U.S. Postal Service uses wrong art - printer gets the blame

Why is it that the printer is always blamed when there's an artwork mistake?

Recently the U.S. Postal Service released this new 44 cent stamp:
honoring Liberty Enlightening the World, better known as the Statue of Liberty. The U.S. Postal Service issued a press release about the new stamp stating: "The statue, located on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, was designed by French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi."

Unfortunately, that is not the statue featured on the stamp. Instead it is a half size replica located in front of he New York-New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas Nevada.
Liberty lighting the way in Las Vegas.
The original on the left and the replica 2,600 miles away in Las Vegas.
The original press release (now updated) makes no mention of the statue shown on the stamp being the Las Vegas replica rather than the New York original.

Unfortunately Time magazine referred to the Post Office error in these words: "Even the Post Office didn't pick up on the printing error" and "perhaps the original message of the stamp has been lost in the misprint" (Click HERE for the full Time magazine story).

It seems that the printer always gets the blame when things go wrong.

Errol H. R. Etienne - April 28, 1941 - April 22, 2011

I first met Errol Etienne when he had a graphic design studio in Montréal, Québec. My wife was his "mechanical man" and prepared all his camera-ready artwork. He was a profound influence in my attitude towards the graphic arts as he epitomized the complete commercial artist excelling at design, illustration, photography, and typography.
A few pages from "Brown Things" a self promotion book written and illustrated by Errol and screen printed on handmade Japanese paper.
Étienne was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1941, but spent most of his childhood in Québec, Canada. At the age of 27, in 1968, he graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, California.
The "Incredible Fuzzy Wonder Book" a small promotional book featuring various moustachioed celebrities including Errol and partner Jim Carpenter produced during his brief Toronto stay.
In the mid-seventies he moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he did business under the name of the "Frog and Bison" "Frog" being a reference to his years in Montréal, Quebec, and "Bison" for a former associate in Montana. At that time Errol also operated a studio/gallery, the "Frog and Swan" with artist/calligrapher Robin Arkell. Errol embodied no-compromise professionalism: "I don't let people make changes in my work because it's so personal. I know production and what the job needs, and the only thing that's important is the end product. How you get to that is the problem because the only standard is that it must be excellent. There is really is no excuse for a mediocre final product."

Errol's career veered off track in the early 1980s due to illness and it wasn’t until after a liver transplant in 1994 that he could return to his craft, but found the need to work differently in a different market. “When I came out there were computers and everything had changed for graphic designers.” So Errol gave up graphic design work and with his wife Jan became a vagabond and worked in a “mobile studio,” a GMC motorhome that took them across the country, painting, meeting with collectors and selling his work at private shows and small town markets.
"The light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly."

The Wayback View - Printshop business cards

A few interesting business cards used by printers back in the day.

Today, "Steam Power" is sometimes used to signify an old-fashioned analog workflow. The slogan: "Prices to Suit the Times" perhaps indicates that the pricing goes up and down with the stock market.
Thompson had another steam powered printshop. No need to mention the city where it was located though.

A not very novel way to promote a novelty printer.
At the turn of the 19th Century towns were small enough that there was no need to give the actual address on the business card. Everyone knew where you did business.
If you need packaging for fruit, vegetables, and tigers then this is the printer for you.

Competition - A lesson from the 2002 Olympics

Competition is at the core of most business ventures - including printing. Sometimes a lesson for success can be learned from other competitive endevors as in this one provided by Steven Bradbury at the 2002 Olympics.

Steven Bradbury (the tall guy) competing at the 2002 Olympics. Click the "Play" arrow to watch this short video.
Proof that it pays to never give up, regardless of how you may be viewing the competition from your current vantage point.

Ghosting

A printing "ghost" is an unwanted image resulting from the printing system itself. There are basically two kinds: mechanical and chemical.

Mechanical ghosts are usually visible as soon as the press sheet lands in the delivery section of the press. There are three types of mechanical ghosts: starvation, blanket, and plate.

Starvation ghosts

A "light print ghost" appears in large solid or dark halftones either as a light or dark image of another part of the press form. It is caused by the layout of the press sheet elements combined with the limitations of the press inking system.Light print starvation ghost.
This can happen when graphic elements contact the form rollers on the press just ahead of large areas of heavy solid ink coverage. The graphic elements remove more ink from the form roller than the press can make up before these rollers come in contact with the solid. As a result the solid receives less ink in those areas and the graphic elements appear as a light image in the solid.

Strategies to avoid this problem include: rotating or "cocking" the press form relative to the press sheet so that the graphic elements are no longer in the same inking zones, changing the imposition or design to eliminate the problem, running the job on a larger press with greater inking capacity, making sure that water levels are run at a minimum, running on a larger press sheet and adding "take-off" bars - graphic elements - in the non-live image area of the sheet to even out ink usage.

A "dark print ghost" occurs when knocked out graphic elements immediately precede an area of heavy ink coverage.Dark print starvation ghost.
This is the opposite of a light print ghost. Here, the knock out can cause excess ink to remain on rollers in the reverses causing a dark image of the graphic to appear in the large solid.

The same strategies used to avoid a light print ghost are also used to avoid a dark print ghost.

A "plate ghost" or a "blanket ghost" appears when graphic elements intrude into the printing as latent images.Plate/blanket ghost.
This problem usually occurs on multicolor presses where the press form on one of the color units sensitizes the plate of the following color unit. Proper desensitizing of the affected plate and ink adjustments should correct the problem, however, sometimes the plate and/or blanket may need to be replaced.

Comment below submitted by "Otherthoughts"

For what it's worth? The how, why and when that I've used ink take-off bars in the past.

Solid ink Borders were the most prone to a starvation type of mechanical (ghosting?) in my experience, especially PMS spot color borders.

In my sheetfed experience, often there was a bit of space available for ink take-off bars, our standard sheet size was 19" x 25". Despite there being some space available, ink take-off bars were never used to make a job easier running and nicer looking as a matter of course by anyone other than myself. I employed them as a stripper because I knew that the pressman would appreciate the help (being a former pressman myself), and because I knew it would produce a better printed result.

The type of job that really needs them, doesn't come along all that often, here's an example.

Lets say the form below shows a reflex blue to be run as a fifth color. And lets say that the reflex blue borders will trim out to be 1/2" wide on all four edges.Without ink take-off bars, ink usage ranges from 17.125" to 2.125", a ratio of 8 to 1
With ink take-off bars, ink usage ranges from 17.125" to 3.562", a ratio of 4.8 to 1

Layout Details
Limited the bleed at both the gripper and tail to 1/16" each. Butted the pages together at the circumferential center line mark and finally shrunk the Color-bar down to 1/8". This leaves 1 7/16" to implement the take-off bars on a 19" x 25" sheet.

Gripper margin = 00.312
8.5 x 11 x 2 = 17.000
Bleeds x 2 = 00.125
Color bar = 00.125
Total = 17.562

Notes As you well know, ink take-off bars are useful with low total ink coverage scenarios as well, but such scenarios have nothing to do with ghosting/starvation. Regardless, prepress failed to employ ink take-off bars in this scenario just as well. If there was no room for ink take-off bars on a job, we did without them, which was essentially "No Change" from what we did in all cases. :)

Gordo's response

The iconic National Geographic magazine cover border is a great example of this problem - but uses a different solution. They don't have enough space on the press form to add ink take-off bars, so instead, in anticipation of the increase in darkness at the top and bottom of the picture window, they use a screen tint of the solid spot color in those sections of the border.Left: as the cover would print with a solid spot yellow border. Right: as the cover prints with the top and bottom sections of the spot yellow halftone screened.
The screened part of the spot yellow bar gets darker on press due to the mechanical ghosting effect and ends up the same color as the solid yellow on either side.

Chemical ghosts are related to the chemical activity of inks as they go through their normal drying process. Their appearance is usually unpredictable and, unfortunately, become evident only after the job has been printed and in the press delivery pile for a period of time.

Chemical ghosts may appear as reproductions of one side, or part of a press form, in the solid area of another part. Their appearance can be erratic - showing up in one area of the printed sheet but not in a similar or duplicate part. They usually appear as a dull ghost on a glossy background or as a glossy ghost on a duller background.

What makes an ink glossy or dull.

When an ink appears glossy, it is the result of enough ink vehicle forming a film on the surface of the paper to provide a smooth covering layer for the pigment particles in the ink.Graphic representation of the edge of a sheet of paper showing ink pigment particles suspended in the ink vehicle.
When an ink appears dull, it is the result of the ink vehicle draining from the surface into the paper so that the irregularities of the individual pigment particles and paper surface are not covered with a thick enough film of ink vehicle to create a gloss appearance.

How inks dry

When ink is printed on a press it goes through two distinct phases:

1 - Setting - the drainage and leveling of the ink vehicle into the paper coating or fibers. This causes the ink to "gel" and become immobilized.

2 - Oxidation - the polymerization of the ink vehicle into a solid mass creating a hard film.

As the film of ink oxidizes it releases gaseous by-products. As a result, the ink printed on the second side of the press sheet can be exposed to the gaseous by-products from the oxidation of the first side if it is printed at a critical point in the first side's ink drying cycle. Those gasses affect the drying rate of the second side ink selectively as the sheets are stacked in the press's delivery. This results in an ink film that has been immobilized at two very different rates, and therefore has areas of high or low gloss which reflect the image on the other side.Graphic representation of sheets of paper in the delivery of the press showing gaseous by-products released as the ink dries.

The Wayback View – 1984, Newsweek - Apple's Advertising Coup

Recently the US celebrated two major events - the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan and the 45th Superbowl football game.

While many people are aware of Apple's historic "1984" Superbowl commercial (spoofed by Motorola's Xoom introduction ad in this year's Superbowl) that introduced the Macintosh computer, few are aware that Apple achieved another advertising coup that same year. In the fall of 1984, Apple purchased all of the advertising space in Newsweek magazine's special edition commemorating Ronald Reagan's landslide win of a second term as President. This was the first, and possibly only time that an advertiser has purchased all the advertising space in a magazine.

Below, for the record, are all the ads from that historic Newsweek issue.

Click on images to enlarge