FAQ

Standard prints are available in A3, A1 and sometimes A0 format – exclusives generally start from double A0 – see table below. Size matters for material prices, for printing costs and definitely impacts shipping costs – but those are included.

Simply put, because some works became far too detailed to deliver on A3, especially on metal. To the point that for printing future books I am looking into only printing part of a specific piece of work. I decide up-front on the size of a work – and then play with how as audience I hope you’ll see different things when you’re 50 meters away, 5 meters away and get up close.

  The finishes are:

• “Print on Metal”, which is a direct print on etched aluminum dibond. Dibond is lightweight and rigid, as this material consists of a flexible polyethylene core covered with a thin aluminium sheet on each side, and is finished with a high quality lacquer that guarantees perfect printing. Because the color white is not printed, there is an inherent metal shine to the print. This comes in A3 and A1. The thickness of the dibond is still ~3mm (~0.12 inch).
• ‘Ultimate flex‘ means high grade photopaper on metal under museum-grade plexiglass. Here, the print is on photopaper which is subsequently glued onto dibond. The finish is more ‘matte’ and the plexiglass finishes it off. For ‘ultimate flex’ works. I use Fuji Maxima paper, glued between Tru Vue TruLife acrylic – so called ‘museum glass’. 
• Exclusives are printed on the highest of quality Canson paper, which I started using for its reputation for printed art illustrations like Hardo’s. The museum glass used for exclusives is made by Diasec, as (often) used by the Louvre.

All ultimate flex and and all exclusives come ready-to-mount, with a frame attached to the back. This automatically makes it look like it ‘comes off the wall’ and is floating a bit. The works are intended to not have a further frame around them, and will ‘float’ a couple of cm from the wall. 

For the metal prints, I recommend using hanging strips (e.g. 3M or Tesa heavy duty hanging strips). The backside is a smooth sheet of aluminium and this works really well. Some people have had their aluminum prints framed, which pending the skill and experience of your framer with dibond also works well, but in my own home I’m more than content having them up without further framing. 

Finally a good question, thanks Chad. The full outlook for Hardo & Co is to have eight (8) books. I’m fully committed and understand the timeline involved here (we’re literally talking a decade of work). After 8, there may be individual publications. But for the 8, the topics and >95% of the pages have been thought out, live rent-free in my head, and what we’re looking at here is years and years of diligent execution.

Shipping is included unless specifically specified otherwise. For the HFT print, shipping costs up to €1.500 are for Hardo & Co. Any import duties are for purchaser.

You’re going to hate this, but… It depends. For exclusives, generally ~3-4 weeks. This includes the time to order the glass, the paper, and – not unimportant – the special sized & high spec shipping crate (which for intercontinental shipping has to be fire-proof etc).
The book should generally arrive within a week – most often I use FedEx or TNT (speaking of merger arbitrage) or UPS.

I generally try to handwrite a card along with every purchase. In the ‘notes’ part on the order, write any message you want Hardo to convey if this is intended as a gift.