Pressed

The benefits of press passing

Friday, June 25th, 2010

It is often the case that much of what we print is produced without the client being present. However, one of the advantages of Calverts being based in inner London is that local clients can press-pass their work.

Printing plates will have been made by this stage so  it could be expensive to make sweeping changes to approved artwork but press-passing does offer a cost-effective opportunity to check colour reproduction on the actual paper stock.

Please be aware that colour can only be adjusted in tracks parallel to the direction in which the sheet comes off the press. So if you were to increase the cyan (for example) in a picture at the grip edge of the sheet then everything that follows behind that on the sheet will also be affected. It’s easier to see this on press than explain it here so why not give us a call, an email, or even a job to show you what we mean!

Press-passing decisions should be made quite quickly. The press is already running and costs will be based on uninterrupted print production

While we do try to give accurate time-slots for clients to press-pass their work occasionally there may be a little bit of a wait. We’ll try to entertain you as best we can but if you should get bored, hungry, or both then Eddies Café, just around the corner from us on Mare Street, comes highly recommended…

Eddies Cafe

Photo by Emily Webber www.londonshopfronts.com

What Do You Mean, ‘Punchy’?

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Calverts is descended from the design and print wing of the Arts Lab, back in the ’70s, but after all this time we still wonder sometimes if designers and printers will ever speak the same language. To test the waters, we recently asked: “what do designers mean, when they ask printers to make their images look punchy?”

No two designers gave the same answer, so is it any wonder we sometimes get misunderstandings? Vincent said that punchy means “great repro (on images) to make CMYK rich and full”.  Our own Scumboni interpreted it as a request for “the sharpness and ink lift you get from printing on coated paper – but on uncoated”.  Our favourite answer was from John Wallet, who reckons punchy means “like full colour, but with really vivid oranges and greens” – in other words, Hexachrome for the price of CMYK.

On reflection, we came to the conclusion that ‘punchiness’, like ‘richness’, is one of those qualities designers look for when they’re anxious that the job should really impress the client and look great in their portfolio. As WDLtd told us, it’s a bit like when a client asks a designer to ‘jazz it up a bit’ – in other words, imbue it with that little, difficult-to-define, something extra.

What do you think?


That obscure object of design (and print)

Friday, December 18th, 2009

The tools of our trade are sometimes weird and often wonderful.
Here is a case in point:

mystery_pic

If you can tell us what these are and what they do then we’ll send a mystery prize to the first three correct answers… on an email to: info@calverts.coop


Letterpress lusciousness

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

After attending a workshop at Harrington and Squires, our designer Angie was enthused and lucky enough to get her hands on a classic 8 x 5 Adana table-top letterpress machine. Letterpress is the original printing process, as invented by Gutenberg. Today it’s rarely used by most commercial printers but a growing band of aficionados have fallen in love with the hands on, textured feel of the process. There is something inherently satisfying about wielding a compositing stick, metal type and some cornerstone quoins that you just don’t get from other print processes

The iconic Adana Eight-Five was launched in 1953. They continued to be produced in Twickenham until 1999 and rumour has it that a copy of the Adana is currently being made in Japan.

Digital is often sited as being the future of printing but not many digital presses can print onto 700gsm card, blind emboss, cut, perforate, crush your fingers and produce some beautiful print…

Adana_card


Revolution on paper

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

ROP

When the British Museum wanted to produce a programme of the upcoming Revolution on Paper exhibition they approached Calverts.

The brief – to achieve a critical colour match on the cover image, an original Diego Rivera print from 1932 and with a mix of pre-press wizardry, unbleached recycled paper + a bit of old-fashioned press passing we got finally got there. Or rather we will do, it’s still whizzing through the press at 10,000 sheets an hour.

Mexican printmaking flourished in the early part of the twentieth century, following the country’s first socialist revolution. The strong left-wing government which emerged emphasised art as a way of promoting revolutionary values which led to a pioneering programme to cover the walls of public buildings with vast murals, and later to setting up print workshops to produce works for mass distribution and education.

The British Museum’s Revolution on Paper exhibition will be the first in Europe focusing on the great age of Mexican printmaking in the first half of the twentieth century. The exhibition runs from 22 October – 5 April 2010. Admission free.