Off Register

ETS27 is a two-colour risograph impression that refuses to stay perfectly aligned. Pulling its vermilion and indigo plates apart makes a physical argument for “Free Your Mind”: another point of view changes the picture.

The story

The opening is an event poster at wall scale, made from three words, two inks and one diagonal. The page itself is the printed surface. A visitor can read the impression in order or ask the mind to print a different view of the same event.

The physical process supplies the decisions. The inks overlap into a third colour through multiply compositing. Tiny curved fibres interrupt the cream ground; displaced edges interrupt the deposited ink. The portrait is separated into two rotated screens. Austin’s independent gig-poster culture supplies the connection, without borrowing its lettering swirls or a kit of ornamental shapes.

Typography

Dela Gothic One, weight 400, remains the display face. Broad, dense forms have enough ink area to reveal misregistration. At 1440 px, “FREE” is approximately 347 px, “YOUR” 137 px and “MIND” 300 px. “YOUR” is upright and flush right, part of the same impression. The reading line occupies the space opposite it. Later display type remains substantial; the dates are approximately 235 px and the ticket action 72 px.

Newsreader, regular and semibold, with a true italic, replaces Barlow. Its editorial serif gives the reading voice a different physical character from the dense display ink. The italic invitation is deliberately human; programme titles are firmly set, rather than imitating display typography. Reading is generally 20–26 px; provenance and utility labels are 12–17 px. Both families are self-hosted in this folder. Font licenses are retained here.

Colour and material

• Uncoated stock: #F4E6C8.
• Vermilion: #F05230.
• Indigo: #313274.
• The dark third impression is produced by multiply; it is not an independent accent.

The cream surfaces carry a small, tiled SVG of short curved fibres. This is geometry at the substrate, not a noise wash applied over every section. Printed edges use a low-amplitude SVG displacement. The opening’s single vermilion diagonal is an ink area, with the same material edge as the letters. The previous screen diamond, hatch wedge, theme zigzag and orphan invitation hatch are gone.

Lora Anguay’s real photograph becomes vermilion dots at 15° and indigo dots at 45°, on a 7.2 px screen at source resolution. Luminance is lifted with gamma 1.3 before separation. The rotated screens create interference and their own uninked pores; synthetic white speckles are no longer punched into the shadows. The original local image remains the no-JavaScript fallback.

Composition and tempo

The opening keeps the largest gesture and removes the interface clutter around it. The event credit is anchored beneath ETS27; dates and city occupy the opposite corner. Below the artwork, “Read the print” is the strong route, event links are practical, and “Or make your own impression” is deliberately lighter. Tickets have vermilion emphasis. The route line sits above a reserved lower trim so a 56 px consent strip cannot cover it at the review viewport.

The registration control sits in a separate trim strip after the first impression. It is the ten-second discovery, outside the A0 artwork. There is no numeric settings readout and no motion setting in the primary chrome. Two overlapping ink swatches explain what the control moves. The accompanying caption changes at registration; motion uses an accessible small pause control.

The sections no longer share one corner-caption skeleton:

• The theme is a vermilion broadside, with staggered type and a second impression on “of unlike.” The reading copy has open space of its own.
• The people occupy cream stock. The heading begins on the shared left axis; three names sit opposite the portrait. Two deliberate name indents make the offset a pattern. One nearby statement labels the entire ETS26 sample lineup.
• The programme is an indigo working spread. Its sample note sits beside the headline. Dates and sessions have their own hierarchy. On the phone, four days form a two-by-two selector, with every number and caption in the same cell and a real gutter between them.
• The invitation returns to paper. “May 3–6.” is a single wall-scale line; Austin is set in italic below it. “Get tickets” is a display action on the opposing axis. It no longer repeats the theme’s red broadside.
• The mind is a printed spread: an impression and writing line on one side, a grounded answer and source on the other. On the phone, the answer precedes the writing line. It begins with content, rather than an empty-chat greeting and three suggestion links.

Motion and life

The offset is a proportion of the rendered font size: a resting 0.018 em. The slider multiplies that base from zero to three, giving a maximum 0.054 em. A phone word is never pulled by a desktop-sized pixel offset. Fine pointer movement adds a small proportional drift.

One 1.1-second plate pass runs on arrival. As sections move through the viewport, the separated theme line and date impression drift slightly with the physical position of the sheet. The motion is the ink registration itself; no generic reveal fades or idle animation loops are added.

Submitting a question settles both impressions into register and prints the sourced answer in a brief stepped pass. Registration still settles with reduced motion, but without animation. Reduced motion disables automatic drift, including changes to the media preference during the session. The reader can also pause motion explicitly.

The mind and the fork

“Or make your own impression” opens an independent surface on the same stock. A sourced answer is already printed there. A question replaces the impression; it does not create a chat transcript. The full print returns at the part of the event relevant to the answer. Slash opens the mind; Escape restores the standard route.

The standard route carries the mind in the sheet’s right margin as a compact vertical tab after the hero. The fixed bottom composer is removed. No input crowds the first-frame fork or gets buried by a bottom consent strip. The only writing line is on the mind spread, with the short placeholder “Ask anything.”

This remains an honest visual demonstration with curated local responses. Lineup and programme records are ETS26 samples; no ETS27 speakers, venue or agenda are invented. Ticket prices remain on the authoritative Eventbrite page.

Jury decisions

The design retains the actual two-ink overlap on all three hero words. Making only “YOUR” drift would weaken the idea of two impressions making one event. The default slip is now restrained, and the larger separation belongs to the visitor’s gesture.

The control survives as a discoverable material action, but moves outside the artwork. Screen texture survives in the real portrait, where it carries information, rather than behind the hero as decorative pattern. The paper now demonstrates its material directly. Dates remain functional tabs, with enough separation to read as days. The mind retains the settle-and-print mechanic, while losing the fixed composer and suggestion-list structure.

Verification and next work

The revised page is checked with the project’s headless renderer at 1440×900 and 390×844. Every desktop, phone, full-page, scroll and submitted-answer PNG is inspected. shots/meta.json records render errors and font use; shots/qa.json records width, offset, keyboard, source, contextual return, motion and fallback checks. Two complete render passes were inspected. The first exposed oversized fibres and crowded phone numerals; the second verified shorter fibres, a two-by-two day selector and more clearance at the hero trim. A final render includes the last event-name spacing correction. Final verification reports zero render errors, zero console issues and all 12 interaction/layout checks passing. All nine PNGs were viewed again.

Production work remains: connect the print components to the validated knowledge snapshot, replace samples when the ETS27 records exist, and expand biographies and session details as impressions of those same records. Keep the native staff editing paths in WordPress and Whova. This concept does not create a second content store.

Misregistration can still become costume if it drifts too far. The proportional cap, honest sample labels, stable utility copy and sourced answer protect the material argument. The portrait is a concept treatment; a biography should provide the clean original too.