Process: Andrew Combs

I finally finished my first poster at Hatch! I was given a 'Local Band Special,' (for an artist named Andrew Combs) something Hatch does to keep posters affordable for local bands. They don't have to pay as much because they basically have no say in the design of the poster, though we do still talk to them about what they want, and I was allowed to call the band's manager and describe the poster to him before I printed it, just to make sure I wasn't completely off the mark.


Andrew Comb's CD (which they nicely included in the job file) had a song on it called 'Hummingbird,' which I thought would be a great image for the poster. The manager also thought it would be a good idea, but unfortunately there was no hummingbird image in the shop. This is where working at Hatch is fun and tricky, because we have to design posters around what's available (for certain posters, like big jobs over 1000, we can carve a linocut, especially if the image is something we can re-use on a job in the future.)

I digress. We had no hummingbird, so I decided to try this 'singing bird' block. Here's a proof of the set poster with the bird, which would be printed as a second color so it would overlay the large 'combs' type.

Then, I began separating the color layers so I could print them in different runs. This is the first layer:

I called Andrew Comb's manager and described the layout to him over the phone, just to make sure it sounded like something they'd like. Unfortunately, he thought that if the bird wasn't a hummingbird it wouldn't make sense (and I was kind of worried it would read as Andrew Bird), so he suggested trying a different image. I came up with this awesome tractor because it was the most 'southern/Tennessee' type imagery I could find:

So I was able to lock up the second color layer to be printed:

Then, I mixed the ink:

Here's the first layer on the press, I love this teal color!

And the print from the first layer (below).

The large 'Combs' type was so old, it was warped in a lot of places and actually really hard to print. And unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of choices in replacing letters as these were the only ones I could find from this set.

Since printing takes a while, I was only able to finish the first color last week, so this week I put the second color on the press:

And here's an action shot of me printing it (courtesy of Laura!), during which it was pointed out that the ink matched my hair color exactly. Totally subconscious, I swear!

AND, here's the finished poster! Du du DAAA!

I printed 130 of these babies, and it took a while but I'm pretty happy with it considering it was my first Hatch poster ever :)