Case study · Business cards · Studio Álvarez Interiors

Getting the stone A out of four colours

The icon was a raster relief — beautiful, and reproducible only as CMYK process. That single fact ruled out foil, letterpress, blind emboss, single-colour signage, embroidery, and anything under about 30 pixels. Getting it out of four colours meant rebuilding it as vector and finding a way to carry the sculptural feeling in one ink.

The Studio Álvarez Interiors card standing on warm bone — the stone A rendered in one ink as relief rules on a soft cotton sheet, with a blank card lying flat behind it.

TechniquesLetterpress, Emboss

The idea

This wasn't a redesign. The mark was right. It was in the wrong format, and the wrong format was quietly deciding what the brand could never do.

Six rules

01Diagnose what the file actually forbids. Trace a vector master from the existing artwork rather than redraw it. The mark stays the mark; only its file format changes.
02Generate every variant from one outline. All five renderings are generated from the same single outline. The bevel is constructed from that outline's own distance field and lit fro…
03Retire the two that describe an edge instead of a mass. Cut both. Kept the flat solid and the simplified silhouette, and developed the fourth idea properly — line weight driven by a light source…
04Let the line weight do the shading. Relief rules. Each rule thickens as it enters shadow and thins as it crosses a lit face, so the weight itself describes the form — the ribb…
05Quantise the shading rather than gradate it. Incised facets — the shading quantised into three flat planes, the way a V-cut inscription resolves into two walls and a top. Hard edges be…
06Keep one version that survives being made in metal. Monumental extrusion — the outline swept back along a fixed axis and closed off. No shading at all; the mass comes from depth. It's the one…

As supplied — CMYK raster compared with Vector master — As supplied — CMYK rasterVector master

Same mark, traced rather than redrawn. Everything downstream — foil, letterpress, blind emboss, signage, embroidery — becomes possible the moment it stops being a raster.

As supplied — full tonal relief compared with Etched — one ink — As supplied — full tonal reliefEtched — one ink

The sculptural feeling carried by line weight instead of by tone. Each rule thickens into shadow and thins across a lit face, so the drawing itself describes the form.

Monochrome seed outline the whole family is generated from — One outline. Every treatment below is generated from it, lit from the upper left.

Macro of the Álvarez stone A on cotton stock — engraved line weight thickening into shadow and thinning across the lit face — One ink, at close range. The weight of the line is the only thing describing the form.

Tonal separation exhibit for the Álvarez mark — Shading quantised into flat planes — hard edges, no gradient.

The finished Studio Álvarez Interiors card lying on warm bone, the stone A printed in a single ink — The mark as it prints — one plate, no process build, nothing to register.

Press notes, per treatment

Relief rules: screen, letterpress, offset, engraving and large format. Minimum 64px / 25mm, and the thinnest rule has to hold 0.3pt at final size.

Incised facets: one spot plus tints, or three solid spots. Minimum 48px / 18mm. Tints screen, so this one is not a letterpress or a foil.

Monumental extrusion: no shading at all, so it's the one device here that survives being printed flat and being cut in aluminium.

Start from these materials

Same paper, foil and finish, locked in — nothing of Studio Álvarez Interiors's artwork comes with it.

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Designed by Austin Terrill, founder.

Getting the stone A out of four colours

The idea

Six rules

Press notes, per treatment

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