Customers often ask where and how Read Between The Lines® products are produced. We love sharing that our greeting cards, notepads and cocktail napkins are all printed right here in Dallas. It's important to me that Read Between The Lines® supports other local businesses as much as possible.
We letterpress print with Sunbelt Letterpress, and do other types of printing (offset and digital) with Allegra - both are located in Dallas, and are wonderful to work with. Each has been in business for decades, is incredibly knowledgeable, dedicated to quality and your happiness, and love working with small businesses. Yay!
Letterpress - this tactile, rooted-in-history tradition of printing, is so filled with care and workmanship. Emails, text messages and social media will likely never match the experience of receiving a letterpress card. Running your fingers over printed words or illustrations stops time for just a moment, and in such a lovely way, connecting you with careful craftsmanship, and the giver of the card.
Once I’ve written expressions for an upcoming collection’s release, our Creative Manager, Jennings, and Graphic Designer, Emily, go to work in sourcing just the right papers and foils to pair with those words. The color and feel of a paper, as well as the choice of foil color affect the way an expression comes across, every time.
We reference what’s happening in design, as well color trends, and meet often with our amazing ’paper partner,’ the family-owned Clampitt Papers of Dallas, to stay in the loop on new and exciting paper collections released by our favorite specialty paper companies.
Jennings and Emily will put together a large board showing the new expressions with their favorite paper and foil combinations, and we all meet as a Team. This informal get-together is exciting and always so much fun, as we all talk through the papers and foils, making small tweaks, until we have the perfect setting for each expression.
Our Team brings so much to the table in terms of reference points, style, and knowledge of our line, products and customers. We’ll often reference conversations with both wholesale and retail customers in this meeting, on our path to finalizing combinations. I want these cards to meet real needs in the marketplace, and be gorgeous on the shelf.
The winning papers and foils (as well as custom copper plates for the printing of each expression) are then ordered by our Operations Director, Lindsay. Within just a couple of weeks, the new cards come to life on humming vintage letterpress machines in the hands of our amazing pressman, Jesus.
I’m a freak for our products being perfect, and you’ll see in this post's video some behind-the-scenes goodness of how a new greeting card is made, including footage of one of our newest friendship cards on press.
Please let me know in the comments, below, what else you’d like to see (or know!) in terms of behind-the-scenes at this small biz.
Thanks so much for your support of Read Between The Lines - it means the world!
xoxo,
- Melinda
