In July 2008, in the 4th Anniversary LBE, was a chance to obtain one of 200 Digital Patricians. This is a digitally printed hand perforated version of the year one Penny Patrician.  The original Discworld stamps were printed by offset-litho, apart from an experiment with an ancient letterpress used to print the Penny Civic. Offset-litho however does not lend itself to be economical on smaller print runs. So digital printing was introduced. This allows for small print runs and more colours. However the definitives continue to be printed by offset; apart from this run of Penny Patricians. This was there official line at the time, but subsequently some digitally printed 10p greens appeared with the Letters to Pseudopolis series.
There was some debate on the collector`s forum concerning the differences between the original and the digital printing. The original and new digital versions that I have seem to differs slightly in respect of paper thickness (the original is noticeably crisper) and darkness (the digital image is darker than the original). Also, the dimensions of the original printed artwork were 22mm x 17mm whereas the digital artwork is only 21mm x 16.5mm. The artwork was of the same dimensions as the other home-produced stamps. Others commented that the Digital print had the same artwork dimensions as both the Wincanton and Bath perforated versions of the Penny Patrician, but these are of lower print resolution. Hence it is possible to identify a Digital Patrician only by comparison with a known example of other year one stamp