As a sponsor of last week’s Altitude Design Summit, we proudly printed really cool letterpress menus and business cards to contribute to the event. 400 of the country’s top design bloggers attended and spoke at Alt and it was a great experience to be a part of the festivities. For the letterpress menus, we used our Piedmont design as inspiration and printed in black alongside a custom yellow ink to match Alt’s branding.
We also contributed to the awesome gift bags given to all Alt attendees. Actually, they weren’t bags at all, but rather metal lunchboxes with a cool Alt magnet on the front. Inside was a bunch of goodies including one of our small gift boxes filled with an assortment of Smock Everyday cards. Big thanks to the Alt team for allowing us to be a part of the fun! We can’t wait for next year.
For lots of discussion and ample recaps on what makes Alt such a cool event, visit the Alt Summit blog.
{Bottom two photos from Alt Summit. All others by Smock.}
Recently featured in Martha Stewart Weddings and showcased on their blog (here and here), we loved working on this stunning summer-inspired custom designed wedding suite with our friends at The Wedding Library. We chose bright and cheerful shades of red and aqua, inspired by a vintage handkerchief with a fun cherry motif. The end creation is bright, elegant and perfect for a summer wedding celebration. We designed and printed letterpress invitations, signage, table numbers, favor tags, and place cards, all perfectly coordinated for the vision of the event and showcasing our Smock Clermont calligraphy font. Another huge thank you to Claudia Hanlin for proposing this fantastic project – it was so much fun and a true honor.
We love these elegant and sweet bridal shower invitations, featuring our cute umbrella motif. Pretty and sophisticated, they are flat offset printed in azalea ink on our luxury bamboo paper.
With the holiday engagement season in full swing, the time to start thinking about fabulous letterpress save the dates to kick of the festivities is drawing near! These awesome save the dates are a custom design from Rugg Road Paper Co. in Boston, featuring our champlain pattern as a letterpress motif. Printed in midnight and sky inks, they also feature sky edge painting for a chic, preppy look that we completely love.
An issue near and near to our hearts, we wanted to spread the word about an incredible effort by PAN North America, one of Smock’s eco partners, to shed light on the devastating effects of pesticides on honeybee colonies and their call for the EPA to take action on this major issue. Why does it matter? Beekeepers face an industry on the verge of collapse, an industry particularly susceptible to the devastating effects of pesticides. With 1/3 of food production reliant on bees for pollination, the collapse of commercial beekeeping would devastate U.S. farmers as well. The time to act is now.
Smock supports PANNA’s admirable environmental efforts through donations via 1% For the Planet, pro bono printing and other partnerships. Just recently we printed a version of our popular Garden letterpress cards for PANNA, which contributors donating $75 or more receive as a special thank you. Wondering how you can get involved, too? Visit PANNA to sign the petition to take a stand with beekeepers and consider giving today. A huge thank you to PANNA for continually inspiring us – bravo!
Recently we had the pleasure of printing these really pretty letterpress bat mitzvah invitations for Dear Emily in Winnetka, Illinois. They are printed on our 1-ply bamboo paper in our Juine design, showcasing soft and elegant sea mist and papaya inks. Sophisticated script paired with Hebrew text make for a fresh and lady-like invitation.
It turns out, we’re suckers for a fabulous letterpress baby announcement around here and lately we’ve been printing a lot of really cool designs to help little ones make a grand entrance. They can be formal or quirky, designed to accommodate a photo (just adhere with double-stick tape) and look particularly awesome when paired with fun customizations like patterned backings, envelope liners and edge painting. Here are a few recent favorites…
Brought to us by Inscriptions on the Boulevard in Fort Worth, Texas, this custom baby announcement features our Ellie motif printed on our seamist bamboo paper in pewter and silver inks. The envelope is lined in our Seneca pattern in pewter.
The Write Image in Salt Lake City sent us this pretty customization of our Kurai design, printed in taupe and shell inks for a soft and feminine letterpress baby announcement.
This baby announcement is a custom design that also serves as a cool letterpress holiday card, printed in pewter and spring green inks. This fun design came to us from Byrd + Bleeker in Fort Worth, Texas.
From Stationer of New Orleans, this girly baby announcement showcases our Juine design in pearl ink.
At long last it’s time to share the winner of our latest Smock Design Contest! This stunning customization of our Kurai letterpress wedding invitation suite came to us from Salutations in Charlotte, North Carolina. The design is printed in sea mist and taupe inks, enclosed in a custom folio featuring our sinclair pattern in taupe on the interior with our signature champlain pattern in sea mist on the exterior. Our special guest judge, Kristen Magee of Paper Crave, shares, “This invitation is ultra elegant, and I love that it’s feminine without being too feminine. The soft florals and script font are delicate, romantic and balance wonderfully with the more straightforward sans serif font and pattern on the pocket fold. The understated color choices are also nicely balanced, making this a design that would appeal to both women and men.”
We can’t thank our friends at Saluations enough for working with us on this incredible design and a huge thank you to Kristen for taking on the difficult task of judging the contest. Stay tuned for our next batch of design contest winners in early 2011!
Once upon a time we shared with you a whole bunch of gorgeous letterpress designs that we recently honored in our Smock Design Contest. Today we’re back with our first runner up! This design is a custom letterpress birthday party invitation based on our Graham design brought to us by Luxe Expressions in Atlanta. They are printed in bright hues of custom deep pink and green and feature our roxen pattern on the back. Created for an 80s theme 40th birthday party, our guest judge Kristen Magee of Paper Crave says, “The vibrant colors and bold pattern make this such a fun invitation, and the “40” emblem graphic gives the invite a bit of a funky edge. The design is versatile and could be used for so many different types of occasions, but I love it as a 40th birthday party invite. The message it sends is, ‘I’m turning 40, I am completely fabulous, and you are going to have an absolute blast at my party!'” We couldn’t agree more.
Today we’re excited to share this lovely custom letterpress wedding invitation design, second runner-up in our latest Smock Design Contest. Brought to us by our good friends at Judy Paulen Designs at Bloomingdale’s, it features a colorful mix of color and pattern that we just adore. The letterpress invitations were printed in mango and espresso inks and the inserts were letterpress printed in slate and espresso inks. All of the pieces were backed in our champlain pattern in mango and the envelopes were lined in champlain printed in reverse, white on mango.
Our special guest judge, Kristen Magee of Paper Crave says of her pick for second runner-up, “This suite oozes class without being staid, and the fantastic color choices and patterns give it a very modern feel. I also love the playfulness of the language on the reply postcard and rehearsal card. But the detail that put this invitation in my top three is the incredible patterned envelope liner. Love it!” Thank you to Kristen for helping us out with the judging and lots of love to Judy Paulen Designs for sending us this beautiful design!