The journey a card takes from its initial design stages to a finished product is filled with care, craftsmanship, and creativity. Scroll down below to explore how a card begins as a new idea to become a meaningful form of correspondence between individuals. 

Our Founder and Creative Director, Kyle Hawley, begins the process by concepting and sketching out design ideas for a new card based on merchandising requests from our retail buyer and larger product development goals. During the concepting process, Kyle determines which heritage print methods will be used. Final sketches, paper selections, ink, and printing directions are then handed over to our team, who digitizes designs and prepares them for either carving or polymer plate printing. After the design is finalized for block or polymer, our team orders plates or hand carves the finished design that will be used in the print job.

Once the plates are received, our production team begins the letterpress-printing or block printing process. The design matrix is inserted, the press is inked and prepped, and off they go! The team runs each sheet of paper through the press until they have printed the desired amount of cards. Depending on the concept, a card may also be printed on LPP handmade paper or hand dyed paper.

The newly printed cards are then set to dry, revealing the vibrant and charming design. Next, the cards are cut using Friedl, our Challenge Diamond Power Paper Cutter 30.5, then folded in half using a scoring machine. Once we have achieved a folded and finished card, the cards are packaged and sent to our South Congress bungalow, where they can be shopped by all of our guests!

Follow us on social media at @letterpressplay where we showcase the behind-the-scenes of our team as they create our treasured greeting cards!