In defence of the hickey

Welcome to print.coop, the ink-on-paper pages from specialist printing and design co-operative, Calverts. We produce high quality, economical and sustainable, commercial print. We're experts in the latest and best litho and digital printing technology, as well as traditional craft applications. We know almost every commodity grade or 'designer' FSC® or recycled paper on the market, and can tell you about the most cost effective formats.

our approach

Why work with Calverts?

Print buyers come to Calverts for four main reasons - our creativity, quality, expert advice and track record in sustainable printing.

We have proper conversations with our clients, to help them realise their print ambitions - from fairtrade teaching tools and low carbon travel guides to art and science comics and high end books. There's almost no print idea we can't turn into reality.

We have a hard-earned reputation as 'green' printers. We're always investing, learning and sharing what we know about every aspect of low environmental impact communications.

And Calverts worker co-operative business model means we're able to improve continuously, by putting our money into state-of-the art repro and printing hardware, software and training - instead of paying dividends to outside owners and shareholders.

All this adds up to higher quality, higher impact print; timely delivery - and a better print experience.

Get in touch and we'll help you print something beautiful.

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

Standards & certification

Design and print affect the environment. Calverts has therefore implemented an environmental management system to the requirements of ISO 14001 to reduce our negative environmental impacts.

We are committed to comply with or exceed the requirements of environmental legislation and other environmental initiatives to which we subscribe. We are also committed to the prevention of pollution and continual improvement.

Our objectives are to:

1) Reduce our carbon emissions

2) Reduce the impact of paper use on natural resources

3) Improve resource efficiency and recycling

We have set up programmes to achieve this with targets and time scales.

Find out more about our environmental initiatives.

Print

We haven't exactly been inundated with emails identifying these mystery objects.

They are, of course, hickey pickers, which are hand tools used by printers to remove the minute particles of hard ink or paper fibre which can sometimes work their way onto the surface of a lithographic printing plate or blanket while the press is running.

These blemishes - or hickeys - can result in a 'bullseye' (or 'doughnut' if you're American) appearing on the printed sheet - basically a small uninked spot in the printed image.

Hickeys are widely considered to be imperfections. Part of the unholy alliance which also includes catch-up, scumming, showthrough, misregistration, poor fit and setoff - all designed to thwart the printer and aggrieve the client. But does the much maligned hickey deserve such a bad press?

These days letterpress printing is admired for it tactile quality and the 'bite' it gives to the printed piece - yet in the past letterpress minders would go to great lengths to prevent 'bite', applying and removing layers of tissue paper to the underside of metal type in order to retain the smooth surface of the printed sheet. The debossed effect, or 'bite' which gives letterpress printing a unique characteristic was, back then, considered a flaw.

Hickeys today are thought of as flaws in the print process but such flaws, in rare doses, can add something unique to otherwise identical copies.

The Inverted Jenny stamp and the Wicked Bible are result of errors in the printing process - errors that differentiated them, made them more desirable. You don't get 'bite' in lithographic printing and you don't get hickeys in digital printing - so when digital printing eventually replaces litho (as litho replaced letterpress) will future afficionados of print ephemera think of hickeys in an entirely new light?