After work Friday I began the long, quiet drive to Hastings, Nebraska, girlfriend in tow, to spend the weekend with Bennett and his wife letterpressing our opus to teamwork. We arrived late, and didn’t immediately get to work; there was catching up to do, and good times to be had. Eventually Bennett started setting the type. This took about seven hours.

Lucy the Letterpress was old. She had a beauty that defied her years, though, and still knew how to run a good plate. That much was completely amazing to me. Bennett had already done the first color - the blue log - and so it was onto the second color: Orange.

We did a lot of preliminary set-up and registration. We’re not a printer with unlimited resources, we were positioning everything by hand. After a long trial-and-error period we were off and running. By running, I mean Bennett was furiously trying to keep up with Lucy’s pace without getting his fingers smashed into oblivion. My job was to stack the good prints and sort out the bad, watch for ink coverage, and drink. I think I handled all aspects of my job pretty well.

We wound down around 4:30 in the morning, followed by the cleanup, which was mostly Bennett.

Sleep till 2, fast-forward to the evening, when we started the setup MUCH earlier. It was a bit easier getting the plates ready this time, and registration was a snap.

At this point I’d like to pause and point out that mixing PANTONE colors by hand is pretty difficult. Getting a match? Ha.

We ran a few tests of the final mamby-pamby color and proceeded to pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. One problem: The heavy ink started sucking pages into Lucy. Well, we thought, we can fix that. So we pulled an old printer’s trick and drew a rubber-band between our two gripper arms. That would help hold the page in place the extra half-second it would need to stay put.

Unfortunately the rubber band pulled one of our gripper arms about a half-inch into the printing area and one impression completely destroyed our plate. That’s right, kids, tighten those bolts on your gripper arms! Or you’ll ruin your entire project. It cut the head off the piece and we had to stop printing all together. Out of the whole project and a weekend of printing, we wound up with 15 posters. 15 out of a projected 150.

We’ll keep you posted on the RETURN OF THE DESIGNOFF when the new plate arrives, and when we get the bulk-mail version ready for press. Until then, stay sharp, designers of the world! And always respect your letterpress.