Posted by Olivia dela Rosa on October 23, 2014
With all the printed materials and designs that we have right now, my eyes get pretty tired seeing the same old thing over and over again. There's nothing new in the market and nothing really stands out anymore. Though I don't find this totally wrong, the lack of inspiration is what frustrates me. A good design not only ignites something in you, it also challenges you to seek out and push the limits. It calls you to try and think of something new until you find the perfect design you need.
After searching endlessly throughout the Web, I found comfort after seeing these letterpress cards. Letterpress is basically a printing process that uses a movable type - reversed and raised letters and images made of metal or wood - which is then inked and impressed upon the paper and often with sort of an indentation from the pressure, creating a debossed effect. Its first use is dated back in the 15th century, used widely in printing books back then but has moved to business cards and wedding invitations later on. If you decide to do it yourself, you might find it labor-intensive but once you see the results you might consider the whole thing worth it.
Scroll through to see our thoroughly selected letterpress cards and discover new designs for your next project. Happy exploring!


Happy Notes from Anthropologie

Alexandra Huckabay by Print&Grain


Roar Projects by Principle Design



Bonjour Letterpress Card via Etsy

Letterpress cards by Colorquarry via Etsy




A Little Bird by Belinda Love Lee


Brad Goreski business cards by Sarah Drake Designs

Bon Voyage notecards by Inhaus Press

Letterpress wedding invitations by Minted

Greeting card by Denotecard via Etsy


Wedding invitation by Print & Promise via Etsy

Pinup Art letterpress card by Ink Pop Studio via Etsy

Wright & Goebel by The Working Assembly


Type Letterpress Desk Calendar by iSkelter

Hooray postcard by Parrott Design Studio via Etsy


Wondrous Co. by Mitch Bartlett




Ten Thousand business cards by The Distillery

2011 Holiday Word Search greeting card via Dolcepress
Enjoying so far? If you'd like to see more design inspirations, go and explore the rest of the site. Who knows, you might also end up getting the printing deal of your life with all the discounts we're offering!
Restaurant branding and design idea's
Square business card design examples
Business card dimensions and paper weight
Electronic business cards with NFC technology
Wikipedia: Letterpress
We used Overnightprints for our wedding invitation cards. The marriage was planned for a long time. Our initial plan was to celebrate it with a small circle of friends and family. Just 10 days before the wedding we finally decided to trow a huge party - you only marry once! Needless to say it was stressful to change things in the very last moment. We needed our wedding invitation cards FAST, read the review on overnight prints on this site and decided to use them for printing our invites. Everything turned out wonderful for us: The cards were delivered within 24 hours and the quality was wonderful. Overnight prints - for us - is a company you can count on.
Rating: 5 / 5
Tiny Prints did not deliver my order by the delivery date, even though I paid for super rush delivery. The did not contact me to say anything was holding up my order. The auto message when you call even said they weren't experiencing delays and all orders were being sent on time. Two different Tiny Print reps aid I would get the order the following day. When I called again to question that, because it was the night before the new delivery date and they still hasn't printed yet, they admitted after some questioning that I would not receive the order the next day. I wasted hours creating the invitation on Tiny Prints and now need to start over with someone else because Tiny Prints has false advertising, poor customer service, and claim copyright issues for not sending me the file to go elsewhere.
Rating: 1 / 5
Fist time ive tried vistaprint. They seemed to be a good option for photobooks, spend days creating and now i cannot upload. Been on call with their customers support for almost an hour now. I guess they are cheap for a reson.
Rating: 3 / 5
Snapfish is useless: I ordered graduation invites from their website. A few minutes after i placed the order i realized there was a spelling error, so i tried to contact Snapfish about it. Their Live chat was totally useless, their phone support seems to be outsourced to some third world country. It took me over an hour to finally speak to someone who promised me they would correct the spelling error.
The cards just arrived at my house, and guess what: They did not correct the spelling error! Totally useless!!
Rating: 1 / 5
Im not impressed by Vistaprint at all. Their product pricing is competitive but their shipping prices are extremely high. On top of that it took almost 3 weeks for my order to arrive. Everything looks good and cheap with Vistaprint, but at checkout the negative experience begins. I will never use Vistaprint again.
Rating: 2 / 5