PLACING AN ORDER

What is your turnaround time for business cards?

• We print your card within 20 working days. We dispatch it via a fully insured DHL service or as letter with shipment tracking and delivery is estimated to take no more than two working days within Germany. We send you a mail with the tracking number, which allows you to track your parcel online.

What are the shipping costs?

• We use parcel dispatch for your personalized cards and all objects (because it is insured up to 500 Euro) for 4,99 Euro within Germany. The shipping costs for all other EU countries is 13.99 Euro, to Switzerland 29.90 Euro to the US 34.99 Euro. All other cards are send as letter with shipment tracking. The shipping costs are 1.45 Euro (plus prio lable for tracking) within Germany and 3.70 within all other countries.

How do I pay for my business cards?

• For personalized cards we accept payment via bank transfer only with all transfer fees payable by the client. All other products can also be payed by Paypal.

I have run out of cards – can I re-order more?

• All the characters in the typeset can only be used once. Due to the finite number, we could never create new typesets for any other clients if we kept your typeset indefinitely. You can order your card again, as long as we still offer the design you chose. The time and effort (and the price) for the typesetting and printing of any further batches of your card is the same as for the first time.

Can I pick up my cards?

• Every first Thursday of the month our workshop is open in the afternoon from one to five. During this time you can buy our products analog. Personalized cards must be ordered in advance through the website. If you would like to pick up these cards, please contact us by mail (info@more-impression.com) or phone during our office hours on Thursdays from nine to twelve (0341 9273 6008).

QUESTIONS REGARDING TYPESETTING AND PRINTING TECHNIQUES

Why isn’t there a @-character?

• None of our lead types contain any @-character. It is possible to make a bespoke casting of the type. For now we have to accept that the type is missing, just as we accept the finite amount of characters in our archive. For example we are not able to supply all characters for every language (such limitiations also exist in the digital realm). There are various nice ways to represent this character anyhow, for examble:[at] or AT. The character @ (originally latin) originated long before the email and twitter. It appeared as a lead type in the form of commercial at in mercantile calculations: for example 5 tons of coal @ $10. Theoretically it should be part of our mathematical set, alas to date it has not been found.

Can I send a PDF for printing?

• No, this is not possible with our technique. It is possible to work with so called clichés (also called sterotypes) – a kind of stamp made from the digital prototype. However, we work exclusively with the inventory of movable characters we have available in our workshop library. We love every character’s individuality and the fact it has to physically appear to make certain words or fonts. The manual typesetting of printed matter with lead characters gives texts the tangible sensory quality they emanated for the past five centuries.

Can I choose other colours or fonts?

• Our offer is not a pick-and-mix. Every design is conceptualised in advance by us. Colour, paper, font and size are matched to maximise quality output.

Why can’t I choose any other edition size?

• After hand-set lettering is unlocked it is required for a fresh chase in different designs. Further, every individual type can be used for printing no more than 20,000 times, relative to paper quality and handling. So we work with finite material, utilising deadstock material, which cannot easily be sourced. For larger editions we recommend offset-print or Galvano-type. Our business cards are collector’s items and not mass-produced.

Do I have to insert hyphens or will my textflow be automatically cut?

• Wrap-around textflow is not possible with hand-set lettering. The line ist the smallest typesetting unit. Every line is set type by type and space by space. Spaces and line spacing are also materials, albeit blindprinted. Spaces carry the same weight as types. For the input on the website we assumed an average measurement standard for the amount of type used per line. Finished lines are locked into the chase.

Which presses does More Impression use?

• The majority of our work is printed on a Vandercook proof press from Chicago, Illinois. We also own a century old embossing press manufactured by Krause in Leipzig and a Adana tabletop platen press, which we don’t use very often. We would love to add a Gally platen printing press to our machine pool, any hints and offers to: info@more-impression.com

What type of fonts does More Impression offer? Can I order font samples?

• We own 41 fonts, some of which as multiples and in various font sizes. We are currently working on establishing a font sample library. With approximately 100 type cases this can take a while. Therefore we don’t send out samples at present. You can get an impression of our beginning font library on Instagram: #MOREschrift, in our design overview as well as in our archive.

Which colours do you use for printing? How many colours are possible?

• We print with shiny solid colours (Pantone and HKS) and mix every colour by hand, bespoke for each individual print order.

Can you print white characters on black paper?

• For a high quality solid appearance of white colour on a black surface the appropriate techniques would be screenprint or the offline hot-foil stamping process. Our colours on the other hand never appear fully opaque. Light colours do not appear as highlight on darker colours but mix with them to a new shade entirely. Metallic colours are exceptions. We can also apply pigments on the wet colour medium.

MEDIUM RELATED QUESTIONS

What are Bézier curves?

Is lead toxic?

Why isn’t there a preview?

DESIGN QUESTIONS

Why can’t I design my own card?

• We are trained graphic designers and we pre-select workable design options. We offer you the freedom of not having to rifle through every set of fonts, consider endless colourmixes and compare papers by touch, but to know and trust that someone does all that for you. We invite you to take us up on this offer.

Why are some designs sold out?

PERSONAL QUESTIONS

None of the designs fits my purpose. Can I have something more personal?

• With More Impression we provide a changing but limited offer. For jobs beyond this scope please write to info@more-impression.com and we will send you an offer.

I’ve found old lead setting material. Can I hand them over to More Impression?

Why are 3 questionmarks just not cool?

Unresolved questions and new solutions to: info@more-impression.com