Mandate Cards: Like Moo, but letterpressed
By now, everyone is familiar with Moo cards (if you’re not, go check ‘em out). Those adorable little business cards that you can crank out by the 100, complete with custom shots from your flickr account have become pretty prevalent these days (though I have to admit, I’ve been putting my order off for quite some time now). That might be due, in part, to their lack of competition. Sure, you can order from any of the hundreds of “print shops” online, some of which will even print your cards for free if you don’t mind their logo floating next to yours.
Recently though, we came across what might just prove to be a viable alternative to the bovine route: The Mandate Press. Although they’re a little more expensive (Moo runs about $.20 each for mini cards vs. $.40 per card from TMP), they’re not outside the realm of “affordable”. And, like Moo, TMP’s cards are fully customizable. The difference? The Mandate Press will letterpress your selected design onto your cards, creating a much more tactile custom card.
Not convinced? Have a look at their flickr stream of their work. It’s pretty impressive. So that means that you’re limited to whatever font/image blocks they have on hand, right? Isn’t that how letterpress works? Nope, not so much (not anymore at least). We’ve now entered the Star Trek age of letterpress design. According to their site:
…the age-old letterpress process has benefitted from modern developements made in the printing industry. Digital files and typefaces can be transferred to a photopolymer plate and printed just like lead type. The Mandate Press is a modern letterpress shop. We make all of our plates from digital files; this means we can print any font, ligature and dingbat that you decide to use.
Since I haven’t gotten around to printing Moo cards yet, I might just have to give these guys a shout. Maybe you should too!
