Full Color Business Cards

Hi all!! This is my first forum discussion. I was wondering if you could help out with some advise. I just acquired a 10×15 C&P press and I am trying to print some business cards with a full color (all brown) on one side but I cant seem to get the color nice & even. I am seeing the white from the paper coming through. How can I give it a full crisp ink color? 

Thanks in advance for your help. 

Alicia

Ahh thats the beauty of letterpress!  But perhaps give them a double impression? Ie: leave the card in there and let it cycle through the press twice?  This can change the colour or make the colour shade darker so be aware of that. Good luck!

Hi Alicia,

Platen presses struggle with solids–it’s not their forte! 🙂 You can skip feed, meaning ink the forme two or more times before printing–or hit it twice, but it’s never going to be perfectly solid. We often have floods printed offset, which produces a much richer and more saturated solid.

Please make the brown color with offset printing and later press hard with letter press plate…

Hi Alicia,

In the past, I have had to print solids, and the folks are right—it is difficult at best to get a nice, rich solid. A couple of things I did to help included the following: if you have them, run the idler rollers on your form rollers to maximize your ink supply. I would (by gentle stages) thin the ink out, and as a last resort, I’d under-print a 50% tint screen of the solid, then print the solid on top once it had dried. Oh, and adding a bit of gloss varnish to the ink sometimes makes a solid appear “deeper” than otherwise.

Let’s see–if you want to have some fun with it, get full-color seps and print it as a four-color process piece. If you are like me, it will be fun even as it drives you a bit crazy……

Barb

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