The eerily talented folks up at Fuzzco sent this gem our way last month. Luckily, we had already been creeping on the beautiful site they built for Charleston’s newest fancy seafood & oyster hall: The Ordinary. Needless to say, we were giddy to get started.
One must hold one’s card just so.
Silkscreen printing allows us to print nice, bright colors on nice, dark papers…nice.
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:
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.
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.
Select intern projects will be proudly displayed in the French Sample Room.
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.
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.
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.
We did it! We’ve finally thrown caution to the wind and decided to completely ignore the fact that we’re living in the new millennium! What does that mean you ask? Well, we’ve finally gotten to the point where we’ve shut down all things digital and henceforth will only be offering true boutique printing. Digital printers? Gone. Gang run flyers and promo material – not here anymore. We’re not saying that there’s anything wrong with modern printing methods or the need and/or desire to purchase them – we’re just saying that these products and processes aren’t for us anymore. Ours was a head over heels falling in love sorta thing with letterpress and serigraphy… While the falling happened quickly, it took us over 2 years to ween ourselves off of doing the actual digital processes that once paid our bills after deciding to do so.
Having made the switch, we feel more focused than ever. There’s a power to keeping processes to a minimum. It allows us to put sufficient time into what we love doing while staying the size that we want to be. It’s easier for us to manage a smaller foot print with less moving parts (unless you count all of the moving parts on a press!)
An example of our focused energy can be seen in the redirection of our website. Education, portfolio & connection have become this website’s primary focuses. Through our Tips & FAQ & Paper’s Explained pages, we hope to educate the good people of the design community on the specifics of designing for the processes that we handle – Letterpress & Screen Print. We hope that educating on these old world processes will help bring understanding and therefor breakdown any fear that may exist in the unknown. From there we hope that our portfolio (currently only visible on our quote page), will serve as inspiration for your designs. And then there’s connection. Of course we want to hear from you about working together, but we also want to continually grow our education sections – so please feel free to ask for tutorials to be added on anything relevant to designing for spot color work.
If you are at all interested in Screen Print or Letterpress, please take some time to visit the Tips & FAQ as well as the Paper’s Explained pages. Read them in their entirety. I dare you. If you do, I promise that you will a better designer, more education enthusiast, and/or satiated print nerd upon completion. If you’re not, then you’ll at least be able to tell us why not and what we’re missing. So there’s your invitation. It’s not pressed, but I do hope you take it, read it, and share it.
We had to sit on this print for a while before exposing to the world, as it was for a show at Gallery 1988 – THE ROAD TO SHERMER a tribute to John Hughes – but man were we brimming with anxiousness to show everyone this rad design from the always amazing Derek Deal.
The entire sauce team are giant John Hughes fans, so it just tickled us something crazy to print this poster… Now that the show is open we’re proud to be able to share it with you… Love JH? Get you one here while they last.
Chipboard is a great post-consumer product. Made from recycled scraps, it generally has a brown hue but can also range into the brown/gray arena. The board we use is .30 but we can get thicker stock if requested.
It’s durable, thick, and has the rugged feel of something that is definitely recycled.
3/3 spot with a full wash of blue on one side
3/0 – bright colors aren’t a problem for screen print, not even on chipboard!
1/1 with a really dark navy, just barely off of a black
A close-up of just how opaque white can go down on chipboard when screen printing
Get a quote on something like this here
There’s nothing like having a dark stock instead of laying down the color you want. There’s a real sense of authenticity that is just plain impressive when you see a card with a colored background and it’s the paper, not the ink, that is the color.
Screen printing on your business cards is a great way to do what is impossible for other processes, specially printing light colors on dark paper. White ink is a specific niche that screen printing holds over the less opaque letterpress and offset options. The other option for white on dark would be foil, which is great and has it’s place. Yes we can foil your cards, but the choice between the two is really design specific… Feel free to call us to see which we recommend for your design.
Here are a few screen printed cards on dark stocks to help inspire you for possibilities…
Duplexed to double thick 130# Neenah Epic Black, this card a 3/2 spot. The tone on tone gives the card a ‘spot uv’ feel, even though it’s just gloss ink. This paper is a rich black sheet.
A 1/0 square card on 140# French Black Muscletone, a softer more grainy black paper
Duplexed double thick on French Hot Fudge and Cement Green. 3/2 spot
2/0 spot on 140# French Muscletone Black
1/1 white ink on 130# Neenah Epic Black
A good example of how opaque our white screen print ink is.
Get your print quote here
Here’s a little pictorial journey through the process of screen printing on paper. From burning screens to mixing inks, and registration to racking each sheet – it’s truly a hand done process.
The print featured is for eboy, which is on sale at the poster cause project.
Enjoy.
The other day we shut down early for a very special tour group; the amazing creative staff of Publix Supermarkets.
Since most of us here at the Sauce were kids, we’ve been in love with the Florida-born grocery chain. They lure in the young with free chocolate chip cookies – no doubt the brain child of their genius founder, who could easily pass as the doppelganger for Walt Disney. If you FL people haven’t noticed that before, just check George Jenkin’s portrait in the front of your local Publix. You’ll also notice that 1920′s gentlemen have this cool about them that reigned until slayers like Cary Grant perfected the flow just a few years later.
I’m not going to lie, when Publix reached out about making a visit we were beyond flattered. Austin blushed for sure. We frequently nerd out on their incredible and clean branding, their packaging, and overall rad vibe that just owns here in FL… So needless to say, we were eager to put something special together for them.
As Publix has their own printing facilities that would put most commercial shops to shame, we decided to concentrate on the gaps that we would fill in. Our design aesthetic and unique print processes. We wanted to design something fun that we could print in front of them that they could have and use everyday. Coasters is was!
Enjoy some pics of the day and let’s do something like this together soon, ok?
Sketches from the desk of Brian at Itchy Illustration, he and Austin worked out the design.
Working out Publix’s pantone match
About to burn the white screen
The Publix team gathered around Wagner and Brooks
Loaded up in the letterpress magazine
All done. 2/0 Letterpress, Screen Print, and die cut for a live studio audience
Request a quote for your custom design idea here
Elephant Walk Antiques and Interiors + Mama’s Sauce = super rad screen printed tapestries.
When you start talking about 5 ft screen prints, we have to start thinking creatively around here… i.e. Something that big we have to burn in the sun and then hose out in the parking lot. Check out some pics of the process…
There’s no job too big for the sauce!
Have a crazy idea for printing? Try us here
Clark Orr is a bad boy. That’s all I really have to say.
Check out this 24×36 behemoth that he sent our way to
print for Everygreen Terrace’s 10th anniversary show in
Jacksonville, FL and see if you agree…
