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.

Kwu stopped by for a few days and filmed what we do. Enjoy!

So I’m going to try something that requires a little discipline here… If you follow us on the Twitter and Facebook, you’ve probably seen ‘What’s on Press…’ which is basically a snapshot of whatever we have on press that day. We’re pretty good about keeping up with it and people seem to like it. Well, we print a lot more than we get to share – so each week I’m going to try and collect everything in bulk and put it out there. I really feel lucky to work with all of the wonderful designers who we print for, and hope that sharing the work that goes through our presses will help inspire you to see the possibilities that still exist with traditional print mediums. I’ll be trying to make it a Friday thing – forgive me for jumping the gun a bit early this week! Enjoy this weekly update – and if you want daily’s make sure to follow our FB & Twitter. Both links can be found in the right column of this here blog.

Click to make them big. Enjoy.

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

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 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

So it’s been a few weeks and we’ve finally recovered from Orlando Creative’s First Annual Fishing Tournament…

It was an amazing dusk till dawn affair chock full of wicked sunburns, great logo design, row boats littering creative spaces, and an all around great excuse to work outside… Ever screen print t-shirts on a loading dock before?

Two-man/woman boats. No motors. 2 paddles and 4 lakes. Catch and release. It was a dusk to dawn affair that we co-hosted with the oh so rad Fiction.

As is it was a gathering for/by creatives – we had to have a stellar logo. If the logo caught your eye, know that it was illustrated by the super rad Brian Boesch of Itchy Illustration. Type treatment by our very own Austin Petito.

Brian takes up residence at the sauce in his very own cubicle. You know all of the Colt 45 you drink? Yeah, he did the mustang rearing up on the side of that ice cold can of goodness. No big deal.

Next years tourney promises to be even bigger and much badder. If you’re an Orlando creative – make sure you’re on our list to get the invite. Perhaps the best way would be to befriend the tourney on Facebook.

Keep Fishin’
The Sauce Boss.

Have your t-shirts printed here.