We designed + printed this project several months ago, and I’ve been meaning to blog about it. It’s a project that I am very proud of. You see, these cards are for a sweet little boy named Jack. Jack’s mom and I are good friends. Jack happens to love pirates and perhaps pretends that he’s a captain – Captain Jack Sparrow, that is.

When I got the opportunity to design stationery for him, I knew a pirate had to be involved. And a pirate wouldn’t be a pirate without an eye patch. So, designing began, and client approval followed.

The story doesn’t end there, though. I knew when I created this design that it would test our registration ability. By registration, I mean in order for these to print correctly, the placement of the artwork had to be perfect. This pirate stationery is a two color job, and with this particular design, registration is crucial. The silver ink had to line up perfectly with the yellow ink in several key places. With the ink colors aligned perfectly, a nice + even white outline around the pirate illustration would be created.

The way letterpress printing works, each color has to be printed independently from the next. So, for this job, all of the graphics that needed to be printed in yellow were grouped together in one piece and lined up. Then, we printed a pass of yellow ink on all of the cards. Next, we cleaned the yellow ink off the ink disc and rollers. Then, we had to do the same with the graphics that needed to be printed in silver and made a second pass with silver ink.

This all seems simple, but letterpress is tedious. Patience is definitely needed. Lining up the artwork needing silver ink was challenging. We had to manually shimmy the artwork a hair this way and a hair that way to get it just right. We would shimmy it, pull a print and repeat.

Above, are our first attempts. Both are unacceptable prints because on each of them, the registration is off. On the top, the silver is shifted ever so slightly creating a bend in the continuous circle. The shift also created a gap of white on the ends of the bandanna. The silver is also overlapping the yellow by just the tiniest bit. Do you see the darker line that was created where the bandanna and pirate face meet? Go ahead and click the picture to zoom in if you need to. The bottom print is an example of the registration being off even further.

As you can see by the very first picture, the tale of the pirate has a very happy ending. After several patient + determined attempts, we nailed the registration and knocked out a set of beautiful cards for Jack.

Oh, and do you see the puff of the eye patch? It’s my favorite part of this illustration. It makes me smile.