Offset Print

An offset print is a sheet printed by offset lithography: the inked image passes from a metal plate to a rubber blanket, and from the blanket to the paper. The word offset names that indirect step. It is the ordinary process of books, magazines and posters, and since the late twentieth century it has also been the process of choice for many artists' editions, from exhibition posters to signed prints in editions of several hundred.

Definition

Offset lithography rests on the old lithographic principle that oil and water repel each other. The plate is flat; the image areas accept greasy ink and the non-image areas, kept damp, refuse it. Because the plate never touches the paper, the rubber blanket can press the image cleanly into the surface of the sheet, which gives sharp type and fine detail. Colour work is usually printed from four plates, one each for cyan, magenta, yellow and black, which is why dealers and publishers speak of a four-colour offset print. Extra plates can add a metallic silver or gold or a varnish.

A second method, waterless offset, uses an ink-repellent silicone layer on the plate in place of the damping water; it was developed in the 1960s by 3M. For a collector the two look much the same.

Origin

The offset press was developed twice. In 1875 Robert Barclay patented a rotary offset press in England for printing on tin, and in 1904 Ira Washington Rubel of New Jersey developed one for paper; Kaspar Hermann built a prototype in Europe the same year. Rubel is said to have found the method by accident around 1901, when a sheet failed to feed and the image printed from the rubber roller instead, more cleanly than from metal. By 1907 a Rubel press was working in San Francisco, and offset went on to become one of the most common ways of making printed matter.

Its use for art came later and for different reasons. An offset edition can match an artist's colour closely and be made in quantity, which suits exhibition posters and the signed editions of artists, such as Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara and Tadanori Yokoo, whose work comes from graphic design, anime or the poster itself.

Key facts

How to identify it

• The dot. Under a loupe, the colour of an offset print breaks into tiny dots in rows, the halftone screen; a screen print shows flat, solid layers of ink instead.
• The surface. In our handling, offset ink sits thinly in the paper and has no raised edge, while screen-printed ink can be felt with a fingertip.
• The margin. In our reading, signature medium and numbering must be checked for the individual edition: a signature may be printed, written in pencil or made in another medium. The printed image and the hand-applied additions are separate questions. The meaning of the number is set out in our entry on edition numbers and artist's proofs.
• The poster line. Exhibition posters often print the venue and dates; those lines date a sheet more reliably than memory.

Offset is not a lesser process. It is a different one, and the price of an offset sheet depends, like any print, on signature, edition size, condition and the image.

Where it appears in the collection

Offset sheets run through the Murakami and Superflat shelf and the posters of the limited edition shelf. We hold a pair of Yoshitomo Nara Cosmic Girl offset prints from the BALTIC in 2008, a KAWS exhibition flyer from Kaikai Kiki Gallery in 2013 and a Tadanori Yokoo poster of 1975. Yokoo, who made the poster an art form, is read in our guide to his posters and paintings.

Related entries

• Silkscreen print: the other common process for artists' editions.
• Kaikai Kiki: the studio behind many signed offset editions.
• Superflat: an art made for flat, printed surfaces.

Sources

1. Offset printing, encyclopaedia entry, sections on history and process. wikipedia.org

Last reviewed 15 November 2026. The Japonista Curation and Concierge Team, Tokyo, Japan.