London, U.K., Tuesday, May 17, 2016 —
Partnering with a world-renowned artist, Kodak recently had the opportunity to show off its impressive printing technology to create covers for We Can’t Do This Alone: Jefferson Hack the System. The book redefines the purpose of alternative media in the 21st century, drawing on a wealth of innovative projects to artfully map out a bright future for radical publishing. It contains a series of original artworks devised by Jefferson Hack and Ferdinando Verderi, bringing to life 25 iconic quotes from Jefferson Hack’s editorial career.
The project features 5,000 different first editions, each with its own book jacket design and printed with Kodak’s unique technology. As limited editions, each of the 5,000 copies is individually numbered and features a completely unique cover that has been created using Kodak printing technology. The idea came out of a conversation with the author himself.
“When I spoke with Jefferson and told him about the ability to create unique covers for his book, he was immediately excited by the potential of our technology,” said Dany Atkins, VP Brand & Creative for Kodak. “We work with artists all the time, using Kodak’s technology to help artists realise their creative vision. We are thrilled to be part of the Hack the System project.”
Most inkjet printing systems constrain the design process as compared to traditional offset lithography presses, but with the Kodak Prosper 6000, Jefferson Hack’s team was able to expand the design process with virtually infinite variability of cover designs, while still enjoying the gloss paper stock and print quality they were accustomed to. Art director Ferdinando Verderi created a bespoke ‘algorithm’ of imagery, which was fed into the software and was manifested differently on each cover.
The project highlights Kodak’s cutting edge printing technology in astounding ways. The Kodak Prosper 6000 prints on glossy papers at 10.8 feet per second, which equated to 5.9 book covers per second; all 5,000 were finished in just under 15 minutes. The Kodak 700 Print Manager (the image processor and press controller) transmits a total of 13.9 Gbit/second of image data to the press for printing, equivalent amount of data required to run 9,000 HD TVs simultaneously. Most impressively, the Kodak Prosper 6000 digital press used in the project create 56 billion drops of ink per second.