33 Letterpress Business Cards for Inspiration
Published in MarketingBusiness cards are a necessity for designers who want to market themselves and their services to people that they come across. They also provide an opportunity for the designer to make an impression with a stylish, memorable card. Letterpress business cards are a popular choice for designers, and in this post we’ll showcase 33 high-quality letterpress cards. Hopefully these examples will provide some inspiration if you are considering designing some new business cards.
For more on business card design please see:
76 Responses
These are amazing. I wish letterpress cards weren’t so expensive though!
Those are absolutely beautiful. I love how simple most of them are.
Another great article on business cards is http://www.noupe.com/design/50-beautiful-business-card-designs.html. More great ideas if you’re desiging your own.
Tommy,
Yeah, that’s definitely a down side.
Great! It’s full of Inspiration
Gorgeous! All of them! So in love!
These are amazing, I am loving the inspiration here
Awesome cards, nice post.
Great compilation. Thanks for inspiring. Keep it going.
Awesome, I just ordered some embosses printing through carderizer.com You don’t see a whole lot of embosses or letterpress business cards (not exactly cheap to print). Great post btw.
HATS OFFF
Amazing card designs!!! very inspiring..
–great designs!–salute–
They are expensive, yet if you look at the bright side, this is a way to get people to get to know your business and you got to “dress for success” I think this is money well spent.
Not to mention the designs are simply gorgeous.
Beautiful cards. I want. Jealous.
Some of these are amazing! I definitely want to incorporate this ‘cool factor’ into my business card. It’ll be a while though as I want to experiment with others first, like die-cut and metallic effects.
Great post!
Beautiful examples! Too bad letterpress is soooo pricey.
I’ve used deboss as a letterpress substitute to control costs, but the real deal is definitely a cut above!
nice business letter dude.
These cards are amazing. I personally like the design of the card
really beautiful listing of business cards, some of them latest design in this beautiful list.
You all are so magical. Every time I need inspiration for a very specific type of thing, boom, I get a notice you have another amazing post. Thank you. Vandelay Design, you are deeply appreciated.
THANK YOU!
@Tommy
Do what I did (cuz i’m so cheap).
I purchased the minimum amount of letter press bcards and also purchased regular bcards. I save the expensive cards for potential clients that I actually set meetings with but I hand out the standard cards for the old “hey, give me a call sometime if you need _____”.
love this!!
I’m looking for a web-based printer for letterpress business cards – anybody got a suggestion?
Gorgeous cards.
Amazing the number of business cards that have aol and gmail addresses and not a domain/business e-mail…..
Wow really impressive & creative! I need to create cards for me, and an affiliate, this
was just in time!!! Thanks.
Really like Mind Punch, some of these I have not seen !
check out this one! letterpress, diecut, metal adhesive label.http://bit.ly/9RiLZo
Letterpress is pricey bc of the cost of paper.
Nice business card, Have you seen Google’s business cards? if you sign up for a public profile you can get one. Its very kool
Just One Word!! Amazing!! Ohkkk One More Cant Get More Awsome!!
One thing that is ALWAYS missing from business card design posts is where to get these. Does anybody know where I can print something like this?
@Tommy Day
You can get letterpress relatively inexpensively from the Mandate Press. Their $95 calling cards are a steal.
http://www.themandatepress.com
Wow – very impressive stuff here. Thanks for the share
A temple of inspirations! This is amazing! Fantastic. I need a client for create somenthing after this!!!!
Like I said before Vandelay removed my comment: Where do you get these cards? Business card posts never mention what companies do this.
Great selection.
Some of these are amazing!
Really beautiful listing of business cards.
Thanks.
Am feeling business card envy only a few weeks after my own business card redesign! Thanks for sharing some inspiration.
I love how they used the letterpress texture to do the work for them. Many of the designs were simple but they were only able to be so because of the depth created from the letterpress. Its great.
I definitely have a soft spot for letterpress. I’ve even looked into getting a press…
Cool selection of business cards designs.
@Tommy Day, letterpress cards don’t necessarily need to be expensive, check out The Mandate Press for their letterpress business card deals – http://themandatepress.com/
Al,
Your comment wasn’t removed, it was held in moderation and hadn’t been approved yet. There are a ton of companies that offer business card printing, like UPrinting and The Mandate Press.
Very cool designs. A great card could be the difference in getting you a job, you never know! Especially in an art related field.
so simple & beautiful cards… wish i can print one
Amazing Designs! It’s all about the texture.
All cards looks quite similar to each others. Almost all presurized. I’ve expected more. Nevertheless some of them have very creative ideas.
This is a gorgeous collection! I’m always so impressed with how creative you can get with such a small canvas! We just had a client custom design her own double-sided business cards that we’ll be printing on our lovely eco-friendly birch wood! Ahhhmazing! Can’t wait to have some pics to show off!
I design business cards/stationery too! Very interesting designs here. The pig one it`s my favorite.
wOw! … wOw! … wOw! … wOw! … wOw! … wOw! … wOw! … ………….
awesome… just awesome… damn i wish i could conceptualize bcards as great as this T_T great work to the designers. gj gj!
Some fantastic business cards. Really some great show of designing.
they are wonderful designs, ı will make business cards for me and ıam using they
Some Great Examples of letterpress Business cards. I wish we still had our kluge
what a great press that was!
Nice collection!
We specialize in high-touch letterpress business cards through the web…
Our online estimator provides instant quotes for a range of cards options.
See http://slowprint.com/amflp
The process is intended for designers, as we generally print from your supplied PDF…
We’re happy to note that we’ve had a number of our cards and designs featured at Typophile and Card Observer
Thanks also to vandelaydesign for showing our Slowprint and P&E cards, both of which I designed and printed last year!
Cheers!
Peter
@slowprint
@ideaswords
We have some pretty cool plastic cards designs here http://www.cpcards.co.uk
Also, for more examples please see http://www.cardexamples.co.uk
We print the frosted clear plastic cards and work with lots of graphic designers who order cards for their clients.
Awesome collection of letterpress cards, thanks
Ok, that’s amazing BUT WHERE TO PRINT NOW? ahah…
Romain,
There are tons of places to print business cards. Check out http://uprinting.com.
thanks vandelay !
another thing that is not easy, is how to make a good PSD file with this kind of “inlay effect”…
Nice ones
Such a great collection.
Letterpress is an elegant choice and the people who design them always put so much care, attention and creativity into them.
These business cards are just stunning. There’s nothing more elegant and classy than a good old letter-pressed business card.
Nice work
We’ve got plenty more at slowprint.com!
Thanks for supporting letterpress!
By the way, regarding the price of LP printing, a few points: (many comments about how expensive letterpress is)
The very popular Crane Lettra 220# runs (in 100s) over $4/sheet (20×26″)
Film and Photopolymer for a typical one-color job can run $30-35
Now figure in the time and expense of getting a letterpress shop running, keeping old presses alive, paying rent, insurance, etc.
And then there’s the printer (not the press, but the GUY or GAL who RUNS the PRESS!) who kinda needs to get enough from week to week to make mortgage payments, buy food, coffee and toothpaste, and maybe go out for pizza now and then
We do letterpress for designers and their clients, which requires custom ink mixes for every job, high-end papers, etc etc. A two-color double-sided job will take at least two working days to complete, and then there’s trimming out the cards on the old Challenge Cutter (very tedious and stressful, but critically important to complete perfectly or the job has to be re-printed!)
Letterpress cards are actually substantially less expensive than they should be, but the difference is taken up by the printer’s love of the craft, and willingness to keep doing it even though he has to bring in a couple of thousand bucks from other sources every month or two, particularly since the economic debacle of 2008, ongoing.
Finally, if you love letterpress, don’t go for the cheapest or smallest number of cards.
Get the best and most beautiful you can, and double the order. The cards will then be at least 40-50% cheaper per piece! Design a card that is timeless. If you may move, leave the address off. If your email may change, leave the email off
Plan on using the cards for years. Buy enough to last and the cost is spread out over many moons. Gorgeous cards are really not that expensive compared to buying a viente latte at Starbucks every day!
Thanks for listening
Peter
http://slowprint.com
@slowprint
Sorry, 40-50% cheaper is not always accurate, since at 50% you’d pay exactly the same amount for twice the number of cards! The curse of typing before coffee
However, my point is that the fixed costs of setup and overhead, etc remain fixed as the number of pieces rises, and the difference in the price per piece is substantial.
Just as a quick example, here’s a rough price per piece for 2/2 cards on Crane’s 600gsm (220#) (from our calculator here: http://slowprint.com/exquisitelp )
500 $1.400
1000 0.840
1500 0.680
2000 0.605
Also, apologies for the smilies…
(-:
So at 1500 cards, the price per card is less than half of the cost for 500.
(I hope this doesn’t seem like a blatant advert, just trying to provide a good example!)
All of these are spectacular examples, especially those that understood how impactful pattern can be and truly make use of the pre-production set ups. In this era of image bombardment, a well designed, beautifully produced card stands out even more. Vandelay does an excellent job “shopping” the best examples!
All of these are beautiful examples of typography and letterpress designed business cards. I really enjoyed J Hische’s design. It was sophisticated, yet simple. Cleverly Cut’s design was also excellent. A great use of color and paper choice. I agree with Jo-Anne, in that a beautiffly produced card stands out more than a cluttered over designed card. Great inspiration, thanks for sharing!
I want to touch them!
I recently discovered Brixx Letterpress. The quality I can vouch for and their website makes it super easy to place an order. No need to wait for a quote cause they have upfront pricing. Just select what you need and upload your file on checkout. Kinda like Sticker Mule but for letterpress printing. The also do postcards and wedding invitations.
Here’s the link: http://www.brixxletterpress.com
They’re really friendly too.
Jo-Anne is right – excellent examples of business card printing such as these really stand out from the plain examples you see every day.
Those are some really nice cards, thanks for sharing…. my favorite of them is the Cleverly Cut one.
Nice collection, I like Blok.
Letterpress is definitely the way to go to give your business card a unique look – love it – thanks for the idea!