How Vintage Posters Were Printed: Lithography, Offset and Screen Printing

Printing technique is one of the most interesting clues in an original poster — and one of the easiest things to oversimplify. Not every old poster is a stone lithograph, and visible dots do not automatically mean reproduction.

Lithography

Lithography is based on the repulsion of grease and water. Early commercial posters could be printed from limestone, while later lithographic production also used metal plates. Colour images required multiple printing stages and careful registration.

Stone lithography is especially associated with the great late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century poster tradition, but it should not be used as a blanket description for every poster from an early date.

Offset lithography

Offset transfers the image from a printing plate to a rubber blanket and then to paper. It became enormously important in twentieth-century commercial printing and is completely normal on genuine period posters.

This matters for authentication: halftone or screened printing is not, by itself, evidence that a poster is modern.

Screen printing

Screen printing pushes ink through a prepared mesh stencil. It can produce strong, flat areas of colour and has been used for commercial, exhibition, event and artist-designed posters.

Letterpress and other processes

Typography and simpler graphics may also have been printed letterpress, while photogravure and other processes appear in particular periods and contexts. Poster history is technologically diverse.

What magnification can tell you

A loupe can reveal colour separations, halftone structures and ink characteristics, but those observations only become useful when compared with what is expected for the exact edition.

A printing method is not an authentication certificate

Reproductions can imitate older processes, and authentic posters can use processes people mistakenly think are “modern”. We combine printing with paper, dimensions, credits and edition history.

Read how we check authenticity for the complete approach.

Explore the posters featured above: Kieler Woche · Campari Cappiello · TWA London · Keith Haring. You can also explore our collecting guide, authenticity guide, condition guide and framing guide.