Printastic

Jess and me spent a couple of really interesting hours with Jim Pennington from Lithosphere printers in North London (www.lithosphere.co.uk). We went originally with a view to just meet and greet another printer, find out what they could do and add them to the list of people we could possibly work with in the future.

In the end we got a lot more. Jim sat us down, made us some tea and told us all about the kind of things printers have to consider and the issues they face when they are working with designers.

One story he told was that designers, with long print runs, should always check work that has been printed overnight with work that has been printed during the day. That’s because the printer working the night shift will be working in very different light conditions to the person on the day shift – something which can affect colour consistency. A good printer will look out for this sort of thing for you.

I’d heard of Lithosphere because they printed the Stop The War posters, designed originally by David Gentleman (see can see the youtube video about how Gentleman designed these here).

They only do a certain amount of printing in-house and will send out some jobs to out-of-London printers that they know are right for the job. They get trade rates for these jobs (which are cheaper because they are not in London). Lithosphere add the value in talking to you about what to consider with regards the paper you are considering, the kind of colours you want to use, etc. He made the point that they can add the most value when people contact them at the beginning of a job when they are considering things like paper and structure. They know GF Smith paper suppliers – but rather than the client buying the paper, Lithosphere buy it.

They don’t handle small jobs for less than £200 but I will definitely try and use them where I can in the future because I know I’ll get real advice based on what’s right for the job.

Jim actually went to LCP back in the day. Small world.

small scales for weighing paper

measuring paper thickness (in microns)

heidelberg 4 colour offset printer in action

heidelberg offset printer

Jim explaining a print job

plates for the offset printer

offset printer controls

proofing desk and printer controls

for calibrating printer colours + plate positions

checking detail through linen glass

Gold Snow

Random snow stuff, really. Started with thinking about black and white (visual grammar) compositions using rough edged snow against the dark tarmac. This soon started to include everyday objects with very distinct, often secondary forms (shoe prints, tyre tracks). For my academic contexts piece, I’m thinking about something to do with how rough/natural/accidental/worn forms can combine/coincide with forms which are very deliberate/’straight’ and this sort of fits with that. A bit.

Played with a few in photoshop, just to see what impact texture and colour could have and get to know the software a bit better.  Anything I’ve done is pretty much through the ADJUSTMENTS tab (either the thresholds or gradient map controls).

I didn’t spend a lot of time altering the images (finding the best colours, cropping, etc) but it has given me some ideas for how textures like this could be used in wider design pieces – poster background, logo elements, etc. In its altered form, the snow can look like anything from a virus under a microscope, to calligraphy or marbled paper.

My favourite are the birds’ feet which look like they could be made into a wall paper border. Funnily, each foot looks like a bird or an aeroplane.

Click on the one of the images and it becomes a slide show (apparently).