Yesterday, I made photopolymer plates of the artwork for my letterpress project in class. I had no idea what was involved with that process (I thought you just sent out Illustrator files and they’d send you the plates – which you can, it’s just way more expensive), so I was very excited to learn all about the magic involved. It happens here:
Notice the middle section glowing alluringly? That’s where you vacuum your plates and film onto a board and expose it to UV light for 3 minutes. Then you put it in the washer on top, which is full of water and brushes, and wash your plates for 4 minutes and 40 seconds (exactly, or else). Then you rinse the plates, dry them completely with a blowdryer (if you’re me, you’ll burn yourself 20 times), put them in the EZ-Bake oven on the bottom for 10 minutes, then re-expose them to UV for another 5 minutes. After that, slap some adhesive on the back, and you’ve got yourself some plates to print from.
I had some time to set type last night, too, after a prolonged search through the type guide to find a font that came in both 14 point and 60 point (later revised to 48 point), and that had more than 6 o’s. Goudy Bold, I’m looking at you here.
Oh man. I’m way excited to see how it turns out!!
that is a craft and a half. really cool stuff.
That is so cool! I always wondered how they got all the custom designs in letterpress.