A Full Redesign, and Now to Print

Since  the original LGBTQ+ was illegible, I had to reconsider the visuals. I redesigned the letters, still in outline, still in process colors, but in a row.

The printer who I'd wanted to print it went out of business as I was waiting for him to quote the job. Grrr. The disappointment is that the fellows over at Highland Press didn't mind me rolling into town to oversee the job to see it print, whereas other presses, would.

Soliciting bids from printers in the NYC area is a drag. "You don't want to print this digitally? Do you know the difference between inkjet and offset?" The usual condescending crap from combed-over print salesmen, although they've mostly graduated from the wood-paneled office with fax machine, bald eagle inspirational posters and  male desk chachkas.

I miss the days of when I was fore(wo)man at a small, fairly horrible press in Long Island City. I'd get the guys there to print just about anything in between runs for BAM membership offers.

Tracey Moffat, from Scarred for Life, offset print
1994. Tate Gallery, London.

Another issue with printing my job offset is the size press. The press where I was a foreman, we had a 4-color Heidelberg GTO (see above), an awesome press that was perfect for small and short runs. The college where I work had three 1-color GTOs, but had to dismantle its printing lab for many reasons--the most obvious one that offset printing is no longer relevant. Shame, but not a shame. And, using it as a fine art machine is beyond what most pressmen want to do; and nothing associated with offset printing is environmentally friendly.

That's not to say that offset was never used as a fine art medium. Tracey Moffat, an Australian artist and filmmaker, used offset printing to create her Scarred For Life I and II series among many other works that was wildly popular in the mid-1990s. At the Art Institute of Chicago, they had a 1-color press (not sure the brand), available to execute prints. Other than E, printing my contact with offset has been limited. However, it's interesting to report that a product now exists to create plastic offset plates that can be made from a laser printer and produce up to 10,000 impressions. The drawback is that the resolution is 133 dpi--lower than the sharpness of a newspaper image.