For most printed material, the method of printing is the means to the end. As long as the result looks good it doesn’t really matter how things were actually printed. Heck, from a printing point of view, noticing how something was printed is arguably a production failure since the standard processes are intended to make the printer’s hand as invisible as possible.
As a print and design geek though, one of my favorite things are designs that not only do something interesting with the printing but use the printing as a design feature in and of itself. Designs where I not only notice the printing method but which highlight the fingerprints of the printer.
There are actually two baseball card designs from my youth which do this. The first is 1985 Fleer. Lots of people love this set for the colorful borders and interesting photography. I admit that I like it for this as well. What is especially interesting to me though are the grey borders. I’ve seen some people call them grey. I’ve seen others call them burlap and compare them to the textured borders on 1983 Fleer or 1968 Topps.
So let’s take a closer look. On the left, 1985 Fleer. On the right, 1970 Topps. Both borders are basically the exact same color: just black ink printed at close to 40%. The only difference? The way the dots are arranged on the paper, specifically the angle of the dots.
Traditionally, when a halftone* is printed by itself it’s printed at a 45° angle.** This minimizes the screen pattern and results in a color that we tend to view as solid and patternless. 1970 Topps’s border is a textbook example of how this works. Zoom in on the photo and, if you can get your brain to not see things as just grey,*** you can see that the rows of dots are at 45° angles and produce somewhat of a checkerboard effect.
*Previous posts about halftones on this blog look at 2017 Topps releases, 2018 Heritage, and 2019 Flagship and Heritage.
**I could write a post just about traditionally-printed screen angles but there’s already a good one on the web.
***Something my brain has a hard enough time doing since the entire point of the 45° angle/screen is to confuse your brain.
1985 Fleer though is printed at 0°—instead of a checkboard effect we have a clear grid of dots in rows and columns. This creates an effect where many people notice the actual pattern of the dots rather than treating the area as a flat grey color. I was unaware of this as a kid but it’s something I love about the design now. It’s an elegantly simple approach which uses the actual mechanics of printing to produce an effect that didn’t have to be designed.
Another thing worth pointing out about 1985 Fleer is the composition of the colored borders. As you can see in the sample above, there’s no screening pattern at all in the blue. This is because it’s being printed as 100% Cyan (one of the four standard printing inks).* One ink. No screen pattern of dots. No registration to worry about.
The red and green borders are similarly solid. This time though they consist of two inks. Red is 100% Magenta and 100% Yellow while green is 100% Cyan and 100% Yellow.* The three colors we’ve covered so far are some of the simplest colors to print and as a result are colors that come up frequently on baseball card designs.**
*You can see a bit of misregistration in the red border as there’s some Yellow fringing on the bottom edge and Magenta fringing on the top edge of the red elements.
**The other simple colors are the pink (100% Magenta), yellow (100% Yellow), black (100% Black), and dark blue/purple (100% Cyan plus 100% Magenta).
The other three colors show that Fleer’s screen choices were intentional. All three borders here feature a Magenta screen at 45° mixed with either 100% Yellow or 100% Cyan. It’s worth noting here that these screen angles are only being used for the borders too. The photos appear to be printed using the traditional angles.*
*Magenta can be seen at 75° in a couple of the zoomed in images—specifically green-bordered Essien and light-blue-bordered Teufel. And for anyone who didn’t read the link provided earlier, the traditional angles are Cyan 15°, Magenta 75°, Black 45°, and Yellow 0°.
Why am I looking at the screen angles for the solid colors? Two reasons but for now the only important one is that the other set which is about print screens happens to be about colored screens. Once we start looking at this set the screen angles become part of the design.
Yup. Come on down 1990 Topps. I’ve seen this one referred to as the Lichtenstein set since the screens look like the Ben-day dots that dominated comic book shading and which Roy Lichtenstein referenced in his pop art paintings. This is an appropriate name even though 1990 Topps’s design is still a halftone screen rather than Ben-Day dots.
So let’s dig in, starting off with the simplest of the color options in the base set, the light blue gradient. This should look somewhat familiar. Just Cyan ink. A screen angle of 45°. Up close it’s just dots but at arm’s-length it’s still a somewhat smooth gradation from almost white to 100% Cyan.
The crop above is a half-inch square from the middle of the gradient Comparing the sizes of the dots on the top of the crop to the bottom shows how halftone screens work in general and how the gradient effect works specifically. In a halftone, the size of the dot changes as a color gets lighter or darker. Larger dots are darker colors, smaller dots are lighter ones*. In the gradient here as the dots get smaller the color approaches white and as the dots get larger the colors approach turquoise/cyan.
*Compare to stochastic FM screens where the dots are all the same size and it’s frequency/quantity of the dots which changes as colors get lighter or darker.
Printing the dots at a super-coarse screen of around 20 lines per inch instead of over 100 allows them to be part of the design while still conveying the color information.
It’s in the mixed colors that things get interesting. The red, orange, and green gradients all involve mixing two inks together. In each of these cases the darker ink (Cyan or Magenta) is printed at 45° while the Yellow is printed at 15°.
The 30° difference in angle minimizes moiré effects and produces the halftone rosette pattern that we’re used to seeing. In these cases though the yellow is so light that we don’t really see it and even zoomed in it’s very easy to see these as being red or green dots a a 45° angle and not even notice the yellow ink and the fact that it’s also being screened into a gradient.*
*Sharp-eyed readers will also notice that in the orange gradient above (second image) the dark blue stripe is screened at 0° and Mike Scott’s background is Black-only at 45°. These black-only All Stars show voids when they’re from the same press sheet that the famous Frank Thomas no-name “error” is printed on.
The difference in angle is also what keeps this design from looking like Lichtenstein or Ben-day dots. With the yellow in the mix it’s easy to miss the two inks. But with the dark blue and purple cards the screening is much more obvious. These screens involve two similarly-dark inks but Topps chose to print them differently. Above on the left is dark blue which Topps chose to print Cyan is at 45° and Magenta at 75°. On the right is the purple which printed Magenta at 45° and Cyan at 75° instead.
Despite one screen being at 45° these two colors look much more halftone-like than the other four colors in the set. There’s a clear mix of colors and the 45° angle is difficult to see. Even though I know it’s there I see these as being more rosette-like.
Compared to other color choices Topps made for this design though the dark blue and purple are pretty restrained. This would change later in 1990 as Topps’s later sets—Topps Traded, the Mini Leaders, and Major League Debut—are all very different from what Flagship is doing.
Topps Traded (photo 1) is a basic red gradient except that unlike Flagship the Yellow isn’t being screened at all and the Magenta is screened at 15°. This is the only design of the nine 1990 designs where there’s a solid ink (Yellow) in the gradient.
Mini Leaders (photo 2) meanwhile feature a gradient from Cyan to Yellow so the mid-point looks green as one ink fades out and another fades in. Where all the other 1990 designs fade from a dark color to a lighter version of that color, this one features essentially two gradients. In the zoomed in image above, the Yellow ink is at 15° and goes from large dots at the top to smaller ones at the bottom. Cyan meanwhile is at 45° and goes from large dots at the bottom to smaller ones at the top.
The last image is the most-interesting sample for me. Major League Debut consists of a four-color gradient. Zooming in on this design shows all kinds of dots. Rather than looking remotely Lichtenstein this is pure halftone all the way down. Black is at 45° like it usually is. As are Cyan at 15° and Magenta at 75°. Yellow meanwhile looks like it’s at 30°—not the 0° I’d expect but slipped in between two of the other screens where it’ll result in the same kind of halftone rosette pattern.
Anyway, despite my not particularly liking the 1990 design even though it’s full of things for me to geek out about, one of the things I do love about it and 1985 Fleer is how they’re extremely hard to replicate with modern technology.
Before computer-based color separations, all the printing elements were assembled manually, stripped together, and then burned onto a printing plate. This allowed different elements to be screened at different frequencies and angles. The photo is screened differently than the borders and it doesn’t matter.
Now, everything is done on the computer and the plate is made using the same screen on all elements. This is generally better in terms of color accuracy and reproducibility but when replicating old designs runs into the issue where things that were formally-solid inks are now being screened.* Or in the case of designs like 1990 Topps, things that used to be screened are now being double screened.
*A lot of the heritage designs show how this works.
This brings us to the second reason I was looking at screen angles. Modern remakes of these designs are completely different. Zooming in and comparing the Topps Archives version (left) to the dark blue screen of the 1990 design (right) shows how Topps Archives treats the halftone dots as only a pattern. Instead of two coarse Cyan and Magenta screens, there’s a light blue background color and a dark blue dot pattern, both printed with a super-fine stochastic screen. The edges of the dots aren’t crisp and, for me, the design just isn’t the same.
I get it. With today’s technology, doing this kind of thing requires you to go out of your way for an effect that’s intentionally going to make the printing look “worse.” When Fleer reprinted its 1985 design in 2001* it got hit with all kinds of moiré because Fleer couldn’t cope with changing the 0° angle to 45° (what a computer would want to print it at). Computers just don’t do this kind of thing well plus manually making your own screens means you also lose all color controls that your printing process has.
*I do not have this card and refuse to buy it just for this post but if someone supplies a 24oo DPI scan of that card I’ll edit this post to show how badly it was handled.
That’s the shame or replicating these kind of things. No one points to the 1980s and 1990s as a time of being careful about how cards were made. Despite being massively overprinted, it’s clear with sets like these that there was still some thought being paid to the nitty-gritty details of how the ink was actually going on to the paper. And that’s pretty cool to realize.
SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee 
You managed to make me appreciate 1990 Topps! Well done!
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Fascinating stuff!
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What a fantastic deep dive into an aspect of card production I knew nothing about! Totally have a new found appreciation for the beautiful 1985 Fleer and a begrudging appreciation for the 1990 Topps.
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This is awesome! It’s fun to get a better understanding of how cards are/were actually made.
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The following is meant as a compliment: I’m going to need to let this marinate and then come back and re-read this.
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And I thought Christmas was on the 25th!
Great article — thanks for taking the time to write this.
I’ll never miss an opportunity to shamelessly plug my site and its (relevant!) coverage of Carlton Fisk’s Fleer 1985. https://listoffisk.wordpress.com/2018/05/14/fleer-1985-unnecessary-sequels/
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Oddly enough, I was the one who came up with the Lichtenstein Set title during my first go-around as a card blogger.
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Thank you, that was a fun read.
Forgive me, I’m not sure I yet command all the terms & concepts correctly. Also, if you have explained some of this elsewhere, or i missed it above. A variety of printed “versions” of 1990 Topps cards seem to have showed up. The NNOF & “blackless” obscured a small amount of this black screen, at least one (proof?) full sheet with “no black” is cut up on E-bay to compare to the Topps Vault proof cards on sale.
Questions;
– With the 4 screens, theoretically there could be any combination of CMYK screens print “variations” on the front of the card (plus blank) ~ 16 versions? Examples of the “K” screen black & white card exist.
– How does the card stock effect the final print? Is standard card stock naturally grey on the back and a white base ink on the front? With Tiffany (Update etc.) being white on both sides?
– The back is the duotone spot color. Examples of a “no yellow” card exist. It should be possible a no black ink card exists as well?
– Is the Glossy All Star pack inserts spot color also?
Thoughts on the “bright yellow” & “full yellow (Jeff King error)” versions that have shown up online?
– “K” black screen off register versions are popular “errors”, however there could be off register versions for each screen, right?
– Any variation found or thoughts on the other 1990 issued same theme cards?
Like; O-Pee-Chee (maybe the occasional “traded” note on the front is spot color?), Tiffany, DoubleHeader, Sports Shots Portfolios, Box Bottom Cards, USA1 George Bush, Yearbook Stickers/1989 Award Sheet, any of the variety of 1990 Topps packaging that “blank” back Jr. cards get cut/peddled from (Wax/Cello/Rack/DoubleHeader/OPC etc.), OPC/Standard/Update Christmas Set Boxes, Mylar issue, rookies printed on the backs of Stadium Club cards.
– What style is magazines from 1990 printed? For example, the pictorial 1990 Checklists Printed in Topps Magazine and other advertising etc. sheets depicting 1990 Topps.
– Can we make the hypothesis: of the ~16 years of subsequent Topps sets where official 1990 Topps themed reprints are included (on ceramic?), they would be stochastic FM printed after 2008? Likely similar to the variety you found in the 2017 products?
Best Regards,
A Lichtenstein Set Addict
@ZacknPhilly
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Gonna take these in the order they’re asked:
1. Regarding the screens and combinations.
Yes. 16 combinations possible: blank, C, M, Y, K, CM, CY, CK, MY, MK, YK, CMY, CMK, CYK, MYK, CMYK.
In practice not all those will be printed. The different color combinations are what we call progressive proofs and they tend to show the order the colors are printed and registered on the sheet. This order has changed over time so I’ll list it generically: Ink 1 by itself. Ink 2 by itself, 1&2 registered. Ink 3 by itself. 12&3 registered. Ink 4 by itself. 123&4 registered. There’s a guy selling cut-down progressive proof sets of 1970s cards. Very cool stuff. I think he’s charging $100 for a common set. His sets feature 10 combinations: C, M, Y, K, CM, CY, MY, MK, CMY, CMYK.
2. Card stock
Up until Score in 1988, card sets were printed on what’s called C1S (for coated one side) card stock. The coated side is white and doesn’t absorb ink as much. The white/grey/brown uncoated side only affects the color of the uncoated side. Score, Upper Deck, and the rest of the premium lines in the early 1990s were all C2S (coated two sides). By 1993 I think everything was coated on both sides except for 1996 and 1997 Fleer which are both uncoated stock on both sides.
3. Back colors
Yes, no-yellow and no-black backs are be technically possible and actually likely to have existed at some point. I’d caution against calling them duotones though. Yes they’re a two-color design but a duotone is actually a screened image that is printed in two different inks (eg Studio 91) rather than a design that features two inks which never mix.
4. Glossy All Stars and Rookies are CMYK process. No spot colors. Spot colors on the card fronts is another early-1990s improvement.
5. Is the Jeff King error the white/yellow name on back distinction? If so that’s likely a print screwup (I’d guess that the fountain solution wasn’t running or engaged so the entire plate printed yellow instead of having the knockouts) which slipped through.
6. Off register screens.
All the screens can be, and frequently are, off register. Black as the darkest ink and the one with key information like keylines and names is the most noticeable one though.
7. Other 1990s cards.
I’d be shocked if anything like OPC used spot colors. That was a premium feature at this age of card production. Reprints on things like Stadium Club backs (Stadium Club does use a spot color on the fronts) is a good question. Those appear to be rescreened and consist of other colors besides what was in the original screens.
8. Not sure I understand this question about magazines.
9. Topps has been inconsistent with its screening methods over the past decade so I really can’t even hypothesize here.
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Excellent! Thanks.
1. Google search didn’t pinpoint a guy as far as I can tell. Suggestions on finding progressive proof sets of cards? (In my case, specifically 1990 Topps).
2 -3. Thanks!
4. Clarification – are the pack inserts in normal packs spot color? (ex. the one for the Topps Glossy mail in, or the topps baseball hat etc.)
4b. Thoughts on e-bay seller claim of “bright yellow” 1990 Topps back cards? Kinda seems like Tiffany card stock was used on a standard 1990 Topps printing setup. 1990 Topps Tiffany doesn’t have the *X next to the copyright on back. https://ebay.us/tgtehA
5 – 6. Thanks!
7. Clarification – wasn’t specifically asking if spot colors were used on other 1990 cards. Was asking if you knew of, or anticipated printing style variations (like you noted in the (4) 1990 Topps theme products) in any of the ~11 other 1990 Topps Baseball themed issues? Can check out the 1990 Topps DoubleHeader Doc Gooden soon enough!
(the Stadium Club comment should have been in #9’s reprint question).
8. I am printing ignorant. I know 100% more than I did based on your post. How are magazines printed in relation to baseball cards? For all I know it could be the card stock only. The 1990 Topps Doubleheaders are on thin “crappy” stock, I would have said “like a magazine.” 1990 Topps Magazine (or Beckett) had articles about 1990 Topps including pull out poster checklists. I was curious if a close up look of these “prints” from the same time frame would look different than the real thing.
9. Thanks! Time for me to 24oo DPI scan a bunch of 1990 Topps Themed cards.
Have Fun!
@ZacknPhilly
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1. The only guy I’ve seen just has 1970s cards. No idea about a source for 1990
4. Anything with a photo on it is definitely just process. Often the solid colors are the basic solid-ink-only colors (pink, red, cyan, green, yellow) so it can look potentially spot color since there’s no visible screening.
4b. That ebay auction looks like a white paperstock test. The * and stuff on the backs appear to be control marks so Topps knows who printed what. 1991 for example has a ton of variants here.
7. Box bottoms are definitely like the rest of these. Haven’t seen everything else to know for sure.
8. Magazines are printed using the same process (offset lithography). I suspect that their images of cards likely result in rescreening things but it’s been so long since I’ve seen a vintage Beckett.
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Whoops, sorry! the 1990 Topps DoubleHeader is going to Jason…. Happy to send you a different dupe for your records if you like. Or just the scans whenever I get a 2400 DPI setup.
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(Q10.0) Do I understand correctly the “Black & White” card noted at https://www.museum.radicards.com/portfolio/1990/
would have the front of a “K” Proof card, however still having the back printed is unlikely to be a proof?
Thoughts on the following exercise in overdoing it?
Possible Variations for a given AM Screened card (1990 Topps as example);
– 3 Total Standard Versions; Regular, Tiffany, O-Pee-Chee.
– 5 Total Blank Front/Back Versions (O-Pee-Chee front = Regular).
(Q10.1) It is valid to assume that official progressive proof cards are blank back?
– 10×2 Total (Q10.2) Progressive Proofs, Regular + Tiffany; C, M, Y, K, CM, CY, MY, MK, CMY, CMYK (O-Pee-Chee front = Regular).
– 3 Total (Q10.3) yellowless back cards.
– 2 Total (Q10.4) blackless back cards (O-Pee-Chee front = Regular).
– 2 Total additional white card stock cards.
– 10×3 Total (Q10.5) “off-register” combination error/variation printing possibilities (indicating off-register in lower case): cMYK, CmYK, CMyK, CMYk, cmYK, CmyK, CMyk, cMyK, cMYk, CmYk (?)
(Q10.6)*Are off-register examples sometimes listed on e-bay as “double print” cards -> https://www.ebay.com/itm/Ken-Griffey-Jr-1990-Topps-Rookie-RC-Cup-336-Error-Double-Print-VERY-RARE/333499931268?hash=item4da6251a84:g:D0oAAOSwPqpeMxCV )
Further down the rabbit hole to combination depths;
– 10×3 Total (Q10.7) blank back version of standard issue “off-register” cards above.
– 7×2 Total(ly unlikely) (Q10.8) “off-register” proof error/variation printing possibilities: cM, cY, mY, mK, cMY, CmY, CMy (?)
– 10×2+7×2 Total (Q10.9) standard back unofficial progressive proof type cards (like the “K” only printed 1990 Topps Thomas referenced above) + unlikely “off-register” proof variations.
– additional rolling combinations of oddity.
(Q11) On individual “off-register” cards the following combinations would be indistinguishable without frame of reference, right? cMYK = Cmyk. Cm = cM etc.
(Q12) For an uncut sheet “off-register” situation, would an observer be able distinguish between a cMYK & Cmyk sheet (as well as other reciprocal off-register combinations) because of the sheet edge references?
Thank You for entertaining the hypothetical construct!
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Have to say that you’re kind of overthinking things here. This isn’t like coins where proofs are special runs. In printing, proofs and whatnot are all part of what’s called makeready. The printer does not care what’s on the back of the sheets except for the part where they have to register the fronts and the backs. Everything else can and will be printed on any scrap paper of the correct stock type. You can’t assume anything and trying to logic out a checklist is a fool’s errand. The possibilities are literally endless.
http://toppsarchives.blogspot.com/2020/02/wrong-way-kids.html
Regarding registration. Your possibilities are:
-3 inks registered, one off.
-2 inks registered, the other 2 inks misregistered from everything.
-2 inks registered, the other 2 inks also registered but each pair misregistered.
-All 4 inks off register.
The last two options require a frame of reference to decide what’s off register. This would normally be the trim but on an uncut sheet you’d probably also just pick whatever one looked centered best.
The double blacks aren’t double prints in the sense that they were run through the press twice. Nor are they a misregistration of the inks. They reflect a printing mishap where ink isn’t being laid down correctly.
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