Production Lesson(s)

This project brought together many of the things we do in our letterpress studio, but rarely all together. We utilized the entirety of our Vandercook's printable area, and our artwork varied from large fills to fine type to a bitmapped photo. We had to find happy mediums for ink levels and pressure.

We needed to modify our color scheme on press. The original light blue we specified looked better as it tended towards gray, and the bright orange that we originally specified did not integrate well until we added some of the bluish gray to it, making it veer towards rust.

It was difficult to maintain tight registration as the paper stretched and warped each time it passed through the press. The finishing house had to make a decision around where to register the die cut as the artwork drifted a bit. They wisely chose to focus on the front cover and spine.

Finally, our first gluing scheme didn't work out too well (luckily we only glued 50 of them initially). We had placed too many strips of adhesive around the pockets, and they were too snug. Once we took away most of the strips that ran horizontally under each pocket, and let the slit and paper do some of the gripping work, the pockets started to behave better.