Posts By: Thermofast

800gsm At Home Cards

800gsm At Home Cards

800gsm At Home Cards

Please look through our sample at home card designs for you to choose from, or of course you can design your own or send us your print ready artwork.

At home cards can be supplied in white, off white or cream as standard 400gsm or as thick as you wish. Matching envelopes also available.

Thermofast can now offer a duplexing service for invitations, business cards or any at home or correspondence cards, this means we print on 400gsm board and then duplex it to achieve a really thick finished product of a 800gsm board! You can also have a bevelled edge square or round corners with a gilt edge in either gold or silver for a really professional high quality finished product.

 

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Designers Best Friend

Designers Best Friend

Designers love us – they can’t get enough of our raised print invitations, our ability to print on card up to 800gsm thick, the physical feel of thermo printing. The ability to offer their clients something a little different, these double-thickness invitation cards combined with great design and thermo is quite unique and memorable. Most of all though, they love our trade rates and the fast turn-around we offer, which enable us to be the conduit between them and their client.

Thermo Trade printing thermofast

Raised letter printing can add dimension and texture to their printed stationery and folder projects – also known as thermography printing, to elevate the appearance of printed pieces. Sometimes confused with more expensive engraving, thermography is a special printing process with unique advantages. The process of thermography printing involves a powder that is added to the wet ink printed on paper stock. After removing the excess powder, the printed piece is heated and the powder and ink mixture dries to form a raised effect on paper.

Thermography can be combined with other printing processes, such as offset, foil embossing or lithography – all of which we do. It is typically used with one or two standard PMS colours, but is also available with full colour.  Raised printing produces the look and feel of a higher-end engraved product, but at a fraction of the cost.

For pieces that will be used in office printers or copies, like letterheading, we use “laser safe” thermography to ensure that raised ink does not melt under the heat of these devices. Thermofast’s thermography process is a special heat-resistant application designed to withstand the high temperatures of laser printers and copiers without melting, smearing or distorting colour.

As a note to graphic designers – thermography can be used only on one side of the paper. Raised printing shouldn’t be used over a fold or close to the edges of the paper, as the raised ink tends to fracture when folded.

To receive samples from us get in touch or drop us a line to discuss opening a trade account with Thermofast By the way, the relationship’s not just one-sided, we love designers too, we just don’t have the arty beard’s 😀

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Raised Ink Stationery

Raised Ink Stationery

Your wedding is a day that you will remember for the rest of your life and as reminders, many couples keep a number of items from their wedding that will bring back happy memories of their special day; invitations are an element that are always kept. Beautifully designed, raised ink wedding invitations printed in thermography will be guaranteed to be kept for a lifetime.

Thermofast Wedding Guide Stationery 546

Of course, there is no right or wrong (despite what the bridal magazines tell you) of what a complete wedding stationery set should contain. It’s down to your individual requirements, your budget and how much you want to keep people informed. There is no right or wrong and you may decide to only have wedding invites and nothing more, or you may decide to go the whole hog and get a complete set.

The receipt of a beautiful wedding invitation will always be placed on the mantelpiece or indeed, the kitchen pin board. Your event will be looked forward to with a greater sense of excitement and anticipation, perhaps even precipitating a swifter RSVP, but the initial sense of excitement is always enhanced by fabulous presentation.

Thermofast Foil Blocking Suffolk Weddings

On every wedding day there is a heady mix nerves, excitement and happiness, to ensure that everything runs smoothly your guests will need to be given plenty of information in advance to allow them to make their plans.  It is therefore vital that within your wedding invitation you also include information such as where to stay, where to park, if children are welcome and all the of other questions than need answers. We have made invitations for thousands of weddings and we will be delighted to use that experience to help yours run perfectly.

The Wedding Stationery Guide

Wedding stationery is n essential aspect of any wedding and one that needs to be given careful thought and planning. Things have changed since the days of when a simple wedding invite was enough. Our most common print runs in our Suffolk factory are Engagement Announcements, Save The Date cards, RSVP cards, Wedding information sheets; Hotel Guides and reccomendations, Order of Service books, Thanks You cards. Thermography replicates the look of engraving at a much more affordable cost. Thermography’s special ink creates raised letters, though the type may be slightly shiny. This process leaves no impression on the back of the paper. Offset, most common for everyday use, leaves a flat surface and is dull and boring by comparison.

Cotton paper compliments raised type beautifully, but wood paper’s variety of colors and weights can accommodate any style. The most formal invitations use a side fold, and the single panel card, once considered less formal, is now completely accepted.

Save The Date Cards

These are basically cards that are sent way in advance of the actual wedding to give people plenty of notice of the actual wedding date. It helps your guests to literally ‘save the date’ and plan their diaries. These cards came about because traditionally, wedding invitations are sent out around 6-8 weeks prior to the date. In these modern times, many people will have prior commitments scheduled and may be unavailable on your chosen date. Likewise, if you are planning on getting married during a busy period like during the holiday season, then giving your guests as much prior notification is important. Save the Dates will allow you to inform your potential guests many months in advance of the invite being sent out.

Wedding Invitations

These are the actual ‘formal’ invitations, inviting your guests to your wedding day. They typically contain the date, time and location of the actual event. We have hundreds of samples and can guide you on design, or layout & typeset them for you. We love typography and the physical layout, type choice and size are important, raised ink invitations are lush, but comic sans isn’t the most natural bedfellow when creating truly stunning stationery!

Normally most bride & grooms have a two tier approach with invitations and guests will be invited to attend the whole event whilst others will be invited to the evening celebrations only. As such we often print two sets of wedding evening invitation cards for this very purpose. Your thermographic wedding invitations can be printed in any size you require, but A6, A5 and A4 (folded) are common – as are the round cornered gilt or plain edged cards that come in old-school inch measurements, 6×4″, 7×5″ we can provide envelopes to match any size. Thermographic wedding invitations can be printed in any pantone colour that you wish to have and up to four colours can be printed in thermography.

Cotton Fibre Paper, the traditional standard for wedding invitations, has a soft, rich look and feel. It comes in white or ecru (ivory) of varying weights (thickness), we can go up to 400gsm. In addition to looking and feeling more luxurious than wood paper, cotton is a good ecological choice that stands the test of time. Cotton is a renewable resource, and does not yellow with age. Wood Fiber Paper, most common in everyday use and extremely versatile, can be made in a variety of colors and weights. Recycled paper makes a wonderful environmental statement, and alternative fibre papers can accent less-conventional, informal weddings.

RSVP Cards

With most wedding invitations they generally contain the wording “RSVP by….” This basically prompts your guests to confirm whether they will be able to attend or not by a specific date. Planning a wedding is a huge affair (as you possibly are aware of you are reading our blog post) and knowing how many confirmed guests you can expect to your day will greatly help you to plan and budget more accurately. If some cannot attend, then it may give other guests the opportunity to attend in their stead. Knowing accurate numbers is essential, if nothing else for printing estimates.

In reality, whilst many will reply to your invitation in good time, there will be many who will forget to RSVP or they inform you late. It can be a bit of a planning nightmare so anything that helps your guests confirm their attendance is only a good thing and this is where RSVP cards come in. You can obviously list email as a contact preference, but if you design them yourself, do remember to list out the email address legibly, not in capitals in a script font, as nobody can read them. Mobile numbers are more common today also, and landlines also, not everyone will write back to you, despite the trouble you go to invite them, again it requires planning and chasing, but raised ink stationery does set a tone that instills a sense of gravitas to an occasion.

Order of Service Books

These are basically cards that outline a programme of the days events and are used in most weddings. What will happen when and where, the timings and any other useful information required for the day can be printed onto the Order of Service cards. It always helps to let your guests know where they should be at a given point in time! This piece of literature is the most kept and treasured by guests, often, sadly the invitation isn’t, but because there’s often so much personal  information listed in Order of Service books, readings, hymn or music choices, personal vows etc. Again great presentation makes the difference, and we often print the outer covers in thermo and flat print the insides, there are some great binding options too, stunning cord tassles for instance looks so much nicer than staples and can be accessorised with flowers or something personal to the couple.

Wedding Thank You Cards

Finally, once you are finally married and have enjoyed your honeymoon, it’s not quite over yet. It is traditional to send a thank you card to your guests, showing your appreciation for them sharing your day and to thank them for any gifts they might have given.

These are generally hand-written to make them more personal and are lovely to receive as a guest, often we just print the newly married ‘s names at the head of some individual stationery and they can act as correspondance cards for their new life together well after the event. Get in touch with us here to receive printed samples, or just a call back for a quote.

 

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Business Card Design Tips

Business Card Design Tips

We do raised print business cards for hundreds of private individuals and professional services in a month, in the last week – we’ve produced thermo printed cards for a photographer, two law firms, an accountancy company, three designers, an architects practice, a group of dentists and one flying doctor! Our cards can be printed in any Pantone colour that you can think of, there’s 2,058 by the way – and on any any card thickness up to 400gsm. If you require more than two colours, we can print a third and fourth colour if the registration is not overly tight.

Business cards can also be printed in thermography in our Suffolk print factory on front and litho (flat printing) on reverse, alternatively you could have thermography on both sides. Thermo business cards are tactile, beautiful pieces of communication, therefore full colour photographs or all over solids will not work! They are suited for line work, and small solids, logos etc.

We are happy to take your artwork at Thermofast, we prefer to accept either QuarkXpress files, InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop – or you can obviously save as a PDF, we can normally sort it from there.

Tips for submitting artwork

  1. Make sure you’ve added in the ‘bleed’ in your design, filling this area with any background colours or images. Ensure all important parts of your design are kept within the safe area, inside these perameters.
  2. Where possible designs featuring graphics or text should be submitted as vector based PDFs. To keep your text in vector format, we recommend applications like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign and more recent versions of Adobe Photoshop. Please note, saving text in JPEG format could result in ‘fuzzy’ edges.
  3. Make sure you pre-flight your PDFs using the ‘Adobe PDF/X-1a’ preset. This option can be found in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign and more recent versions of Adobe Photoshop.
Thermography Business Cards

Best Business Card font?
It’s best to choose up to 2 fonts for your business card, one for the business name and other for the information details, see a rough guide to our fonts here. Always make sure that the information detail is in an easy to ready typeface, and isn’t too small, around 5-6 point is the smallest you want to go. Sans serif fonts will always look more modern, Ie Arial, Helvetica etc. Serif typefaces, Times, Garamond etc are also good for adding some gravitas to a card. The rule is there is no rule, but do remember to include wacky typefaces (if you use them) with your artwork.

Business Card Designs
Decide on the design of your business card by your profession, make them fit for purpose. If you’re a wacky design company obviously you can go with something more edgy and abstract, if you’re an accountant or lawyer, a minimalist design would suit more. If you have minimal design skills, do stick to your day job and let us do it for you, as a guide, if you find yourself searching the internet for clipart, we ought to design them for you 😉

Colour Guide
Decide on what type of colour scheme is most appropriate to the profession you are in. A colourful business card could reflect a graphic design function, whilst a minimalist colour scheme could more appropriately suit a legal firm. Choosing the right colour scheme by your profession will help with attracting the right clients.

Thermo Business Card Price Guide
Our thermography prices start at just £49 for 250 cards, colour from just £53, All stationery can be printed thermographically raised print, or flat printed if required. Take a look here for more information on ordering cards, or at our main site Thermofast

 

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Wedding Stationery Guide

Wedding Stationery GuideWedding Stationery Guide

Your invitations or indeed ‘save the date’ cards will often be the first insight into your wedding day that your guests receive. They’re hugely important for setting the tone for your big day – thermographic print sets the tone for the whole event.

Our use of thermo print in any one of 2,058 new solid colours to choose from in the Pantone range, it’s a fairly safe bet, Thermofast can match your dress or theme colour palette.

It’s a great idea to embrace the season of your wedding and this of course can be reflected in your stationery. This can start from the moment your guests receive their invitations and continue throughout the day with matching on-the-day stationery. This can also co-ordinate with your chosen flowers, bridesmaid dresses and other decorations.

Wedding Stationery Items to consider – Save the day cards, invitations, reply cards, order of service booklets, table plans, menu’s, place cards & thank you cards can all be printed to your exact specifications.

Printing – All stationery can be printed thermographically raised print, flat printed for graphics and logos and foil embossed for that extra luxury feel.

Materials – We hold a vast amount of material in stock, from white, off white, cream & oyster, in laid & wove finishes, and any hand-made paper materials that you require can be sourced with matching envelopes. We can also supply round cornered gilt edge cards, printed on anything up to 800gsm..

Sizing – We can print any size for your thermographic or flat print wedding stationery that you require, remember that you have to get it in the post though, we can also supply hand-made envelopes.

Colours – We can print in all colours or shade.

Type faces – Click here for a sample of most popular typefaces, but we have hundreds more to choose from if you require a specific font.

Easy step-by-step way to order…

• Place order (artwork supplied, or let us design it for you)
• Approve proofs, materials & colours
• Pay for order
• Receive goods within 4/5 days – Its really that easy!

Please see link for some examples.

Choosing the right colours and style of stationery for your season can really bring your theme together. Try to take inspiration from your venue and other aspects of your day.

 

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Make it thick, & shiny…!

Make it thick, & shiny…!Foil Block lettering in Suffolk

We’ve been listening to you, all the good stuff anyway. Thermofast have been doing some research into making our thickest card, err thicker. Our best selling 400gsm weight cardboard invitations that we use for At Home Cards, Event Invitations and Wedding Stationery, is normally weighty enough. But our R&D people, well person, has developed a whopping 800gsm card, finished in matt or smooth ivory board that we can print onto, making it a lethal weapon in the right hands. We can round-corner, hand paint the edges, scent it, gift wrap, send as a gift to a loved one and print double sided using multiple Pantone colours.

If you’d like to see samples of the card, please fill in our sample request form and we’ll stick some free examples in the post today. But our new products don’t stop there… we are now, after many requests from those lovely Bridal Blogs out there offering a new Foil Blocking service to complement the thermographic printing. Thermofast have foils in Gold, Silver, Red, Green but if you need another specific block foiling request, we can pretty much match, or contrast to your palette.

Obviously it’s not just the blushing brides who want embossing, many of clients are Architects, Solicitors, and professional services (and artisans) who care about and appreciate quality stationery, if you’ve not seen blind-embossing, that is raised printing, but no ink, it really is quite tactile, call us on Tel: 01787 880 268 to discuss. At Thermofast, you talk, we listen. Obviously at home though we still have selective hearing 😉

 

 

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Round Edged Business Cards

If you want a business card that really stands out amongst the crowd, then we have the product for you! Printed on our standard 330gsm or 400gsm board – our raised ink business cards are far superior quality than a plain business card, with the raised text you are getting a real quality product for both look and feel. Raised Ink business cards or Thermography, are just what you need, they give that little extra feel and quality when you hand out your business cards to your clients or friends.

We can print in up to 4 colours in thermography on the front and the reverse of your cards on a 330 or 400gsm board, will impress your clients or family when you hand them out, and all for not a lot more cost than a standard business card!  If you require a specific board we hold many types in stock, plain cotton board, textured Conqueror card, etc.

round edged business cards thermofastblog thermofast sudbury, raised printing in essex, wedding stationery

Call us for for further details, business cards in single colour, printed in thermo start from as little as £49.00 for 250 cards, round cornering is extra, but not much, call us on 01787 880268 for a specific quote. No Artwork? No problem, we can do that too. Email us at sales@thermofast.co.uk

 

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Thermography explained…

Thermography explained…

Our production process can sometimes be a little baffling to people trying to understand the various print techniques, so we created a home movie of some business cards being printed at our factory – see here (link may take a few seconds to load on YouTube). Whilst it’s not possibly going to be shortlisted for the Golden Globe this year, it might show you how our presses ‘roll’ here in Sudbury, Suffolk.

Thermofast Sudbury

Thermographic Printing Explained

We can thermographically print on any card or paper stock, up to 400gsm standard or even using uber thick 700gsm by applying double weight card, this can also be used as a blunt instrument! We can use laser-printer proof inks also to guarantee no ‘peel off’ when using with desktop or digital printers.

Thermographic printing is a multi-stage process. First, a printed paper drops off the printing press onto a conveyor. The conveyor moves the sticky ink underneath the thermography powder which is shaken on top of the entire sheet. The powder attaches to the wet ink. The extra powder is then vacuumed up and stored for re-use. Next, the coated sheet passes through an oven with temperatures ranging from 900 to 1300 degrees Fahrenheit.

Laser-safe results in thermography combines a specially formulated powder with an ultraviolet light used to harden or cure the raised stationery so it won’t re-melt.This can take place on an in-line machine or the conveyor of the thermography machine combined with a retrofit unit. This is the most productive and cost effective procedure and produces a smoother finish on fine lines of type, almost resembling genuine copper plate engraving.

Our process allows up to four pantone colours to be applied in thermography, and gives your invitations a touch of class with the round corner gilt edged cards and the thermography together – you can be sure to create the right impression for your event with thermo-printed, hand finished gilt edged cards. We pride ourself on the quality of our work and your event deserves the best.

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Pantone & Warhol 2013 Calendars

Pantone 2013 warhol calendar

Had to share these images of two new 2013 Calendars from Design legends Pentagram – (the world’s largest independent design consultancy). Published by Abrams, both calendars come in wall and engagement editions that will brighten your workspace or home all year long. Pantone also famously forecasts an official “color” for this year—Emerald 17-5641 is the color of 2013—and the calendar similarly selects a color for each month, represented in the images as well as in playful taglines like “Tickled Pink” and “Mellow Yellow.” The grid of the wall calendar looks like a series of Pantone color chips, with the days of the month ranging through the shades of the featured color.

The Art of Andy Warhol calendar is one of Abrams’s most popular, and 2013 is the third year running Pentagram have designed the title. Authorised by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the calendar includes a mix of Pop artist’s unknown, rarely seen works with his more iconic images. This year’s edition centers on Warhol’s prints, with a focus on his more hedonistic, sensual subjects. The works have been chosen to thematically correspond with the months and their holidays: Skull appears with October, for instance; Pointsettias is December’s image.

Certainly beats our standard traditonal Thermofast Calendar; which normally has a plethora of skin tone shades in the form of partly dressed young ladies! If you’d like to see a thermo sample of the 2013 Pantone Colour of the Year, Emerald 17-5641, please email us with your address  at sales@thermofast.co.uk and we’ll get you some samples in the post. Our turn around for business cards can be a little as 2/3 days and cost from just £49.00 for 250 cards in single colour thermography.

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Bespoke & Stunning Invitations, from £52

Bespoke & Stunning Invitations, from £52Beautiful printing by experts

 

We have created some memorable and compelling thermo printed invitations over the course of the the last 12 months at Thermofast. From simple folded cards or just a single sheet, to double thickness 700gsm bespoke boards, bench-finished with hand painted edges. Thermography adds that extra touch of class to an invite, when they are received they immediately exude a high quality product that are both aesthetic and tactile. Thermographic printing is a practical and cheaper alternative to engraving (copperplate printing) but still versatile enough to let your design ideas be made into a finished product. See some of our finished examples here.

Your thermographic invitations can be printed in any size you require, from business card sizes to A3+ thermographic invitations are traditionally printed in black, but we can print in any pantone colour that you wish to have up to four colours can be printed thermographically. The standard board is a good quality white ivory 330 gsm; however, we can print on board up to 400gsm. We do hold a good range of Conqueror card available in many shades and colours, and can obtain and print on any card that you wish. Alternatively you can supply your own material for us to print on. Matching envelopes can be supplied. As a guide price, we can produce as little as just 100 beautifully crafted, bespoke Thermo invitations from £52, + delivery to anywhere in the UK, including artwork.

If you wish, we can set up and supply your artwork for you to your specifications for your thermographic (raised) printing or alternatively you can supply artwork in a pdf format, “QuarkXpress” or “In Design” for us to use. For that extra special thermographic invitation please see our gilt edged card page here.

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