I✦
Reference
Old trade cards, not modern ones. The vocabulary came from print, not screens.
S6
MMXXVI · Print
Business + complimentary cards
2
Card formats
1
Foil pass
10d
Design to press
Ten days
Timeline
The challenge
The shop had been open two years and looked new. The owner wanted a card that suggested a forty-year history without pretending to have one.
The approach
Typography first, ornament never. A heavy uncoated stock, a single foil pass, and painted edges. The restraint is what reads as age — every additional element would have read as new.
The outcome
Customers keep them, which the owner reports without prompting. A card that survives the wallet is a card that keeps working.
Commission✦
Before✦
A thin digital card with three fonts, a stock icon, and a gradient.
After✦
One typeface, one foil pass, painted edges, heavy uncoated stock — a card that gets kept.
The process
How it was made.
II✦
Set
One typeface, one weight relationship, generous margins.
III✦
Specify
Uncoated stock, single foil, painted edge — written as a printer-ready spec.
IV✦
Press
Proofed on the actual stock before the run. Always.
Next
Continue through the shelf.
XVII
If you have something worth saying clearly — we should correspond.
The studio is open for commissions in brand, web, app, video, advertising, and print. The Image → Prompt Atelier is free, forever.