How do you handle cut-through, or just etch it?

A cut-through is the loudest move metal offers and the most fragile. Every void is a place the card can bend. Cut-through only where the void is a closed shape with support on all sides, a counter, a ring, a lobe. Anything cantilevered gets etched instead.

How do you handle enamel where the brand has a colour?

Ink on bare metal sits on top and scratches off. There is no tooth to hold it. Recessed etch filled with baked enamel, so the colour sits below the metal surface and the card can live in a wallet. Etch alone for anything monochrome.

How do you handle break the mirror?

A full mirror card reflects the room, and small type disappears into whatever is standing in front of it. Duplexed mirror-to-matte and mirror-to-brushed panels, so the type always sits on a surface that holds still while the mirror does the showing off.

Design exercise · Business cards · Print Peppermint

Forty-one ways to cut steel.

An exercise across metal card construction: what the substrate does, where a cut-through helps, when enamel beats etch, and how to keep a mirror finish from swallowing the type.

Business-cards for Print Peppermint design exercise with 0.5 mm stainless, black steel, brass, copper, rose gold, iridescent, laser etch, laser cut-through, chemical etch, colour-fill enamel, powder coat, mirror, brushed, matte and suede finishes and duplex mirror-to-matte in one card.

TechniquesLaser Engraved, Laser Cut, Enamel Fill, Powder Coated StocksSatin stainless, Matte black metal, Brushed gold metal, Copper metal

The idea

Metal cards get sold on weight and sold short on design. Most of what circulates is a mirror rectangle with a laser-etched logo, which is one idea repeated.

Three rules

01Cut-through, or just etch it. Cut-through only where the void is a closed shape with support on all sides, a counter, a ring, a lobe. Anything cantilevered gets etched i…
02Enamel where the brand has a colour. Recessed etch filled with baked enamel, so the colour sits below the metal surface and the card can live in a wallet. Etch alone for anythi…
03Break the mirror. Duplexed mirror-to-matte and mirror-to-brushed panels, so the type always sits on a surface that holds still while the mirror does the show…

The point of the exercise

So we ran forty-one, deliberately across six substrates and four processes, to build a working vocabulary: which finishes hold type, where a cut-through survives a wallet, and what enamel is actually for.

No paper in this set. That was the constraint.