Free Letterpress Plates (as available) and Plate Advice for Beginning Printers
Are you new to letterpress printing? One of the most frustrating things for me early on was the fact that whenever I wanted to try printing something, I had to order plates. And if you are in my shoes, you’ll know that platemakers have minimum order requirements and charge shipping, so the cost of ordering plates to test out your press adds up. When I started out, I was spending $60-$100 on plates just to test them out. And a lot of times I didn’t even use them all because—well because printing is hard and you will probably not print 5 test designs when you start out.
Even though old plates aren’t always in perfect condition, they could be a great way to get started and sort of get a feel for how different sizes of designs and things print. So if you are a beginner letterpress printer who could benefit from some old plates but you don’t care what the design is or if it’s in pristine condition, then send me a message over on Instagram @hannahgallantco or send me an email at hello@hannahgallant.com and request some old plates from me. I would be more than happy to send you a few. I am not the greatest at cleaning plates that I’m done with so I cannot guarantee that they’ll be in the best condition, but I can send some anyway.
And if you have any general questions about letterpress printing, I really do my best to help people and answer questions. I know that a lot of excellent printers out there get SO many questions and just do not have time to answer them without charging for their time, but as of now, I don’t have that problem, so I’m happy to give you some support if you need help.
Where to Order Plates
Of course, if you have your own designs you want to try printing, then you need to order your own plates! Well then, I personally would highly recommend Concord Engraving. They are based in Connecticut. They have a really fast turnaround, and seem to have the smallest minimum price I’ve seen. If I order a plate from them I usually get it within just a few days. And if there are any issues with your design, they email you really quickly to get more information from you. I’m not affiliated with them, I just highly recommend their services!
There are lots of platemakers out there, so definitely shop around if you want to, but also don't. Just go with Concord. Trust me.
Using All Black
When you send your plates to the platemaker, you have to make sure that your design is using only black. That means, even if your design looks black on your screen, you may need to go to your color panel and make sure that your CMY values are 0% and your K value is 100%.
INCORRECT: Black with random CMY values
CORRECT: Black with 100% K and 0% CMY
Ganging your Designs
When you design your plates, make sure to “gang” them. In Illustrator, I like to group the elements of one design together, and I copy and paste them all onto a new document that I just entitle “Plates mm-dd-yy”. I move them around, rotate them, etc., to fit them as closely together as I can while still being able to cut them, and then I send one big file with all the designs on them. Make sure you take note of your platemaker’s maximum size and make sure you don’t go over it.
When I receive my plates, if I feel uncertain about where to cut (I have definitely cut off parts of a design before), I go back to my Illustrator document and click on design groups. It’ll highlight the whole group and then I either cut it out or draw lines around designs with a sharpie. If I have a ton of designs, sometimes I write a few details on the plate too just so I don’t have to look around so long.
Organizing Plates
If I have multiple designs from the same project/client and multiple projects on a plate, grab some ziplock bags and put all the plates from the same project in a bag. Then label it and put any other relevant information on it.
How to set up your plate so it’s easier to remove from your base when you’re done printing
Okay, if you haven’t figured out how to do this already, you may have gotten some plastic stuck up your fingernail (which HURTS really badly) and then you don’t feel like printing anymore because your finger hurts. I figured out a way to make peeling plates off the base so much easier, and it is not using a palette knife to scrape it off. You have to remember to do this before sticking your plate on your base. When you’re removing the backing on your plates, peel a little bit of the sticky stuff off the actual plate as well in a corner that is NOT near your design. If it is too close, you risk affecting the thickness of the design and can make one tiny corner of the design not type high. This will ruin your plate.
So find a corner of your plate that does NOT have part of the design near it, and peel some of the sticky stuff off the actual plate. That way, you have an edge on the base that lifts off easily without needing to sacrifice your fingernails when it comes time to take the plate off.
Minimum Dot and Line widths
I know you’ve heard this before, but you will probably forget once or twice anyway. MAKE SURE YOU CHECK YOUR MINIMUM DOT AND LINE WIDTH. Different platemakers will usually have their own recommendations, so I’m not going to put a recommendation on here because I don’t want to mess you up. But whoever your platemaker is, make sure you check their minimum weights. And when you go to print something, sometimes you can actually see a dot on the plate but just a little bit of the surface got washed off. In order words, it looks like there’s a dot, but it’s not getting inked/printed because the little dot might not be type high. So don’t just check your plates, and don’t just check your blind print tests pre-inking. After you set up your prints, MAKE SURE YOU LOOK CLOSELY FOR ALL YOUR DOTS AND LINES. The WORST feeling in the world is printing 200 invitations on handmade paper and realizing you are missing a dot. You will be miserable. And the worst part is you might not have enough time to get another order of handmade paper in time to reprint. You might try to cut out a dot and print it separately. But who wants to go through and print a dot 200 times. Not you. So MAKE SURE YOU DOUBLE CHECK BEFORE YOU PRINT EVERYTHING.
And a word to the wise: if you have a pretty small dot, check again after printing every 30-50 prints. I have lost dots halfway through printing because of inking problems (also my press has a lot of little damaged parts that I find as I get better at printing and inconsistent inking is a problem that I have to constantly work on because of my press), and I have not had time to fix them. So I have lost little dots before. It’s truly the worst feeling, like a pit in your stomach. If you are diligent early on and make sure you pay attention to little details like this, hopefully the likelihood of making similar mistakes will diminish, especially as you become a more proficient printer.
