How a HankyCode print is made

Four things, in order

Every print is one colour, one side, one word and one figure. The colour is the code. The side — which half of the sheet is coloured — is the pocket. The word across the top is what that pocket means. The figure stands across the divide and carries the colour: on the white half the silhouette is filled with the code colour, on the coloured half it is white.

That last rule is the newest and the hardest. It came from looking at the black code, where the figure had to turn white to be seen at all, and deciding that every print should work that way. The colour of the piece is part of the body.

The rules behind the rules

Every colour in the collection is unique: each clears a measured difference threshold from every other, so no two prints read the same on a wall. The type is one face, Bebas Neue, at one of two fixed sizes, in one fixed band above the figure, tracked the same on every sheet; a word that will not fit is sent back to the studio to be shortened, never squeezed. The word’s ink is chosen half by half so it reads on both the white and the colour. The figure never rises into the band; the word never enters the figure.

These are written down as Rules 14 to 17 in our Master, and every file is checked against them by a script before it is allowed out. Nothing public without the gate.

Paper, edition, mark

Editions are giclée on Hahnemühle German Etching 310gsm, A3, 25 per code and side, signed and numbered, sold only to members of the Family in dated drops; when a drop’s window closes, the edition closes. The Study is the same work as a numbered digital edition of 250. Every print carries its reference number and its side in the margin — HC-088 · LEFT — and the registered HANKY FAMILY® mark with the words “A Hanky Family Original”. The mark is the only place the registered symbol appears; it belongs to the mark, not the code.

Each print ships with a certificate of provenance: the code, the side, the colour, the edition, the origin (historical, extended or Original), and the source where there is one. A pair — left beside right — ships with one certificate for the two.

Why it looks the way it does

The 1970s code was clean because it had to be read in a glance across a bar. The prints keep that: flat colour, one figure, one word, nothing else. A rainbow gradient or a photograph would be decoration, and decoration is the opposite of a signal.