M.C. Pressure Brings Their Bold Letterpress Designs to Paper Source

How would you define or describe what you do at M.C.Pressure overall and what’s your ethos as a company?

M.C. Pressure is a letterpress and specialty print shop located in St. Augustine, Florida. We split our time between printing custom projects for folks but also creating products. Our product line has been developed over the years as a creative outlet in the exploration of products we think would be fun to work on or see a space for. We run a small crew at the shop and take pride in being able to deliver a lot of high quality offerings at a personal level.

Tell us about the greeting cards that have been selected.

Three greeting cards were chosen for the addition into the Paper Source catalog on this past round. 

1. You’re Hot – A silver foil stamped card on black uncoated French Paper. It shows a metal slide from a playground as many will remember with the text “You’re Hot” under the drawing.

2. Missing You – a 2 color letterpress greeting card on Ultra White Mohawk Superfine. It is of a drawing of a milk carton and says  “Missing You” on it.

3. Happy Birthday Balloons – This card is a 2 color foil stamped card with registered sculpted emboss to look like milar balloons. It’s simple in overall design but is quite the production print job, especially compared to the other two!

What’s your approach to the cards’ designs?

Our first approach for products is typically humor. We love to laugh and have fun at the shop, so it carries over into our work. This isn’t exclusive though, as we have plenty of products that we make that aren’t meant to be funny. If humor isn’t the initial basis for the idea, we usually find ourselves between two other aspect; production process/technique or imagery. There are times where we might say, let’s use this really cool paper we have access to, or let’s work on a card that has a die-cut shape. At other times, we might think I can’t get the idea of a cat in a paper bag out of my head, and I think we should draw it for some card or product! 

There are also times when silly ideas just come up, and we talk about them at the office. This is how the Fucks Givens cards came about. I asked, wouldn’t it be funny if we could literally give a fuck or not give one? From there, we worked through some options of giving or not giving, and just to be safe, better offered a middle ground for those centrists too. From there, we worked on a design to fit on a business card-sized slip that you can fill out to express your feelings on a matter. I can’t say my mom is the most proud of some of the products we make, but it’s been a fun outlet nonetheless!

How did the collection for Paper Source come about? Who approached who? And why did you decide to work with them?

Paper Source has a process that requires companies or individuals to apply through a submission process. Over the years of being in the letterpress community, we’ve made friends with others who have had their products in their stores, and always thought the idea of being seen in a national store for stationery would be great – it also seems so daunting to imagine the logistics of such a thing. In being a creative, you can imagine this type of thinking isn’t where I find a lot of enjoyment, trying to crunch numbers and fill out spreadsheets. A friend of the shop came to visit us one day and mentioned how they knew the process and they would send the link and some resources on how to apply.

We applied, mailed some physical samples, and didn’t hear anything for months. Then one day I got an email from some folks saying they liked our stuff and how the deadline for the current buying/submissions time had passed (they purchase certain products at certain times of the year), but they wanted to get me onboarded for future potential. Earlier this summer, we received our first PO from them for the three cards!

The decision to try and submit our products for consideration came from our surprising success in wholesale for our products through other platforms like Faire. By and large, our best sellers in the catalog aren’t greeting cards, so to find an outlet that could carry some of our cards to have them seen by a larger audience seemed great! We have the ability to make a lot of greeting cards, so selling some to a store that can handle a large order like this, I think, helps get our designs to others. My hope is that people who shop or see our cards in Paper Source will also be the type of people who seek out smaller mom and pop shops that carry other stationery goods that might carry other products of ours! This is just our first order, and it’s our first national store we’re in, so we’re excited to see how it goes and where it can take us!

Are they current designs or new ones you have made exclusively for them?

They are designs that we’ve had in our catalog for a number of years at this point, but are popular nonetheless. Because the product line isn’t the only type of project we focus on, greeting cards and products aren’t something which we regularly schedule releases for new designs. We’re always working on new things in the background, and when we get them to a point we’re happy with, we move them through production. We try and release new designs as often as we can!

Where will they be available? In store/online?

The greeting cards from Paper Source are available both online and in-stores, though I’m not sure when they will exactly hit the shelves in physical brick-and-mortar shops. They are currently available online through their site, retailing for $7.50.

When does it launch?

Good question, I believe they are available now. Over this last weekend, we stopped into a Paper Source while visiting family, and they had one of the three cards out and available! Stores should have them out soon if they aren’t already! 

Any plans for the future in regards to your card collection or further work with Paper Source?

We have a list of potential ideas to work on submitting to them for consideration. Greeting cards seem to be a good starting point with us in this type of partnership, so we will be sending more in the future! All of the cards we have available are also available on our website, so if people would like to check out the other products we have to offer, I’d direct them there. If folks are interested in seeing some of our custom work or getting in contact about that, the website is the best place for that as well!