What Drives Us? CMYK Dither Screenprint

Twenty years of screen printing knowledge, deliberately broken apart. This is what happens when you take everything you know about traditional CMYK separations and push it somewhere new.

What Drives Us? CMYK Dither Screenprint — A 4-layer stochastic CMYK screenprint. Technical process meets vintage imagery. But not the way you'd expect.

The image gets broken down using stochastic dithering — a digital technique that scatters CMYK dots randomly rather than in the regular grid patterns of traditional halftones. It's controlled chaos. Each colour layer builds on the last, creating depth and texture that shifts depending on how close you stand.

This isn't nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. The vintage packaging imagery gets filtered through a contemporary lens — literally. The process creates something that couldn't exist in either era alone. Too digital for the original packaging designers, too analogue for today's digital printers.

Four passes through the press. Cyan, magenta, yellow, black. Each layer hand-pulled on 310gsm Somerset satin — paper with enough weight to hold the detail but enough tooth to catch the ink properly. The stochastic dots don't sit flat like commercial printing. They have presence, texture you can feel with your fingertips.

The deckled edges aren't decoration — they're what happens when you tear handmade paper rather than cut it. Rough, irregular, alive. No two prints have identical edges, even within this edition of 20.

This comes from questioning everything about how CMYK is supposed to work. Commercial printers aim for predictable, repeatable colour. This embraces the variables — the slight registration shifts, the way hand-pulled pressure changes the dot structure, the way Somerset paper responds differently to each pass.

Details:

• 4-layer stochastic hand-pulled CMYK screen print
• Limited edition of 20
• B2 700 x 500mm with deckled edge
• 310gsm Somerset satin paper
• Signed and embossed
• Sold unframed

Shipping: Wrapped in acid-free tissue and shipped in a sturdy cardboard tube.

Care: Keep away from direct sunlight and moisture. Frame with UV-protective glass for longevity.

This is for people who understand that the best work happens when technique serves an idea, not the other way around. When you know enough about the rules to break them properly.