Print With Us

We apply the highest standards to every project, whether we collaborate on the design or you bring your own. Please email letterpress@swayspace.com with any questions.

Design Collaboration

Most of our projects are the result of an attentive creative collaboration with you, our customer. Come with your most ambitious hopes and dreams and we will strive to the utmost to make them a reality. After a short review of our samples and your aspirations, we will send you a project plan with design fee estimates, expected rounds of design review, printing costs, and a timeline. Most projects take 4–6 weeks to design and about 4 weeks to print. With the following we can generate an estimate for you:

Rough design mockup or description
Quantities of each piece
Dimensions of each piece
Number of ink colors on each side (black ink and blind “ink-less” printing each count individually)
Paper stock (not everyone is a paper expert, but a general idea of paper color, texture, and thickness is helpful)
Any additional finishing (i.e. edge painting, die cutting)

Thumbnail 02 — Ideally we will end our first meeting with a thumbnail sketch of your design.

An Estimate of Estimates

The following are extremely general guidelines of costs you can expect:

Wedding Invitations

125 1-color invitations with RSVP cards: $600
125 2-color invitations with RSVP cards: $1,030
125 1-color mailing and RSVP envelopes (address printed on flap and front, respectively): $460

Business Cards on Quality Paper Stock

250 each of 2 names 2-color: $1,110
500 each of 2 names 2-color: $1,240

Bring Your Own Design

We love working with the many terrific designers out there! We are more than happy to review mockups for suitability to print in our shop. See the following guidelines:

Artwork Considerations for Your Designer

Vector artwork is preferred, or we should chat about how to best print photos and continuous-tone artwork with halftones, bitmaps, or dithering
Generally the finest solid line weight should be .35 pt, but there can be exceptions depending on the artwork
Dotted or dashed lines should be at least 1 pt in thickness
Dots should be at least 1.25 pt in diameter. This includes dots on your i’s (the crosses on your t’s should be fine) and periods in your typeface
We can mix ink to match Pantone uncoated swatches
Maximum artwork size: 18" × 22"
Maximum paper size: 19½" × 28"

Dither 02 — Dithering is one of our favorite ways to treat photographic or continuous tone images.

File Specifications for Your Designer

Adobe Illustrator files preferred. PDFs and InDesign files also acceptable
CMYK document color mode
Spot colors or black only; watch out for lingering process colors
Consider overprinting (let’s chat about specifics)
1/8" bleeds for any artwork outside of trim
Include trim marks (stroked with the registration swatch) or a clear rectangle specifying edges of artwork
Outline fonts or supply font files (most font licenses allow sharing with a printer)
Be sure to embed any artwork, or supply each file separately
We may charge production fees if we need to address anything amiss

Plate 02 — We can help ensure your files are set up correctly for platemaking.

Again, please email letterpress@swayspace.com with any questions.