Retro Showprint BBQ Wedding Invitation

A Country Showprint, Printed by Hand

A two-color letterpress wedding suite that borrows the visual language of the classic American showprint: the wood-type-set country music posters and circus broadsides that anchored a hundred years of vernacular print. Olive green and espresso brown are layered run by run on Colorplan China White, a 130 lb uncoated cover stock that takes a generous bite from the type.

Each color was hand-cranked on a 1958 Vandercook #4, a flatbed proof press that prints one impression at a time, the same way the original showprints were made. The texture you can see in the macro shot, the slightly broken edges of the larger letterforms and the subtle variation in ink coverage, is the Vandercook leaving its fingerprint on the work. The suite includes a coordinating RSVP card and trades the formality of a traditional wedding invitation for big typographic personality.