OUGD406 STUDIO BRIEF 2 - BUSINESS CARD STOCK

I picked up a business card from The Gallery at Munroe House recently, and the stock it was printed on was really interesting, it had a strange, very smooth texture to it, really similar to the stock of the cover of my Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland book I have analysed for a previous brief. I emailed them asking what stock was used to print their business cards, and where they got them printed.

This was the response from my email, which was extremely prompt actually, but then this lead me only researching how much this would cost me to print on Instaprint using this velvet finish, and I found out it would cost me almost 4 times as much as if I got them printed at university in the digital print studios, and at this point in the course I am not prepared to spend that much money on business cards. 

I then went on to try and find a similar stock to the velvet finish business cards, and found that Plike from G F Smith was very similar, so then enquired if I could duplex this with a more natural, textured stock, as suggested in my critiques, as this was the initial idea, although with the Instaprint business cards, it would only be velvet finish on both sides, so I would spend all this money on cards with only half the stock I want.

They responded that they couldn't duplex Plike specifically because of it's texture, so my cheaper alternative wasn't possible either, leaving me in a bit of a mix of how I am going to achieve this velvet and natural duplexed finish on my own, as I couldn't find any other printing companies that duplex specific stocks, let alone the ones that I want duplexed. 

I also tried seeing if I could buy velvet and natural stock, and then sticking them together myself, however I could buy Plike and the natural stock from G F Smith, however it is quite expensive to buy it in small quantities as I would need it, and I feel this would be a waste to spend such money to only achieve a hand made effect. I think the use of stock is just something I should make clear if money was no object, or maybe a possibility for second of third year when I become more professional and have a greater need for business cards.