This turned out to be one of the most challenging print runs of my career so far—even though it was only three colors. The color separations were ambitious to begin with, with very little wiggle room for registration error, and critically important overprints that had to be saturated to look right. The level of detail pushed the limit of anything I’d attempted on a high-volume run before (not including the foil variants we printed 1,200 total).

I used tiny stochastic dots instead of a traditional halftone for the subtle shading, which meant we had to print pretty fast to keep the screen open. Probably the most difficult—and unanticipated—challenges of the run was the heavy, full-bleed ink coverage’s effect on the paper.

Besides sticking to the screen constantly, the heavyweight paper would curl up at the short edges, an issue greatly exacerbated by the dry winter (and radiator heat) conditions of our shop in January. As usual we worked through every challenge, made some killer prints by the skin of our teeth, and learned a whole helluva lot along the way.