any Bugra color bonded to any other sheet. Non-standard combinations can get pricey, though, often doubling or tripling the cost of the stock. Some minimum and setup charges apply.

Bleeds, Trimming, etc.

Art Production

When you are producing your own art work for letterpress

Make all colors SPOT colors, use PANTONE libraries in Illustrator
No "Transparency" full 100% Opacity only (use a lighter tint instead of transparency, which, of course will add another color to the job)
No Photoshop or jpegs, vector only. We can use high-res B&W (1-bit, no gray) TIFFs if scanned images are to be incorporated, but they must be saved as 'bitmap' (1-bit) images, not grayscale.

PayPal

We use PayPal to process all credit card orders.
You do NOT need a PayPal 'account' in order to pay with PayPal. Just go to the "Send Money" tab, enter our email "sales@exquisiteletterpress.com" and follow the steps shown there. We can also send you a PayPal invoice which will have a link that takes you directly to the 'send money' page.

Also, note that we're very happy to accept checks (US, Canada), money orders, and wire transfers. In fact, for larger jobs, we prefer wire-transfer and will give a 5% or better discount for direct payment.

Pricing, "Almost Free™ Letterpress" Business Cards

If you are looking for Almost Free pricing, please see our Almost Free business card estimator page.

The form will let you choose your ink colors, paper stock, and check on per/piece pricing for different numbers of cards.

Note that the special pricing on these cards takes into account discounts for standard color choices and a simplified workflow.

All art work MUST be provided as 100% SPOT color PDFs. We CAN NOT use process colors in the workflow, and there may be additional charges if we need to change the color format. All fonts MUST be converted to OUTLINES!

If you need special colors or any other project, please Contact Us!

Pricing, Wedding Stationery

Slow Print works directly with a number of very fine invitation specialists, and we'd be happy to refer you to them!

Invitation sets on fine papers and with absolute attention to detail, 100 sets minimum, $15/set and up.

Feel free to request a referral!

If you are a wedding consultant, designer or broker, please contact Peter for more info on our B-2-B offerings!

Digital Letterpress, Digital Type, Typography

Our production process is entirely digital from intial design until the plate goes on the press. We start with digital files, either produced in house, or received from the client. We then do extensive pre-press evaluation of the files, correcting for a number of important variables which can affect the letterpress impression. For example, we check that all colors are specified as 100% solid spot colors, and that all type is correctly rendering as 'overprint' rather than 'knock-out'. We'll add a tiny bit of weight to very fine features, adjust the placement of punctuation and tweak the spacing of odd letter combinations. Most people will labor to see the difference before and after, but that is exactly the difference between "acceptable" and Exquisite!

Although we worked our way up with hot-metal and foundry type set in a stick from a "California Job Case", we cannot see ever going back, at least not for our invitation and business stationery work. Digital type faces are far more efficient, and can, in the right hands, produce typography which is more precise and appropriate than metal type ever could.

Photos

While we can do photos on the letterpress, it requires a rather coarse halftone screen, and only works well on coated smooth commercial stock. We recommend any 'continuous' tone images be printed by offset litho or digital printing, and we can then do the letterpress imprinting on the same sheet.

The offset press also uses halftones, but can use a much finer screen. Digital four-color offset is also available.

Combining Letterpress with Offset and Digital imaging

We are happy to work closely with a very good small commercial offset shop, who provide a range of offset and digital printing services.

We've very successfully combined their work with our letterpress on our fine-art printmaking papers, as well as more commercial stock.

Calligraphy, Addressing (Prices, formats, samples)

We've been practicing calligraphy for almost 30 years, so we have very high standards!

With that in mind we have partnered with one of the world's most renowned calligraphers, Georgia Deaver, to offer truly exquisite calligraphy for your invitations. Please see Georgia's samples at http://slowprint.com/calligraphy/georgia

Pricing for invitation design starts at $450, for addressing starts at $4.00/envelope.

Addresses should be supplied in 'address label' format, rather than spreadsheet format.

GSM vs pounds (paper weights)

Papers are described by their weight, thickness and surface characteristics.

The weight is Grams per Square Meter (gsm), which is literally "how many grams would a piece of this paper one meter square weigh?" or "pounds per ream".

Of course, very few papers are actually a meter square, but GSM is a very useful way to compare the 'absolute' weight of various sheets of different sizes.

Pounds per ream is rather more troublesome, as it's not at all intuitive.
A 65# cover sheet is heavier than an 70# text sheet! And that's barely scratching the surface.
Different types of paper have different standard sheet sizes, so cover paper (ie thicker card-stock) is weighed as 500 sheets of 23x35, whereas bond paper is 500 sheets of 11x17, and 'text' paper is 500 sheets of 17x22

see http://www.limitedpapers.com/sizeweightchart.html

Deep Impression, Paper thickness (caliper)

The weight of a paper is a function of both its density and thickness. Thickness in papers is also referred to as the 'caliper', which is really just the name of the instrument used to measure thickness. Many of our favorite papers have a high 'caliper' reading, though the weight may be the same as a thinner paper. These high-caliper sheets are perfect for deep impression, as the fibers are softer, and the thickness allows for plenty of depth without punching through the back of the sheet, which is considered rather gauche...

Paper fibers, sustainable, recycled

Papers are made from fibers of cellulose, commonly cotton, linen, hemp, flax, or other plants. Fibers are recovered from the cuttings and waste in the garment industry, as well as new fiber from the fields. All of our fine=art papers are produced in traditional mills using high-quality sustainable fiber. Our commercial papers, including Crane, Strathmore and others are either 100% cotton, or  Forest Stewardship Certified (FSC)

Printing Rough Papers

We enjoy printing on heavy and heavily textured papers. They do require substantial extra time, however, as the texture tends to make the sheets stick together in the press. We will surcharge certain stocks to account for this.

Scoring Heavy Papers, Folding

We do not recommend folding stocks over 80 lb cover weight (250 gsm), due to the risk of cracking along the fold.

Folding is separate from scoring, and generally, unless otherwise noted, we will score the work and deliver it flat.

We found a great wedding site which explains all this...

http://www.weddingusa.com/stories/invitation_etiquette.shtml