I'd say do it in Photoshop.

> to use a font that creates that effect
How? This is more or less a 3-D-effect-thing.
Photoshop or render in 3-D.
Since this is the Type-ID-board - the font is Albertus ;-)

Thanks for your suggestions and the font ID. I'll start looking for ways to do this in Photoshop...

What about the flourishes/ornaments?
If you want to emboss the entire page (as if printed the ol'fashioned way), just a typeface won't be enough.
Maybe use Photoshop after all...

Suggestion: Design the page/ad using Illustrator or InDesign; Export to PDF and finaly Import to Photoshop again...(use transparent background and a reasonable resolution).
Create a new layer (filled white), Select the layer with text/image and 'clear' the selection layer from the white one.
Apply some kind of 'embossing effect on this white layer.
Perhaps you could bring the 'embossed layer' back into InDesign in order to maintain the quality of the type.

You can create a look similar to this in Photoshop, but it'll look far less organic. It's pretty simple, though:

1. Set your type in Photoshop
2. Set the layer effects to Bevel and Emboss, and select Emboss and choose down as the direction. Adjust the depth and everything until it looks right. Subtlety goes a long way here.

It's pretty easy to do a simple effect in illustrator. first change the transparency of your type to multiply at 100%. then select the type and go to effect: stylize: inner glow. set the opacity at 8-10%, change the mode to multiply and the color to black. it gives a subtle indented look without the hassle of photoshop.

MODERATOR.... move this topic to the correct location

You could always design with the real letterpress type. There are some sites with stock art or you could go to www.woodtypeimage.com the have tons of stuff as well as freebies section.

Brad B's well-done tutorial shows sharp ink traps. Before applying these effects, you might want to dirty the type up a bit by applying a small-radius Gaussian blur, then adjusting the levels to eliminate the gray.

hi, i served an apprenticeship in letterpress hot metal works because of the physical pressure of type into paper to try and recreate this you almost need a stroke but the subtlty is sublime that is what gives letterpress the edge over litho. no easy way , not even thrru photoshop, which as a bitmap prog will never be as effective as illustrator, you will have to use a dark grey, stroke it with black but use a mask to keep the integrity of the font, play

Fred Goudy's fonts were arguably the first to imitate a letterpress effect, especially Kennerley (1911).
Although he was working with metal type, there was sufficient distance, in terms of resolution, between his subject material of relatively crude Renaissance text typography, and the large, sharp letters he was able to create with refined early 20th century printing technology, to allow an objective historical perspective to be expressed in letter details which were informed by the trace of process.

This is a display setting of Kennerley from 1920 (you can see from the text show-through). Note the blobbyness (in imitation of ink spread) and flex of the serifs, the drastic thinning at the joint of "h", and the fly-away tittle, after Jenson.

Poliphilus was conceived at Monotype in 1923 as a photographically-engineered simulacrum and facsimile-maker of Renaissance typography.

So to a certain extent such types incorporate in their design the artefacts and effect of letterpress printing, in whatever medium they are rendered, be it letterpress, offset, or screen.