Printing for the way Louisville does business.
Louisville is bourbon, healthcare, logistics and a small-business culture that still shakes hands, and it is where Brandable comes from.
Louisville is home to the bourbon industry and the tourism built around it, major healthcare and aging-care companies, one of the largest air cargo hubs in the world, and a downtown and NuLu that filled in with restaurants, distilleries and studios. The Highlands, Germantown and Crescent Hill carry the independents; the East End carries the offices and a lot of the households; Southern Indiana across the bridges is part of the same market.
Print in Louisville should feel warm and genuine. A matte card with a good typeface, a postcard with a real photograph, a flyer for a neighbourhood event. Derby season fills the calendar with banners, rack cards and invitations, and the healthcare and logistics sectors keep clean professional cards and sales sheets in demand.
Where print earns its keep in Louisville.
Print works differently in different parts of a city. These are the places in Louisville where a printed piece tends to do the most work, and the piece that usually suits each one.
NuLu and downtown. Distilleries, restaurants, studios and offices. Cards with craft and postcards for openings.
The Highlands and Bardstown Road. Shops, bars and practices along the strip. Flyers, rack cards and postcards.
The medical corridor and the East End. Healthcare, practices and corporate offices. Sales sheets and clean cards.
The Kentucky Exposition Center and the convention center. The state fair, trade shows and Derby week events. A retractable banner and rack cards.
One clear purpose. The right piece of paper.
What Louisville tends to order. Bourbon and hospitality businesses lean on rack cards and postcards built around a real photograph, since a tasting room or a tour desk hands one over as often as it sells anything. Healthcare and aging-care companies along the medical corridor favour a sales sheet and a card that reads as established rather than clever. The air cargo and logistics side of the economy keeps sales sheets with real specifications moving between vendors, and Derby season adds banners and rack cards for its events.
Put a readable name first, then one line about what you do, then the one contact route you want people to use. A finish should support that, never make it harder to read.
Compare business card finishes| The moment | What usually works |
|---|---|
| Derby season | Banners, rack cards and a postcard for an event |
| A distillery or restaurant opening in NuLu | Postcards and rack cards from opening night |
| A practice in the East End | Rack cards for the desk and cards for the team |
| A contractor in the Highlands or St. Matthews | Door hangers and flyers where the houses are |
Make the whole set feel like your business.
A Louisville note. Louisville carries a little heritage well: a serif, a deep colour, a matte or uncoated card. For bourbon and hospitality, a painted edge in a rich colour is the card people keep. For healthcare and logistics, clean and blue.
A brand does not need every piece to look identical, only a consistent voice, a deliberate palette and type that works at several sizes. Bring your logo, or start from nothing: print product design is $97 and logo design is $250, set up for the product and finish you picked.
See what design costsPlan around the day you need it in hand.
Work backward from the day the materials have to be ready, and leave room for artwork, the proof, production and shipping. Each product page states its own time on press: two to three business days for most cards and postcards once you approve your proof, three to four for soft touch and door hangers, seven to twelve for the XL banner. Shipping sits on top of that. Give us the delivery address and your date when you order, with a receiving name if it is going to a venue, a hotel or a shared office. If the date is fixed, say so and we will tell you whether it is possible before you pay.
Getting print into Louisville. Louisville's market spans the river into Southern Indiana, and a delivery to the Highlands or the East End is a different trip from one across the bridges, worth checking on a map first. Derby season brings the year's heaviest congestion downtown and in NuLu, and hotels and the Exposition Center want a name or booth number on anything arriving that week. Summers are humid enough to affect a card left in a car, and winters bring occasional ice that slows roads more than stock.
Mailing in Louisville. For postcards by route, the Highlands, Crescent Hill, St. Matthews and Germantown are neighbourhoods where a mailer reaches households and gets read.
Give the file your full attention.
Use the artwork guide on the product you picked, because the finished size, the bleed and the safe area are not the same for every format. Upload a PDF, PNG or JPG and the size, bleed and resolution are checked in your browser, then your proof arrives by email and nothing goes to press until you approve it. Read your own details out loud when it lands: names, numbers, web addresses, dates, spelling and which side is which. If there is a QR code, scan it yourself.
See the artwork guide on a product



