One sweet husband recently requested a custom stationery design for his wife, Liz. The catch: he knows her well enough to know better than to choose a design for her. The solution: LLB Designs developed two brightly colored designs with unique florals and clean edges. Each was mocked-up on a magazine-style spread complete with font, size, shape and envelope options, to be printed out and presented on the lucky gal’s birthday. Option one:...

Is your company young and stylish?  Buttoned up and professional?  So trendy it hurts?  So classic that it’s got its collar popped and a sweater tied around its neck? Personality is such an important part of any brand, and this is particularly true for young companies that need to get a lot of mileage from everything they do. The logo, fonts and colors should all be created to portray the company’s voice, and then used...

Without a doubt, the number one rule when designing an invitation or a direct mail piece is to start with the envelope size and shape. Many a sad first-time designer has designed and printed a gorgeous piece only to find out that it’s a non-standard size and that matching envelopes just don’t exist. And as having custom envelopes made is crazy expensive, this is a problem to avoid at all costs! Fortunately it’s a lesson quickly learned...

Scoring is another paper-centric word that pops up pretty often. Scoring is simply the process of adding a crease to a sheet of paper or cardstock so that it folds more easily. There are simple, inexpensive hand-held tools made for scoring and then there are also machines (around the size of a paper cutter) that take on larger jobs with less elbow grease. Adding the crease helps to keep the paper and ink from cracking, giving the piece a...

Often one of the first questions a designer will ask when discussing a new project is “Do you want the piece to bleed?” Huh? Paper can bleed? Should it bleed? The answer is yes! And maybe. Bleeds simply refer to the ink or printing running (aka bleeding) all the way to the edge, rather than leaving a thin white border. Most printing machines can’t print all the way to the edge of a sheet of paper (although the technology is getting...