Last week I wrote about screenprinting my cupcake zine, and this week I’m back with another printing post featuring Isabelle‘s artwork and ingenuity–and my first ever business card! Isabelle had wanted to design me an author business card for a while, and earlier this year she’d sketched out some sample art. She also bought a Gocco on eBay. What is a Gocco? It’s a Japanese screenprinting system, compact and very cleverly designed, but they aren’t produced anymore, so the only way to purchase machines and supplies is secondhand, generally online.

Last time, I tried to explain how screenprinting works; the Gocco also uses screenprinting, but the process is a little different than what it was for the cupcake zine. After Isabelle drew the final business card design digitally, she printed it out on paper on her laser printer. The Gocco machine is equipped for burning screens, so there’s no photo emulsion or exposure to sunlight. Instead, you place the printed design on the squishy, sticky printing block, slide a fresh screen into its slot, and place a box containing two flash bulbs on top of the machine. When you press down, the bulbs flash, burning the screen so that ink will pass through the areas corresponding to the printed design and not pass through elsewhere.

Ready to burn the screen

After burning the screen, you apply Gocco ink to the surface of the screen (which is then covered with a transparency so ink doesn’t get everywhere), slide it into its slot, put your paper or cardstock or whatever on the printing block, and press down to print. The stickiness of the block is helpful for keeping paper in place, and the grid on it is helpful for registration.

Printing the blue layer on the back of the card (the box with the flash bulbs is visible in the background, along with Gocco inks in the box)

The business card design was two-color. We first printed the blue layer on the back. Then came registration. The first time we tried printing cards, we printed the black layer on a transparency taped to the printing block to see where the black would print and then positioned a card with the blue layer already printed on it under the transparency to get the right alignment.

Ensuring proper registration of the black layer

The second time we printed, we got a bit smarter and burned the screen such that the cards could always be aligned with the edges of the printing block. This made registration easier.

The black layer included both the front and back of the card, so we printed two cards (one side of each) at a time. One press would print the black layer on top of the blue layer on the back of one card as well as the black text on the front of another card.

The full design

Finishing up production

After printing, Isabelle recycled some glossy cardstock to make a box and covered it with marbled paper bought at the Printers Fair!