In order to make the colors on this guy pop as hard as possible we swapped out the standard CMY inks with their florescent equivalent. The actual design process was one of the funnest yet- we took various wood type and ran scrap paper through a little tabletop proofing press and immediately sprayed with our press wash-up solvent and then isopropyl alcohol to make interesting splatters / streaks / clouds / etc. The solvent and the alcohol has the same effect when mixed as gas and water.

We printed an 8.5 x 11 sheet of Strathmore Ultimate White Wove crack and peel label stock. Unlike many kinds of label sheets, this stock takes a great letterpress impression. This sheet was printed with five spot colors and a kiss cut in tight register. (For letterpress, that’s six times through the press) The kiss cut is a die cutting process which is also able to run on the letterpress. The same as die cutting, but care has to be taken to cut only through the label and not through the backer sheet that peels away.

The printing of this sheet was an intensive bit of letterpress. With floods of color and fine type everywhere the ink density had to right on for everything to print crisply. Note how there is a salty look to the color, more so in the brown ink. This is so we didn’t over ink the fine type elsewhere on the brown plate. There is even a good example of a letterpress halftone on the pretzel in the center. Mmmm.

Atmosphere is heading out for their When God Gives You Ugly tour. We just finished a special edition letterpress poster designed by Keith Wiliams. It features a “1950′s Diner Vampire Fight Scene” watercolor painting by Minneapolis native Michael Gaughan. (If you check out Michael’s website, be sure and see the collection of guitar sculptures. But don’t look to long or you might find the Fart Tube Air Matress) Posters will be available from Atmosphere while they tour and also for sale on the Rhymesayers site after the tour, if there are any left. So get out there and support these guys.

From a technical standpoint, this poster was a real challenge to plate and letterpress print. We took the original CMYK image of the watercolor painting and converted it in Photoshop to a tri-tone image with Blue, Red and Black spot colors. The image is built with a 90 line halftone screens. We push the values in the image to land mostly between 20 and 80 percent. More than 80% starts can start to fill with ink, and less than 20% may risk washing away in the plating process. Halftone images can be a challenge to ink up on letterpress and require a robust inking system. We threw down a massive amount of ink on our Heidelberg Cylinder. This was printed at our maximum 18 x 23 sheet size on French Paper Poptone 65lbC. This perfectly ugly edition is about 1000 posters.

I’m no sportsman, but these almost make me want to go fishing. Fishington is great resource to do just that, is spring here yet? And certainly check out Barretts blog.