Back in the early days of my design life, before my typographic attention span was largely limited to 100 year old typefaces, I acquired a lot of digital type. A lot. And no type foundry crossed my screen as much as P22, partly because of my Western New York upbringing and mostly because of the high quality and delightfully quirky nature of the faces themselves. And while I've had the pleasure to work with the foundry from time to time, the recent creation of P22 Member Club cards was finally the perfect project to combine the digital and metal forms. My first P22 font was Constructivist, of which these great letters are a part:

Absolutely perfect shapes into which our little metal ornaments can be placed. The foundry commissioned the logo sorts from Jim Rimmer, meaning there's a little new metal type here mixed with our old.

The subtle base layers of the card were pressure printed with the back side of a piece of wood type; by adding a cut piece of chipboard (or two) to the makeready on the press, the print area varies accordingly. I adjusted the chipboard layers so that just the round areas for the logo would remain mostly white.

The magenta and yellow were mixed with transparent ink so that they'd remain light and would create overlapping colors and even more texture.

The main text was printed in process blue, which took on a greenish tint over the pressure printed areas. The space in the bottom of the P was left open so that they could be numbered, which I also did so that the ink matches.

A small but mighty project, these cards are Starshaped's little love note to P22. If you're already a member of the club you'll get one. If you're not... what's wrong with you?!

Occasionally there's a collection of ornaments sitting in the studio just begging to be put to use. This is the case with our hundreds of stars and little moons faces. So it was time they saw more action in the form of new cards. Starting with stars (for obvious reasons), I built this form, hoping that it would be relatively, ahem, starshaped. After a bit of tweaking with different sized stars, it came together:

I wanted to explore pressure printing as a way to round out the card and add another color. So I cut out the star (and ultimately the moon) from a piece of chipboard that was taped to the initial carbon proof of the form. The solid background could then be placed in the makeready on press to alter how both a piece of linoleum and wood would print on top of it.

The background was printed first with the linoleum block, and then with a same-sized piece of wood type (the back side of the type). These were both done in the same color, so as to add texture without overwhelming the design. They printed more heavily where there was extra cardboard, leaving a ghosted star image inside. Then the burgundy stars were printed.

After all that, the thought of a reversal of the pressure print came to mind. So instead of printing the solid background, I put the chipboard star down in its place so that only the star printed with a bit of 'noise' around the edges. I did this after printing the stars, so it made the burgundy a little darker.

Now that you've enjoyed these stars, go watch this.

Time for moons! These guys got the same treatment as the stars, but in a round moon shape. Love the lined details on the tiny ones.

The background is printed in a slightly different blue, but with the same linoleum-then-wood process.

Then I did the reverse as well which gives the moon a different look with fuzziness around the edges.

You can see a process shot here with the 2-hit version at the bottom and the linoleum-only shot at the top. Everyone loves wood grain, right?

Both the moon and star cards are available individually and in sets on our etsy site right now. The perfect little blank greeting for everyday correspondence.