We are feverishly elated to announce that the Mama’s Sauce Internship Program is now officially sponsored by French Paper Co.

No one shares our awkwardly intense enthusiasm for inspiring young print designers more than the fine folks at French. Together, we aim to build a program that introduces aspiring print designers to the world of spot color in a unique and hands-on sorta way.

Here’s a rundown of our new & improved educational gauntlet for Spring 2013:

French Paper Treasure Chest:

The kindly souls over at French Paper Co. will be supplying Mama’s interns with an arsenal of inspiring goods that are essential for any aspiring spot color print designer / paper geek.

Spot Color Seminar:

Learn a bit about the ins & outs of designing for spot color printing and demonstrate that learning by designing and printing a screen printed project.

French Sample Room:

Select intern projects will be proudly displayed in the French Sample Room.

Guest Professor:

Spring 2013 interns will have their portfolios personally reviewed by this semester’s Guest Professor: James White of Signalnoise Studio. This is a golden opportunity to hear a Canadian accent in a professional setting.

Hard work:

The only way to learn how to look at print is to look at print. A lot. We instill our obsession with quality in our interns by teaching them to check every single print that comes off press. Every printer at Mama’s Sauce got their start in quality control and it’s the only reason they can print the way they do.

Press Time:

Get to know letterpress and silkscreen printing by getting all up in the business of our presses. Learn to oil them, clean them, and help our pressmen run them.

The internships are unpaid, but we’ll happily work with your educational institution so that your work here is rewarded with credit. If you are not a student, don’t be afraid to throw your name in the hat!

If this sounds like something that makes you want to pee your pants, don’t fight that feeling. Click here to apply.

Here’s a little process we’ve been working on perfecting and wanted to share… Full wash letterpress cards.

SEE: The new incarnation of the Mama’s Sauce Business Card.
1-color black letterpress on 110# Florescent White Lettra duplexed to 140# Black Muscletone.

When you give the negative space in your design some room to breathe, surround it with enough coverage, and then build just the right counter you can really make a pillowy fluff that’s somewhat like a hybrid emboss.

All of the white type is knocked out from the plate, which affords us the chance to put as much ink on the plate as we want. That coupled with just the right impression allows us to get near 100% opacity on the color wash and create an inverted effect from the standard letterpress deboss. Had there been positive text along with the knockout, it wouldn’t be possible to get quality results on just one plate, as positive type can’t be slathered with ink. Why can’t we put as much ink on positive type as we do with knocked out? Science. We don’t know the science. It just is.

Lesson to take from this: Big color washes belong on their own plates. You can knock type or imagery out of that plate/color and not affect opacity much, but don’t even think about adding in positive area text or imagery on that plate/color unless you’re willing to either sacrifice opacity overall or severely bleed out the positive images… Want solid washes and good clean positive type on the same color? Then be prepared to pay to plate the two separately. There’s no wrong way to do it, I mean shoot, there’s something to be said for lowering the opacity on certain wash areas… We just want you to be prepared and in the know.

Signed,

-J. Walter Weatherman