Tutorial Transcript

Welcome to the Exhibit Printing studio. Today I am going to make a short video on how to deal with a print that arrives to you that doesn’t want to lay flat. It is common for prints to be sent out rolled up in tubes. Also, the paper stock is roll fed into a printer so the paper might be sitting rolled up tight on a shelf for a year which means it is not uncommon. Hopefully, this demonstration will guide you in how to counter roll a print without damaging it.

Ok, so here we have a wonderful print by the artist Filfury. You can find a link to his work below this transcript. As you can see it is not laying flat. You can just place tissue on top of it and a large flat object with some weights. Leave it overnight and it should flatten out. However, if you don’t have time for this people often want to just roll it the other direction. This is fine in principle however, if you do it wrong you will damage your print. It will just look like a piece of paper that has been rolled both ways. Hopefully, this demonstration will show you a more efficient way.

This is a 3-inch core which is about the size you want to work with. Firstly, lay some tissue down and place the print face down. What you want to avoid doing is just placing the tube on top of the print, pinning the print to the tube with your thumbs and just starting to roll the print the other direction. The reason being, often, these two pinch points will leave indentation in the paper and damage your print. With this print we have got a margin on it (as it hasn’t been trimmed down) so it is not going to do too much damage, but there is a far better way. Take another piece of tissue paper and place it under the print, giving yourself a decent tail on this side. Now finally place one last piece of tissue paper on top. The print is now sandwiched in between the bottom bit of tissue and a top bit of tissue. Now, when we start rolling the graphic forward, the print edge is lifted with a perfectly even amount of pressure. I will just take this tissue along with it. You don’t need to push hard, no pressure is required. When you get to the end just hold it there for maybe 30 seconds. If when you release the print it hasn’t flattened out, you can just repeat the process. If you wait too long you are just going to end up with a print that is rolled the other direction and you would have to turn it over and start again.

Now we have a print that lays flat. I hope you found this tutorial useful. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us at Exhibit Printing.

Artist’s portfolio: www.filfury.com