Very, very much time has passed without my writing, but that doesn't mean that I've set the project aside. Quite the opposite. The project has taken many new directions, and my research into print methods has been a journey that at once includes discovery and mourning as well.
It's almost impossible to get anything printed offset, unless, of course, you're a newspaper or magazine making thousands of impressions; the way to go nowadays is the INDIGO, which, out about ten years now, has pretty much replaced offset for anything other than web press applications (For those who don't know the term web press, it has nothing to do with the internet. It's a huge printing press, with six or more colors, and the capability to print both sides of a sheet in a single pass. The paper comes off huge rolls which are stored either at the press or a separate warehouse where the temperature is controlled. The printed sheets then go through a folding stage, and then brought by a conveyer belt to its end where it's made ready to bind. It's not the kind of press you can have in your garage).
Small runs of offset are non-existent. Funny, I used to be a quality control foreman in an offset printing plant, one of the few in Long Island City. We had some big perfecting sheet-fed perfecting presses but also, a little gem of a four-color mini-press, which I was hoping to find to print one of the pieces. To no avail. A few short years and this print method is dead, buried, dust.
The design work, however, has been ongoing--material being produced weekly from the goings on in Washington and all its ramifications. There are very disturbing trends that merit exposure, but the work must get out immediately. Like a printed periodical (ha!), if it doesn't get out, it's stale, old, and, as we've discovered by this administration, immediately supplanted by a new barrage of plainly weird news.
I wrote the copy for the piece above; sent it out to print digitally on Arches 88. Looks great. I might edition it and offer it for sale.
Additional posts coming this week, as a lot of the research is finally coming to fruition.
It's almost impossible to get anything printed offset, unless, of course, you're a newspaper or magazine making thousands of impressions; the way to go nowadays is the INDIGO, which, out about ten years now, has pretty much replaced offset for anything other than web press applications (For those who don't know the term web press, it has nothing to do with the internet. It's a huge printing press, with six or more colors, and the capability to print both sides of a sheet in a single pass. The paper comes off huge rolls which are stored either at the press or a separate warehouse where the temperature is controlled. The printed sheets then go through a folding stage, and then brought by a conveyer belt to its end where it's made ready to bind. It's not the kind of press you can have in your garage).
Small runs of offset are non-existent. Funny, I used to be a quality control foreman in an offset printing plant, one of the few in Long Island City. We had some big perfecting sheet-fed perfecting presses but also, a little gem of a four-color mini-press, which I was hoping to find to print one of the pieces. To no avail. A few short years and this print method is dead, buried, dust.
The design work, however, has been ongoing--material being produced weekly from the goings on in Washington and all its ramifications. There are very disturbing trends that merit exposure, but the work must get out immediately. Like a printed periodical (ha!), if it doesn't get out, it's stale, old, and, as we've discovered by this administration, immediately supplanted by a new barrage of plainly weird news.
Additional posts coming this week, as a lot of the research is finally coming to fruition.
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