Glossary of Terms

(Click on a term for a more detailed explanation)

Letterpress printing Off-set Lithographic printing

Capitals and Lowercase Thermography Diestamping Engraved printing

Serif and sans-serif type Stock 4-colour process

The traditional form of putting ink onto stock. An image is carved or formed on wood or more usually now, metal.
In the case of the alphabet, each letter is created as a mirror-image. The top of the letter (face) is covered with a
thin film of ink, which is then pressed onto the stock to be printed.

This is the means by which most wet-ink printing is done now (rather than powder toner as with a photocopier).
Litho generates a flat image on the sheet from a smooth plate that has been chemically treated, in a very similar way
to a black and white photograph. It is called off-set, because the image from the plate, which is wrapped around a
metal cylinder, is transferred onto a rubber blanket on an adjacent cylinder. This creates a "reverse" image that is
transferred to the stock being printed. The whole process works because ink and water do not mix; the areas of the
plate where we do not want an image are treated so that water (applied to the plate before the ink) "sticks" to these
areas and the ink sticks everywhere else. It is a very fine balancing act between too much or too little water or ink!

Capitals and Lowercase

Not to be confused with big and small caps, which as the name suggests is
using a larger initial capital and then smaller capitals in place of lowercase letters. The term comes from the time
of letterpress printing when individual lead letters were held in cases, the capital letters being in the upper case
leaning over the lower case full of small letters.

Creating a raised effect by applying a dusting of fine acrylic powder to the litho or letterpress printed stock.
Excess powder is then knocked off and the powder only sticks to the wet ink. The sheet is heated and the
powder fuses to create the raised image. Too little heat and the powder does not fuse, too much and the stock can burn.

This is a traditional method of printing small areas of text or monograms. The letters for an address are physically
hammered (or stamped) onto a steel slug (or die) which is then used to print in the same way as engraved printing.

Traditionally for printing larger areas of text on sheets of stock using a copper plate that is
hand "chiseled" in reverse to form the letters or other motif required. The finished plate is covered
with ink and the excess is wiped off, leaving only the indentations with ink in them. The stock is
then pressed at extremely high pressure onto the plate and as the ink adheres better to the stock being
printed than the plate, the image is left on the sheet. Then the cycle is repeated. The image on the
sheet can be very fine and because the ink is thicker than litho or letterpress printing, the ink colour
is a better match to the "in the tin" colour. It also produces the raised image in the sheet. It is now
possible to produce plates using an etching process by which letters are photographically exposed
onto a specially treated copper plate before the plate is dipped in an acid bath. At present it is not
possible to produce the deliberate variations that hand engraving can produce.

A serifed type has little extensions to some of the letters and may have the appearance of someone
having "cut" the letters, as a stone-mason might (Garamond, Goudy, etc.). Sans-serif type tends
to look more modern (Helvetica, Arial, and many more).

This is the term used to describe the material to be printed on. It may be paper,
cards, T-shirts, tin cans, etc. It has nothing to do with Oxo or Bisto gravy!

This is generally done using off-set litho printing, whereby the 4 colours that can be used to
simulate all (or nearly all!) the colours of the rainbow, are applied to the stock to produce the finished
picture. The colours used are Cyan (Bright blue) Magenta (Deep pink), Yellow and Black. It is
sometimes referred to as "CMYK", the "K" meaning black! - I don't know why…yet! If you
look closely at any picture in a magazine or newspaper, you can see the dots that make up
the whole image. This is possibly one of the best "magic tricks" of our time, done on an
enormous scale and works even when you know the method!