Since about a year ago (when I was still in design school) I’ve been making my own business cards. The current drill is to print a sheet of cards out at Kinko’s, on card stock (their thickest paper) then spraymount that sheet to a piece of canson card stock paper, in a nice color. A few dozen cuts later and I have my cards. The resulting card is nice and thick, white on one side with black Univers text, and red on the other side. It’s also a tad narrower than the normal business cards.
Cut to the chase- I would like these printed for me, but don’t know where to look. I am in Manhattan and really am looking for quality, someplace that can duplicate exactly what I have now, with maybe a little debossing. Any thoughts?
for truely thick cards with a nice debossed finish and look you should check into letterpress. its the old way that printing presses used to work, with each impression done one at a time.
its not cheap, but produces a result that you can immediately feel is superior to offset and far beyond anything cheap and digital like kinkos. also a good process for lower volumes where the setup costs will kill you for offset.
i dont specifically know any letterpress shops in NYC, but im sure if you google it (new york + letterpress), you’ll find some. i did a quick search and came up with lots of hits.
I know there are paper-stocks out there with white on one side, color on the other. Find a good letterpress vendor!
I had mine done by a guy in San Fran. He used watercolor paper because it’s thick and embosses really well. I’m really happy with the result, which you can find on this thread: Business Cards
duplex papers (different colors) are available, but some friends of mine DID just get cards made that used a fabric laminated to a cardstock … after printing but before cutting, similar to what you did with your Kinko’s cards. the result is very impressive.