Why is letterpress expensive?
Letterpress printing is a handcrafted process that takes years of dedicated work to master; by the time you’re actually ordering your project, it’s in the hands of an experienced artisan dedicated to providing you with the best possible printed materials. The equipment is, now, extremely rare and expensive to procure and move from location to location. Additionally, all letterpress projects have fixed costs, including materials, and, for each color printed, a press setup, a print run, and a press cleanup.
What materials costs are involved in a letterpress project?
The specifics of course will vary from project to project, but generally they involve the following:
- Plates: Every letterpress job requires a plate or series of plates. This is a fixed cost, which means that you’ll only be charged once for your plates. For one-time jobs like invitations, we’ll only need your plates once; for multiple-order jobs (business cards, for example), we can reuse plates many times over (providing that your artwork remains the same by the time you reorder).
- Paper: Paper costs vary widely depending on the type and quality of the paper. Coverstock, packaging papers, handmade papers and natural fiber (non-tree-based) papers are all more expensive than off-the-shelf commercial papers.
- Ink: We mix the majority of the custom Pantone ink colors we print with. Metallic and fluorescent inks are more expensive than normal mixing inks.
- Finishing materials: These can include cutting dies, perforation rules, eyelets, binding thread, and many more… again, depending on the specifics of your project.
How much do letterpress business cards cost?
Every job is unique and will have costs specific to your needs. Plates, which can be reused in the future for reorders, are charged to a job on the first order. As a ballpark, for 500 single-color, single-sided business cards, pricing starts at around $275 + plates, paper & shipping to your location.
How much do letterpress invitations cost?
Every job is unique and will have costs specific to your needs. As a ballpark, “standard” invitation pricing with no custom design or extras (4-piece suite: invite, rsvp, outer envelope, reply envelope) starts at approximately $800 + plates, paper & shipping to your location. Printing just the invitation with no extra pieces would of course cost less; please inquire with your specific needs and we’ll work up an estimate for you.
What factors affect letterpress pricing?
- Quantity
- Number of colors
- Number of pieces (example: Invite/Outer Env/Reply Card/Reply Env)
- Size
- Versions (example: Business cards for 4 employees)
- Bleeds required?
- Floods / large solids? Reversed type or artwork?
- Specialty inks (metallic & fluorescent)
- Single-sided vs. double-sided printing
- Paper type & quality
- Finishing (Diecutting / Scoring / Perforation / Saddlestitching / Coil binding)
- Desired delivery date