Design Context: November 2011

Generation Press

After having the talk with Scrub and An& from Generation Press earlier today, I had a look a their website and some of their work. Here are just a couple of things I really liked about their talk...

An example how letterpress can be used today. Amazing.

For years we have dreamt of bringing letterpress printing in house, especially as my Grandfather and Great Grandfather were both compositors. With the craft of printing being so popular we have, for some time now, been getting the right equipment and the ideal set up in place.
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At Generation Press printing is our livelihood, we have to view letterpress printing in the same way we do for litho or foil block printing, setting high standards to give our customers a letterpress solution.
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Letterpress is very close to our hearts, it is part of our heritage and that heritage is in manufacturing. We look forward to being challenged by you with yet another print process we can offer.
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Design and Photography: An&

Not For Commercial Use. A campaign Generation Press did Involving fly posters, remaining anonymous until found out.

I also got some great tips from this talk and learnt a lot when producing work for print.

The less colours in CMYK you use in your artwork the better. It will leave cleaner lines and edges, particularly in type. For example if you have a colour that only uses 3% or a tiny percentage of C, M, Y or K then get rid of it. It may make a subtle difference on screen, but when it comes to the actual print the difference is hardly recognisable. This will keep your artwork looking nice and keep you friends with the printer.

When using tints, don't use 50% as it is really hard to print. Try using 45 or 55 instead. Also don't confuse tints with transparency or opacity.

If you want to use a white ink on a black background when litho printing try using silver instead. Silver generally comes out looking better and more opaque.

When you are intending to use foils in your print, name the swatches 'red foil' 'green foil' etc. It sounds simple but it makes it easier for both you and the printer.

Compare your coated and uncoated Pantones. One of the problems Generation Press have had with D&AD is keeping their brand colour the same. It is supposed to be yellow and is fine when using coated stock, but when using the same spot on uncoated it tends to come out an orangey colour. GP simply solved this by using a different Pantone. So always compare your coated to uncoated Pantones because they can vary.

They also told us an interesting story about how D&AD actually intended their brand colour to be orange, but because of the reason I just explained it so happened to be seen more as yellow and eventually became their brand.

Colour will always change through the printing process but there are ways to manage it. Dot gain can also be a factor effecting how printing changes your artwork. Dot gain is where the diameter of the dot increases through the printing process. This is caused through the moisture of the paper. It's crazy to think that so many factors can mess up a print!

Scrub also told us to think of our image like an iceberg, the part that you see is only above the surface. It has many hidden layers and data that you don't see. So when editing an image be careful, you may be making it look amazing on screen but you could be deleting, cutting and even adding elements that will make the final print look fuzzy and full of noise. Pretty much use curves and selective colours on Photoshop and not much else, and on Roar go no more or less than +5 or -5 on adjustments.

http://generationpress.co.uk/page/6