the buzz around the hive: printing

The poster was birthed at the printer this week! It is so awesome! I can't wait for everyone to see it. So much work is shown in these prints. Its overwhelming and also super exciting to think about the next stage of this work's life- being out in the world, shakin the ground & watering seeds of change!

I wanted to show some of the pictures from this week. It was a much more satisfying week at the printer than last time, since we walked away with finalized posters in our hands. Woohoo!

This is the printer we print the poster on.

The printer is probably about 60 feet long. It is a model from the 60's (right? or is it the 50's?) and there are only a handful of these around the US. The guy Mike who runs the machine has been working with this printer for 7 years and is a PRO at this thing. Inspiring to watch him work.

Ever wonder what CMYK stands for? Well, it's the 4 ink colors that create almost everything that we see on any given printed page. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. These 4 pictures show the incredibly detailed rolling mechanism that helps the inks to perfectly evenly roll onto each page.

Cyan

Yellow

Black

Magenta

This is the blue plate of the poster running. AH! So cool!

This is Mike looking through a magnifying glass to see if the registration of the CMYK plates are lined up on the print itself.

This is the view inside the magnifying glass. Success! They are all lined up! If they weren't you would see tiny dots of one of those colors peeking out from under the layered black dots we see here.