The New Year will bring exciting new equipment to Publicide's print capabilities! I've just ordered a new roller set for the Heidelberg Windmill along with the glorious and amazing Rider Roller. This item is sure to become indispensable to printing on the letterpress. It adds a third ink roller on top of the two form rollers to fight ghosting and put more ink down at one time.
After inventing a new technique for double inking the rollers to make up for the lack of rider roller, I discovered that this technique had already been invented and even had it's own video on YouTube! I didn't make up a snappy name for it but luckily someone else has—it's called "Skip Feeding". Which just goes to prove that everything is already known about letterpress printing, it just needs to be rediscovered or unearthed.
Thanks to these great sites for helping me ascend ever higher into the firmament of letterpressing:
Excellent prices on new and used Heidelberg Parts at: Printers Parts 4 U
Excellent blog for letterpress tricks with cool online store: Spark Stationery
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Letterpress Perfect!
Finally, after poring over old Heidelberg manuals for weeks and weeks, today Publicide cracked the code on perfect letterpress registration for any thickness of paper.
Credit here is due to the letterpress manuals, the Dolce Press blog, and my dear dear friend-designer and artist Cara Lynn Kleid.
Despite my attempts at center-fed registration, I was still burning up some serious paper (and sort time) with the 2/3rds method of registration. Which is where you miss one out of every 3 sheets and have to recycle it! Unbelievable, and certainly no way to print but I'm telling you it is so impossible to figure out these old machines.
Anyway, it turns out the Heidelberg 10x15 Windmill has its own set of registration-perfect guides that you clip inside the press for perfect runs. I was wondering what all the 'adjust for guides' signs were talking about. Anyway the guides are genius! Heidelberg does it again! Well, I mean they did it again, like in the mid 1800s I guess. Figuring out that the main gripper can't be trusted to register perfectly every time, they made it so the gripper can be set to drop the paper into the clip-in guides! But it is even cooler than it sounds because the machine waits until the sheet is perpendicular to the ground and then drops it on the guides. It is registered with gravity! Perfect, unfailing, always faithful Gravity. You just turn a little switch and set your guides and perfection ensues.
I seriously have been trying to figure out how anyone could have ever run CMYK process color on one of these things and just not figuring it out. BUT never fear, I now have a perfect understanding of how to accomplish this, and was entirely successful today printing two colors exactly perfectly one on top of the other on a whole big pile of cards. So amazing.
The other super best thing about this is that the gravity part makes it so that running insanely thick paper (cardboard, lunch bags, bound books. . . ) through this thing will only make the gravity work better! It seems that the mechanism gets more perfect as the paper gets thicker.
Stay tuned for wicked good Publicide printing merch that includes hairline letterpress registration.
Credit here is due to the letterpress manuals, the Dolce Press blog, and my dear dear friend-designer and artist Cara Lynn Kleid.
Despite my attempts at center-fed registration, I was still burning up some serious paper (and sort time) with the 2/3rds method of registration. Which is where you miss one out of every 3 sheets and have to recycle it! Unbelievable, and certainly no way to print but I'm telling you it is so impossible to figure out these old machines.
Anyway, it turns out the Heidelberg 10x15 Windmill has its own set of registration-perfect guides that you clip inside the press for perfect runs. I was wondering what all the 'adjust for guides' signs were talking about. Anyway the guides are genius! Heidelberg does it again! Well, I mean they did it again, like in the mid 1800s I guess. Figuring out that the main gripper can't be trusted to register perfectly every time, they made it so the gripper can be set to drop the paper into the clip-in guides! But it is even cooler than it sounds because the machine waits until the sheet is perpendicular to the ground and then drops it on the guides. It is registered with gravity! Perfect, unfailing, always faithful Gravity. You just turn a little switch and set your guides and perfection ensues.
I seriously have been trying to figure out how anyone could have ever run CMYK process color on one of these things and just not figuring it out. BUT never fear, I now have a perfect understanding of how to accomplish this, and was entirely successful today printing two colors exactly perfectly one on top of the other on a whole big pile of cards. So amazing.
The other super best thing about this is that the gravity part makes it so that running insanely thick paper (cardboard, lunch bags, bound books. . . ) through this thing will only make the gravity work better! It seems that the mechanism gets more perfect as the paper gets thicker.
Stay tuned for wicked good Publicide printing merch that includes hairline letterpress registration.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
10 hour letterpress print marathon
I was printing for 10 straight hours today on the Heidelberg windmill letterpress. Making notepads for company recognition since everyone loves a little free stuff. I think I used 8 different ink colors, 7 different graphics, and 3 kinds of paper.
Also produced some really cool open-end business envelopes with the company graphic.
Usually, we are printing wedding invites, business cards, or other good stuff on the letterpress. It's distinctive printing style pushes into the paper when delivering the ink, which makes for great texture. Add a textured paper and you've got the ultimate piece of print art.
I also was able to make some cool videos of my work today to post on the YouTube. Check them out here on the Publicide, Inc. YouTube video site!
Also, we're very close to cracking the code of polymer letterpress plates—which would make letterpress more affordable for the masses. At this point, Publicide uses mostly magnesium or copper plates—which are totally rad and hardcore, but also totally so expensive since they are made with molten metals. The polymer plates are supposedly the future of letterpress printing, but so far we haven't achieved consistent results. The breakthrough today involved ink volume as it seems like if there is 1 dot of ink more than necessary on the ink rollers, it makes the whole die and print job gooey. SO we will continue on with the metal plates until perfection is achieved.
Publicide, Inc—Printing NYC
Also produced some really cool open-end business envelopes with the company graphic.
Usually, we are printing wedding invites, business cards, or other good stuff on the letterpress. It's distinctive printing style pushes into the paper when delivering the ink, which makes for great texture. Add a textured paper and you've got the ultimate piece of print art.
I also was able to make some cool videos of my work today to post on the YouTube. Check them out here on the Publicide, Inc. YouTube video site!
Also, we're very close to cracking the code of polymer letterpress plates—which would make letterpress more affordable for the masses. At this point, Publicide uses mostly magnesium or copper plates—which are totally rad and hardcore, but also totally so expensive since they are made with molten metals. The polymer plates are supposedly the future of letterpress printing, but so far we haven't achieved consistent results. The breakthrough today involved ink volume as it seems like if there is 1 dot of ink more than necessary on the ink rollers, it makes the whole die and print job gooey. SO we will continue on with the metal plates until perfection is achieved.
Publicide, Inc—Printing NYC
Saturday, June 14, 2008
JetMount Media
The response to JetMount, our new large-format print medium, has been terrific. This machine prints on most flat surfaces up to 2" thick! It is a breeze for foam core, vinyl, even printing on wood, glass or mirror! It seems to me that we've only just begun to scratch the surface of its usefulness. I'm excited to try printing on a heavily textured board next. The sky really is the limit with this equipment. Amazing!
With almost 60" width and an endless possible length due to its construction, this machine is set to be the new king of large-format printing. Printing in reverse on the back of a piece of glass in full color CMYK inkjetting. Now maybe I can realize my dream of one day printing to cover an entire scaffold around a building.
On a trip to Europe several years ago, I noticed that in Barcelona and Lisbon, when construction was happening and buildings were wrapped up in plastic, some genius had the idea to print ads on the stuff! I'm talking ads 12 stories high and wrapped around entire buildings as thy were being refurbished. Anyway, now if I can just land the account that will get me that printing. I should probably do a marketing push geared toward the top Manhattan construction places.
Anyway, I digress. the JetMount inkjetter is awesome.
With almost 60" width and an endless possible length due to its construction, this machine is set to be the new king of large-format printing. Printing in reverse on the back of a piece of glass in full color CMYK inkjetting. Now maybe I can realize my dream of one day printing to cover an entire scaffold around a building.
On a trip to Europe several years ago, I noticed that in Barcelona and Lisbon, when construction was happening and buildings were wrapped up in plastic, some genius had the idea to print ads on the stuff! I'm talking ads 12 stories high and wrapped around entire buildings as thy were being refurbished. Anyway, now if I can just land the account that will get me that printing. I should probably do a marketing push geared toward the top Manhattan construction places.
Anyway, I digress. the JetMount inkjetter is awesome.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Web Searching
WOW. I just spent all day researching why it is that when you google "printing nyc" the only thing that comes up is a bunch of ki nk os. I spell it here oddly because apparently if I write their name in the same sentence as "printing nyc" they will just get more goodie points added to their file. What I want to come up is Publicide, Inc. PLEASE.
So what I've discovered is pretty amazing and led me to create this blog today. Hopefully I will be able to keep up with it, but since I get totally obsessively compulsed by all things having to do with work, it should be no problem. It is extremely important to write a lot about Publicide—that is, Publicide in reference to printing, web design, graphics, letterpress, flash, HTML, CMYK and whatever else might apply.
I found out that the site I've had up for months at www.publicide.com is totally useless for people searching for print services from me! Unless they already know the name—and let's face it people, it is pretty hard to get good name recognition in New York City without paying bundles for it. Or making large-format ads stuck to cars and people. Maybe I should do some shirts or something and give them out.
I am meeting with my wonderful new business advisors over at Muffin Cupcake next week to discuss this and other exciting business prospects. I'll, of course, report everything that is not totally secret. Jessica Resler and Matt Demanett — my business advisory committee members — are devoted to my success. I have them planning all sorts of world domination type things for exalting my brand status to new heights! Exciting stuff, I know.
So what I've discovered is pretty amazing and led me to create this blog today. Hopefully I will be able to keep up with it, but since I get totally obsessively compulsed by all things having to do with work, it should be no problem. It is extremely important to write a lot about Publicide—that is, Publicide in reference to printing, web design, graphics, letterpress, flash, HTML, CMYK and whatever else might apply.
I found out that the site I've had up for months at www.publicide.com is totally useless for people searching for print services from me! Unless they already know the name—and let's face it people, it is pretty hard to get good name recognition in New York City without paying bundles for it. Or making large-format ads stuck to cars and people. Maybe I should do some shirts or something and give them out.
I am meeting with my wonderful new business advisors over at Muffin Cupcake next week to discuss this and other exciting business prospects. I'll, of course, report everything that is not totally secret. Jessica Resler and Matt Demanett — my business advisory committee members — are devoted to my success. I have them planning all sorts of world domination type things for exalting my brand status to new heights! Exciting stuff, I know.
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