Shelved: Book Comercial Printing that sells Itself

Typography and Illustration in full force, on Display at MoMa. By Vasili Kamenskii.

Full Color, Typography, Repurposed Books: Oh My.

We truly love a great Book. We’re obsessed with these printed treasures on display right now at MoMa’s exhibition Revolutionary Impulse: Rise of the Russian Avant Garde. The stunning show hosts a great number of Modern works spanning scores of years & mediums heretofore unseen in one cohesive collection. Each stunning piece displays the strength and ingenuity of a progressive class of artists using their voice & vision against decades of limitations. These beautifully repurposed, handcrafted letterpress books are presented with an array of print work, sculpture, painting, and film through March 12th.

Hardcover Book Sleeve, White Foil Stamp

Full Color Custom Hardcover Book, Raised Ink bookmark

A few avenues west of MoMa, our NYC Print Shop is proud to stock our print sample shelves with an immersive volume from Rubinstein Partners. Bursting with as much custom character as the 20th Century masterpieces at MoMA, this fully illustrated real estate book is a fabulous example of how far custom touches will go in your commercial printing. The book is packed with full color CMYK imagery and typography, showing every corner of Williamsburg in its brightest light.

Full Color CMYK book printing

Interactive element: Fold out map and die cut folder pocket

For maximum success, attention-grabbing details are key: the book hosts a number of interactive design features to snag the reader and ensure a devoted customer. Informative and stylish custom specs include: offset printed maps, sleek & sturdy pocket folders pantone color-matched to brand-specific hues, raised ink bookmarks & buckslips, and on. This fresh tome is finished off with custom red thread binding and a white UV gloss foil stamped hardcover slipcase. The book simply demands to be flipped through- if not read cover to cover. Whether you’re in store for lookbooks, cookbooks, press kits, vanity printing, or a unique gift, Publicide’s custom book printing and binding is sure to have you turning page after page.

Stacked! Custom Hardcover Books & Die Cut Slipcases

Ensemble Cast: Publicide and Sally Lapointe Gear Up for NYFW

The frenetic pace of our in-house printing schedule is not unlike the exciting bustle of design studios anticipating New York Fashion Week. The New York Times recently profiled downtown fashion designer Sally Lapointe, giving readers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of her impending collection's fittings. Behind every designer lies a letterpress and print company dependable enough to produce business cards, letterhead, invitations and presentation folders to be handed out at moment's notice.

At Publicide we specialize in transcribing the shifting moods and influences of our neighboring New York fashion luminaries into sumptuous and gratifying print materials. Our expertise in printing CMYK lookbooks is exemplified in the lifelike atmospheric and runway photos of Lapointe's Spring 2012 collection, printed on sleek semi-gloss ultrawhite cover stock as seen below.

Black letterpress on solar white duplexed thick business cards hold court with atmospheric full-color lookbook

Tactility is crucial to the realms of fashion and printing. Smooth, semi-coated stock makes a perfect canvas for vast swathes of full-color CMYK printing. Business cards and letterhead on eggshell, uncoated stock lend themselves beautifully to gently-kissed letterpress. We yield to ingenious multi-fold layouts, too: Lapointe's look book opens initially to brooding, in-profile scene-setting runway images, and when opened further reveals the entirety of her stunning collection in frontal view. 

21st Sentry Fox: An entrancing sylph in Sally Lapointe stands guard over the designer's custom letterpress stationery

Naturally, we can't divulge the Spring 2014 runway collection, but rest assured that Publicide is hard at work printing and lettepressing her newest print creations.

Playing Games with Foil

When preeminent online gaming impresarios High 5 Games needed new business cards—a special set made expressly for their Chinese team—they had two objectives: The cards needed to be as eye-catching as the fantastical imagery of their games. And they called for a palette of red and gold—colors that symbolize good luck and wealth in China.

From their cool metallic glyph logo to their bevel-and-emboss game signage to the points of light glinting off the innumerable precious metal elements and fantasy scenarios in their gamescapes, High 5 Games' branding calls for the shine and depth only foil stamping can provide in identity printing.

So many eye-popping gold gradients and glowing jewels;

so much dazzling digital gold leaf. 

The best way to translate 3D metallics and gradients from the digital realm to an IRL product is to print with a metallic foil stamp. Rather than printing out a full-color facsimile of a computer-designed gradient—which can look a little unconvincing—printing with a foil stamp provides an interactive element that brings the "hardware"to life. As you turn the card back and forth and see light hitting the foil from different angles, the gradient and the shine springs alive, glinting off the opaque metallic material heat-stamped into the paper. 

In addition to its shine and dimension, foil stamping's natural debossed quality also contributes to 3D effects on a business card. When you run your fingers over a foil stamp, you can feel how the foil actually pressed down into the paper—and since it's an opaque, separate material that sits on top of the paper rather than an ink that absorbs, it has a texture that feels precious, substantial and unlike any other printing technique. (Foil stamping can be combined with embossing for an extra raised and shiny effect, of course, but it stands on its own to luxurious effect.)

For this run of cards, the High 5 design team chose to pair their gold foil stamping with brilliant red Touché paper, a specialty matte stock with a suedelike finish that works stunningly with foil. It comes in a few extra-thick versions and can also be duplexed to any weight, as seen here in this double-thick duplexed incarnation for High 5. 

Well played, High5—this thick slab of velvety texture with luxury gold stamping is sure to turn heads in any country. 

Project Gravitas Launch

Congratulations to Project Gravitas on last week's launch! To mark their official debut, Manhattan's newest purveyors of the perfect LBD transformed the Site / 109 Gallery with an exhibition illuminating the process of crafting their made-in-NYC dresses. 

With an ironclad concept and a beautiful website in place, all Project Gravitas needed was custom business suite printing to complete their identity launch. They tapped Publicide to translate their designs to print with a personalized corporate branding kit, including these crisp 2-color letterpress business cards. 

We love helping translate passionate ideas to print, and we get a special thrill from working with startups, local businesses and NYC manufacturers like Project Gravitas. Nothing beats a fresh letterpress calling card for making a startup feel official!

Die Cut the Shape of Your Printing Visions

Bust out of that typical rectangle and let Publicide die-cut your calling card into any shape you dare. 

When your printing vision calls for high-end customization, die cutting is your secret weapon. Nothing stands out from the business card deck like a thick slice of cardstock personalized with a perfectly smooth rounded edge or eyecatching cutout. Invitations alchemize into statement pieces with wild-card custom border shapes; business cards get figurative with bespoke shapes; paper coasters go baroque with elegant scalloped edging.

Flaunt dangerous curves, make supple rounds and shed excess corners by teasing the sublime out of the surface. Puncture at specific places to make your point, or outline what your business is all about by creating a custom object silhouette. No need to break a sweat: Publicide’s die-cutting workout will turn heads.

Perfect set of 4 die cut rounded corners with gold foil on ultra heavy black stock

A single die cut sloped corner helps push this extra thick business card forward

 Letterpress and gold foil party invitations elevate to keepsake status with splashy, graphic custom die cutting

Duplexed paper gets a perfect die-cut circle with the subtlest scalloped edge for a classic offset printed coaster

 A foil-stamped kraft business card die-cut in the shape of a luggage tag shows you what this travel writer is all about

Design Shoutout: Combo Printing for Golden Throat Lozenge

Packaging shoutout! We love this technicolor combination-print lozenge box from Guangxi Golden Throat Co., Ltd. —any lozenge promising something as elemental as “dispel[ling] wind and heat" should be packaged with flair that can back up the claim, and Golden Throat designed accordingly. 

This box pairs 4-process color printing with a hint of metallic foil flash to spectacular effect. The CMYK allover print goes for broke with full-color gradient stripes, and that Cooling Soothing waterfall graphic on the back is what CMYK photorealistic printing was made for. Gold foil stamped logo adds fancy finishing and accents the “Golden Throat" brand nicely. As a counterpoint to the riot of color, an impassive, unnamed spokesman keeps everything grounded in black and white. Branding success.

GET THE LOOK:

Paper: 110# card stock, gloss coated, scored + die cut

Printing: CMYK + Gold Foil Stamp

Ian Gerson at A.I.R. Gallery

Here at the Publicide headquarters, we're constantly trying to push the limits of paper production magic–we're always on a quest to perfect the ways duplexing, foil and gilding can transform paper into precious-looking objects.

Accordingly, we're big fans of the artist Ian Gerson, who works a LOT of paper magic realism into their practice. Ian specializes in creating meticulously detailed environments, frequently businesses or booths—like the temporary travel agency they installed in an empty Italian ice parlor or the faux park ranger booth they built at Socrates Sculpture Park. Gerson builds structures out of wood and found materials and fleshes them out with uncannily real cardboard renderings of everyday objects—all right up our alley since we are fools for well-executed office accoutrements as well as anything made from chipboard. 

Cardboard office set complete with old-school PC and telephone 

Paper tape dispenser, paper clock and paper pencil sharpener

This park ranger booth looked so real that a procession of park-goers stopped by every day to ask for information, not realizing Gerson's desk was kitted out with a fake cardboard telephone, tape dispenser and pencil sharpener.

Gerson's current solo show, Rock Jetty Deli & Food Corp, deals with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in Rockaway, Queens, where they live. After watching the storm devastation from their apartment by the ocean, Gerson chose not to evacuate and instead immediately began working with their neighbors to rebuild the ravaged community. This meant living for months with no heat or electricity, scarce transportation, and frustratingly slow-to-nonexistent response from would-be relief organizations and the city itself. In the seven months since Sandy hit, Gerson helped run a soup kitchen, got involved with a bevy of grassroots relief efforts, and worked towards their goal of "knowing every person who lives in Rockaway."

Gerson drew from these life-changing post-Sandy experiences to create Rock Jetty Deli & Food Corp, an immersive tableau recreating the scene in Rockaway after the storm.

A boarded-up bodega, an ATM indefinitely out of service, a scattering of debris and a brown highwater mark painted on the walls—along with projections of footage from Rockaway and Gerson's interactive performance as bodega vendor—take the viewer straight to the beach in Queens in the months after the storm. In this exhibition, Gerson's trademark cardboard office accoutrements give way to a different kind of working object--here the trompe-l'oeil cardboard pieces incude a range of post-Sandy leitmotifs like a generator, a solar panel, and gas tanks.

Cardboard generator and gas can

A cardboard power strip so real, people try to plug their phones into it

The installation is so faithful to Rockaway that Rockaway residents tend to become emotional while viewing the show and revisiting their experiences after the storm. Gerson observed gallery visitors trying to plug their phones into a power strip made out of cardboard—a triumph of scene-setting AND paper arts.

The show is up at A.I.R. Gallery in Dumbo through this weekend, with a closing party this Sunday the 23rd from 4-6pm.