Comment by enriquto

> Huh, to be honest I feel like I've only ever seen halftoning when printing onto paper -- I've never associated dithering with printing at all.

Yep, sorry about my sloppy terminology. I always use "halftoning" and "dithering" interchangeably. Yet, notice that today's printers are often matrix-based, i.e., like a high-resolution binary screen, with a bit of ink smearing depending on the type of paper/plastic.

> I've always assumed were hand-drawn by an artist.

Maybe some are still drawn by hand, but most printed stuff is at some point dithered automatically (and a lot of critical information can be embedded on the dithering patterns).