Why do luxury real estate agents use letterpress business cards?

Letterpress presses the type into thick cotton paper, so the card has depth and weight you can feel. It stands out from the foil-and-gloss cards most luxury agents carry.

What is a painted edge on a business card?

Colour applied to the trimmed edges of the stack after printing. On a thick cotton card, a thin coloured edge frames both faces.

Does letterpress work with brand colours?

Yes. Letterpress inks are mixed to a Pantone target. Keep large solid areas small, because cotton shows mottling across big floods.

How do you handle letterpress, not foil?

In luxury real estate, foil and gloss are the default, so every competitor’s card looks like that. Two-colour letterpress on bright white 100% cotton. The type is pressed into the sheet, so you feel the quality more than you see it.

How do you handle one colour, three places?

Too much red and it stops being an accent. PMS-matched red in exactly three places: the mark, the title line and the painted edge. Everything else is charcoal on white.

Case study · Business cards · The Oppenheim Group

The Oppenheim Group ↗

Quiet paper for a very loud brand

A bright white 100% cotton card with two-colour letterpress printing and a PMS-matched red painted edge.

Business-cards for The Oppenheim Group with bright white 100% cotton stock, two-colour letterpress and pms-matched red painted edge.

TechniquesLetterpress, Painted Edge, Two Colour

The idea

The Oppenheim Group is the Southern California luxury brokerage founded by Jason Oppenheim at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Sunset Plaza Drive. It has since opened offices in Newport Beach, San Diego and Cabo. It is the brokerage at the centre of Netflix’s Selling Sunset and its spinoff Selling the OC.

Two rules

01Letterpress, not foil. Two-colour letterpress on bright white 100% cotton. The type is pressed into the sheet, so you feel the quality more than you see it.
02One colour, three places. PMS-matched red in exactly three places: the mark, the title line and the painted edge. Everything else is charcoal on white.

The client

This card is for the Newport Beach office. The agents working there get recognised from television, so a card has to hold up when it is handed over at a multi-million-dollar showing.

Why it works

The brand is famous enough that the card has no need to perform. So it does not. It is soft cotton, a bite you can feel and one red line around the edge, and people notice it when they pick it up.

Start from these materials

Same paper, foil and finish, locked in — nothing of The Oppenheim Group's artwork comes with it.

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Questions

Why do luxury real estate agents use letterpress business cards?: Letterpress presses the type into thick cotton paper, so the card has depth and weight you can feel. It stands out from the foil-and-gloss cards most luxury agents carry.
What is a painted edge on a business card?: Colour applied to the trimmed edges of the stack after printing. On a thick cotton card, a thin coloured edge frames both faces.
Does letterpress work with brand colours?: Yes. Letterpress inks are mixed to a Pantone target. Keep large solid areas small, because cotton shows mottling across big floods.

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