How do you handle hold the two colours, add nothing?

A third colour is the reflex the moment metal enters the picture — a grey, a black keyline, something to hold the steel down. The bare brushed steel is the only third surface. Every look is Pantone 1665 C, Pantone 2635 C and metal, and nothing else.

How do you handle bind the illustration, never redraw it?

Generative visualisation invents linework unless the source is locked to it — near-misses that read wrong to anyone who knows the brand. Minor Figures' own illustration and packshot were bound as the reference for every render. The drawing in all five looks is theirs.

How do you handle steel shown or steel hidden?

A PVC flood hides the core completely; clear PVC exposes it. You cannot have both on one face. Two looks conceal the core, leaving only a hairline of steel at the edge. Three reveal it through clear PVC. Same construction underneath — the client picks the reveal.

How do you handle chip in the pvc, not the metal?

Metal shields NFC. A chip sitting behind the steel core reads badly or not at all. The NTAG213 sits in the PVC layer, with the antenna zone kept clear of solid flood. Read range is identical across all five looks.

How do you handle thicken the line, keep the drawing?

At 0.3 pt the line does not hold in silkscreen on this substrate — it breaks up or fills in, depending which way the squeegee is running. A uniform thickening to 0.5 pt across the whole drawing. The illustration itself does not change; the weight it prints at does.

Case study · Business cards · Minor Figures

Two inks, a steel core, and a playlist

Minor Figures needed a launch object for their Barista Chai Concentrate: a card that taps to a playlist and reads unmistakably as the carton. We built a 1.26 mm hybrid, 0.5 mm stainless core laminated to 0.76 mm PVC, silkscreened in Pantone 1665 C and 2635 C on both layers, with an NTAG213 concealed in the PVC. Five looks, one drawing, two inks, and the bare steel as the only third colour.

Business-cards for Minor Figures with cr80, 3.375 × 2.125 in, 0.5 mm stainless steel core + 0.76 mm pvc, 1.26 mm total, 2 pms spot colour silkscreen, 1665 c + 2635 c, metal and pvc layers, ntag213 nfc, concealed in pvc layer, pre-encoded spotify playlist redirect and 15 business days.

TechniquesDuplex, Hybrid Metal + PVC, NFC Chip, Screen Print, Silkscreen, Spot Colour StocksSatin stainless, White PVC card stock

The idea

Minor Figures were launching Barista Chai Concentrate and wanted an object to launch it with. Not a flyer, not a card with a QR code on it — something a barista would keep in a wallet and hand to someone else.

Five rules

01Hold the two colours, add nothing. The bare brushed steel is the only third surface. Every look is Pantone 1665 C, Pantone 2635 C and metal, and nothing else.
02Bind the illustration, never redraw it
03Steel shown or steel hidden. Two looks conceal the core, leaving only a hairline of steel at the edge. Three reveal it through clear PVC. Same construction underneath —…
04Chip in the PVC, not the metal. The NTAG213 sits in the PVC layer, with the antenna zone kept clear of solid flood. Read range is identical across all five looks.
05Thicken the line, keep the drawing. A uniform thickening to 0.5 pt across the whole drawing. The illustration itself does not change; the weight it prints at does.

The brief

The card taps to a Spotify playlist made for the launch, and it had to read unmistakably as the carton: same skater, same two inks, same weight of line. Everything below is what it took to get a printed carton onto a 1.26 mm hybrid card and keep the tap working.