On Tuesday I was lucky enough to go and visit Generation Press in Brighton. It was an eye opening experience into process driven print design. Good to see Anand again and meet the team involved in producing their excellent work. I was amazed at the scale of the operation. For some reason I thought it would be far bigger. All of the equipment is in a small barn - a litho machine, a heat-press from 1965, guillotine, duplexing bed and litho plate maker. Incredible to think of the level of work coming out of such a small printers. I guess that due to the size of the operation more time and care can be spent on each job. The emphasis really is on quality not quantity - the reason why GP are well respected throughout the industry.
Andy, who runs the 46 year old heat-press for foil blocking really is an artist. He takes great care on every job, adjusting the pressure etc so the relief of the print is perfect and the foil binds to the stock at the optimum temperature. Seriously impressive stuff.
Examples of the dies which are heated and used to press the foil on to the stock. GP use brass, copper and magnesium dies - copper and brass don't degrade and retain their design much better than the magnesium ones. For this reason Magnesium are used for small print runs.
The vast selection of foils on offer:
Foil running over the face of the heated die:
Finished Print:
Whilst I was looking around Anand showed me a seven colour foil job. I'm not a huge fan of the design but as an exercise in foiling it is very impressive. Andy's registration is bang on!
Litho ink library:
Colour proof:
Jobs awaiting the chop on the guillotine:
Such a good day. I learnt a hell of a lot about the process of commercial print production (my reason for contacting GP) that will inform my own practice. Hopefully I can go back and see a job being produced from start to finish.
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