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Overprint
Dublin · Identity, editorial, packaging, type

Design that survives
contact with production

A six-person studio working mostly in print. We finish artwork properly, supply files a printer can actually use, and write guidelines that a future in-house designer can follow without ringing us.

Start a project See the work
11
Years
140+
Identities
6
In the studio
3
ISTD awards
Printed identity work laid out on a studio table
Selected work

Three projects, start to finish

With the brief as it was actually written, not as we would have preferred it.

Packaging · 2032

Kilbeggan Coffee Roasters

A bag that works at 40 mm and at four metres

Brief
Eleven single-origin coffees, sold both in a small shop and on supermarket shelves, needed to be told apart instantly by staff and by customers who had never seen them before.
Approach
One fixed structure with a variable colour band and a large origin numeral. The numeral carries at shelf distance, the band codes the roast level, and the whole system prints in two spot colours to keep the unit cost down.
Outcome
Rolled out across eleven SKUs with no increase in print cost, and the numeral became the way staff refer to the coffees internally.

2 colours print spec across all eleven SKUs

Editorial · 2031

The Liffey Review

A quarterly that had grown from 48 pages to 210

Brief
A literary quarterly whose page count had quadrupled while its layout stayed the same, so readers had stopped being able to find anything.
Approach
A four-tier hierarchy with running heads, a proper contents architecture and two text sizes rather than one. Set in a single family at four weights to keep the typesetting maintainable by a volunteer team.
Outcome
Handed over as an InDesign template with paragraph styles that the editors have used unaided for six issues.

6 issues produced without studio involvement

Identity · 2031

Harbour & Vale

An identity for a firm that will be bought within five years

Brief
A professional services firm that was explicit about being acquired eventually, and wanted an identity that would not be embarrassing to fold into a larger group.
Approach
Restraint. A wordmark rather than a symbol, one typeface, a neutral palette, and guidelines written so an acquiring brand team could see immediately what was load-bearing and what was decorative.
Outcome
Applied across stationery, signage and a 60-page document system. Still in use, and the guidelines have been amended twice by their own team.

60 pp document system, self-maintained

What we do

Four things, properly

We are not a full-service agency. There is no digital product team, no media buying and no motion department, and we will tell you who to ring for those.

  • Identity

    from €14,000

    Wordmarks, symbols and the system around them — typography, colour, layout rules and the guidelines document that makes it usable by people who are not us.

    • Wordmark
    • Type system
    • Colour spec
    • Guidelines PDF
    • Artwork files

  • Editorial

    from €9,000

    Books, journals, reports and annual publications. Grid, hierarchy and a template your team can actually produce the next issue in.

    • Grid
    • Paragraph styles
    • InDesign template
    • Sample spreads
    • Handover session

  • Packaging

    from €11,000

    Structure, artwork and print specification, taken through to a signed-off proof with your printer rather than handed over as a visual.

    • Dielines
    • Print-ready artwork
    • Colour spec
    • Proof sign-off

  • Typography

    from €6,500

    Custom lettering, wordmark drawing and type selection and licensing advice. Occasionally a full custom face, though that is a longer conversation.

    • Vector lettering
    • Kerning pairs
    • Licence guidance
How a project runs

Four stages, fixed price

Quoted as a whole rather than hourly, with the stages and the payment points agreed before anything starts.

  1. 01 1–2 weeks

    Brief and audit

    We read what exists, talk to the people who will use the thing, and write the brief back to you in our own words. Roughly a third of projects change shape at this point.

    You get Written brief, agreed scope

  2. 02 2–3 weeks

    Concepts

    Two directions, presented in context rather than on a white background. We show you the one we recommend and say why, rather than presenting three and asking you to choose.

    You get Two routes, in application

  3. 03 3–5 weeks

    Development

    The chosen route taken to completion across every application in scope. This is the longest and least visible stage, and it is where most of the actual design happens.

    You get Full system, all applications

  4. 04 1–2 weeks

    Artwork and handover

    Production-ready files, colour specification, and a guidelines document. We speak to your printer directly and check the first proof.

    You get Artwork, guidelines, proof sign-off

  • Fifty percent on commencement, fifty on final artwork delivery. Nothing invoiced in between.
  • Two rounds of revisions are included at each stage. Further rounds are quoted, not silently absorbed.
  • You own the final artwork outright on payment. We license nothing back to you.
What you actually receive

The file list, published

Every studio gets asked this and most answer it in a proposal. It is on the website because it is the most practical question a client has.

Artwork

  • Primary logo AI · EPS · SVG · PDF

    Positive, reversed and single-colour versions

  • Secondary marks AI · EPS · SVG
  • Web-ready exports SVG · PNG @1x @2x @3x
  • Favicon set SVG · ICO · PNG

Specification

  • Colour reference PDF

    Pantone, CMYK, RGB and HEX with tolerances

  • Typography spec PDF

    Families, weights, sizes and licence status

  • Clear space and minimum sizes PDF
  • Guidelines document PDF · InDesign

Working files

  • Source design files INDD · AI

    Layered, named and organised

  • Fonts used Licence details

    Licences bought in your name, not ours

  • Image assets TIFF · PSD
  • Print dielines PDF · DXF

Everything is supplied in open or industry-standard formats. You will never need a subscription to our software to open your own artwork, and we do not hold source files hostage — you own them on final payment, in full, without a licence back to us.

Clients

Mostly about the handover

Which is the part that tends to go wrong elsewhere.

“The guidelines were written for someone who is not a designer, which is exactly who ended up using them. We have produced six issues without ringing them once.”
N
Niamh Cassidy
Editor, The Liffey Review
“They rang our printer directly and sorted a colour problem before it became our problem. Nobody has ever done that for us before.”
E
Eoin Barry
Kilbeggan Coffee Roasters
“We asked for something that would survive being acquired and they took that brief literally, which we appreciated more than a beautiful thing we would have had to abandon.”
C
Claire Duggan
Harbour & Vale
Questions

Money, ownership and scope

The three things worth settling before a project starts.

Because hourly punishes you for our inefficiency and makes it impossible for you to budget. We quote the whole project after the brief stage, and if we misjudge it that is our problem rather than an additional invoice.

You do, outright, on final payment — including source files. We do not license artwork back to clients and we do not charge separately for the working files. The only exception is typefaces, which are licensed from their foundries in your name.

It has happened twice in eleven years. Both times we went back to the brief, because two rejected routes almost always means we misread the problem rather than that we need a third route. There is no additional charge for that.

We design them and hand over to a developer, or work alongside yours. We do not build them, and a studio that claims equal expertise in identity, print production and front-end development is usually stretching at least one of those claims.

Six to ten weeks for a full identity, less for smaller pieces. We run three projects at a time and will tell you honestly if the timeline does not suit rather than taking the work and delaying you.

Tell us what the actual problem is

The brief you send is rarely the brief we end up working to, and that is fine. Start with the problem.

Start a project Read the deliverables list
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