Double Sided Printing Technique

Hi I’m looking at printing 2/1 business cards on 220# lettra. The back of the card is one heavy solid color with white text punched out, and the front is black text with a solid square logo with white text punched out which takes up about 1/3 of the front.

Which order do you recommend printing? Should I print the front text first, then solid back, then logo front?

The last time I did a 2/2, the impression that laid over the opposite side impression wasn’t that clean. How do you combat that?

Thanks!

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Quite a few letterpress printers have indicated that they print on somewhat lighter stock and then glue the two sheets (back and front) together. This is called “duplexing” and will allow one to print with impression and not have it obscured by impressing the other side. You may have to print on slightly oversized stock and trim it to final size so that the glue ooze is not evident.

Another option is to print one side with a shallow impression first and then go for the deep impression on the other face.

With the 220# you should have a pretty forgiving amount of paper to hit. We often ran the 220# on both sides with no issues of show through.
I guess your issue is the solid areas with the knock out. My guess would be that if you ran the black front first, and then hit a large solid area across the back, you might end up ironing down the impression from the printing on the first side.
Also, the impression from the type on the front, could effect the packing on the solid, and you might have some soft or dead zones in your solid.
I would probably run the solid-with-knockout on the back first, and then run the type on the front with the freedom to give it the impression it needs.

Part of it is a design choice. I often think of the ‘front’ of the card as more important, and am willing to sacrifice some details on the ‘back’ to make the favored side shine. Thats your call.
Good luck.