DESCRIPTION Changethethought Business Card CLIENT Changethethought DATE November 2009 DESIGN CREDITS Changethethought: Christopher Cox PRINT CREDITS Foils and Dies TYPE CREDITS Helvetica

QUANTITY PRODUCED 750 PRODUCTION COST $500 PRODUCTION TIME 1 month DIMENSIONS: WIDTH × HEIGHT × DEPTH 3.5 in × 1.75 in PRINT METHOD Letterpress PAPER STOCK 100# Graphite Plike NUMBER OF COLORS 1 holographic foil

How do you translate gradients that render beautifully on screen to print, where it’s not as easy a task? Christopher Cox came up with one solution.

I was aiming for a physical representation of the gradients used on the Changethethought website. A holographic foil with a long wavelength was chosen so the viewer would see as much of a full spectrum of color as possible when holding the cards up to a light source.

Add nice dark paper to that — the irresistible, rubbery Plike (which stands for “Paper-like” — and a simple design that does not compete, rather complements, with the foil, and a beautiful card is to be had. Especially if the printer works extra hard to obtain the level of craft that sets them apart from the rest, testing and retesting until the counters of the letters are kept intact during the process.

A challenge that arose through the process of production was maintaining the bowls within the letterforms when letterpressing smaller type with holographic foil. It was compounded by the fact that the pliable top surface of the plastic-like ‘Plike’ paper is a somewhat difficult paper to work with when letterpressing at smaller font sizes. We had to try several foils and look at the result under different light sources before finally finding what achieved the desired effect. The end result is a kind of luminescent glow that pops against the soft rubber-like black plike paper while maintaining legibility. Originally two foils were chosen for production. To reduce the cost of printing, we decided to use only one foil, and it turned into one of those wonderful happy accidents where through simplification we came out with a better product.