What?
At the risk of exposing the staggering depths of how much of a nerd I can be... I have a collection of close to 600 matchbooks and matchboxes from around the world. Everything from run-of-the-mill daily use matches to matchbooks given to patrons of mid-century strip clubs and a vast spectrum of utterly bizarre designs in between.
Now, I’m not going to go into the background of every brand or who the designers are or any of that. Because frankly… I don’t know the answers to those questions. But that’s not what we’re here for and it’s not why matchbooks are worth collecting. We’re here to marvel at the weird, the bizarre and the unusual design choices made by these brands through the decades. We’ll also have a wee look at how they’re printed and also how this type of design serves as an inspiration to the work I make.
Some rather severe looking black skull matches giving the name and address of a dental surgery in Osaka. Yes, really.
One of the things I love about graphic design is digging through the printed ephemera of times past and using it to make something new. I love to find the imperfections in the printing process and then bringing all of those little imperfections into make something brand new.
The small size they were being printed on, mixed with early industrial print techniques, a need for low cost production and high unit volumes lead to imperfections in the final print that to me, immediately injects an endearing quality into the design.
Your guess is as good as mine.
The designs were printed using lithographic plates. These were large sheets of copper that had the design painted onto it with an acid resistant material, or exposed using a photosensitive chemical and light combo. They were then coated in acid which ate away at the coper before both the acid and the acid resistant chemicals were removed. This would leave the area to be printed standing proud of the rest of the plate, retaining its smooth surface.
Each colour needed its own copper plate in order for the full design to be printed, so this would typically be done up to 4 times. In instances where full colour images were made using halftones, the 4 plates would be Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. These four colours printed in small dots called halftones give the illusion of a full colour image, as shown by the devilishly handsome Raj Kumar below.
Raj Kumar, a vision in 4 colours.
Up close, it’s clear to see each of the individual dots of the halftone plates but from a distance or at a glance, it’s a pretty spot on (punintentional) attempt at a full colour photograph. Even the solid red and blue in the print are made from mixes of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. What I love most about this matchbox however, besides that cheeky wee smile, is the aforementioned imperfections.
When you have early printing machines (halftone printing goes all the way back to the mid-1800’s) running 4 colour prints on massive copper plates, you are bound to get areas where the ink hasn’t applied quite right or where the paper has not landed on the plate in quite the right place, leaving the print with what is referred to as a “misregistration”. You can see from the green glow around Raj’s head and shoulders that the yellow plate was out by a few millimeters to the right, leaving a green misregistration over the cyan. It’s also caused yellow to seep outside the border on the right hand side. The black plate being ever so slightly out on the left hand side leaves a slim white border on the left and also next to Raj’s right ear.
Between the halftone printing and the waist-upwards inferno,
this is maybe one of the greatest pieces of design I have seen to date.
Now, at the time this was not at all desirable, but it was cheap, fast and you got what you paid for. For me however, these are the minute details of this type of printing process that sell the authenticity of a digital recreation and honestly, just look really really cool.
See?
The halftone process also lends itself to making some very convincing greyscale effects. This allowed designers to cut down on cost and avoid over complicating the design by only using one colour but still being able to get some amazing results.
That’s some set of halftones.
As the design of matchbooks and matchboxes evolved, so did the ingenuity behind the overall manufacture. Every available space could be used to print on and make the design stand out. For example, making the matches themselves into a pack of hotdogs to advertise a hotdog company, or an army of little matadors to advertise… bullfighting in Devonshire?? I guess? And if all else fails, bring a 3D aspect into the design with some embossing.
And on that note, I’ll leave you to ponder this depressed orb holding, bat riding frog who offers protection against fire. Maybe not the best mascot for a brand of matches but who am I to judge.
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