Lucas, this is a piece I wrote a couple of years ago as an intro to a book someone wanted to write about his experiences in the printing trade . . . think yoy will enjoy it
What now?
The age old argument – if I keep to all the rules and regulations that you printers and repro houses prescribe, my designs will all be restricted and my creativity bottled, no freedom.
Well, how many times have you received a phone call from your printer or repro house to tell you that your design will not work, that they have to add 10mm to the left hand side of every page because the holes that has to be punched will go through the text? Let us turn this question around. How many times have you phoned your printer or repro house for advice before you start a design or get into some really complicated piece of printed matter that has to look like a ball but erect like a mega structure?
Let us start at the beginning. When the Monks chiseled a book out of a piece of rock and it took them 25 years to complete one page do you think they would have obliged if you asked them to change the type face? We are sure they made some mistakes along the road.
When Guttenberg rolled out the first book that was made up and printed using movable letters - how many people were as excited as he was? He must have made a mistake or two while producing this first ever publication.
When the first printers compiled printing material they must have been very pleased with their handy work. Did everything turn out hunky dory? We doubt it.
When the repro house or printer put a page together from a trace guide supplied – boy oh boy – at first proof stage the logo always had to move a quarter mil to the left and it had to be optically straightened. All the fullstops had to be outside the justification line on the right hand side. . .
The Monks, Guttenberg, the first printers and the repro houses all had something in common – they used dedicated equipment – tools designed to do the job at hand and nothing else. Imagine using the mono caster as a calculator or the step and repeat machine to do colour separations.
We are sure that all these guys who did the actual work planned it very carefully before they just let loose. They also followed a carefully prepared and preserved set of rules (Lets call them rules for now) passed down from master printer to journeyman to apprentice, generation after generation. For instance. How do you determine the best set width for a specific font and font size? What is the relation between the space inserted in the heads, tails, backs and gutters of a page? A passion for the trade. They were pregnant with new ideas, full of enthusiasm to experiment, perfect them and then to let the world share. They even had a measurement, Ems (12point or pica was the standard) used by most printers and Cicero used by the French, that were unique to the printing industry. Imagine your very own measurement system! The rest of the world measured in inches and later in millimeters.
With Desktop Publishing making an appearance in the early eighties the world of the dedicated journeyman and dedicated equipment came to a grounding halt. All of a sudden everything that was unique to the printing and related trades were available to the general public. This is still true today. What is not freely available to the so called general public is the experience that has been gained through the years. Those well guarded little secrets that make the job at hand so much more fun and allow it to run smoother so you can enjoy what you are doing and just keep on doing more and more!
Nothing is more frustrating than when you hold in your hand your well prepared masterpiece of a design, copy written by the best copy writer in town, carefully proof read, sighed off by the client, brilliantly printed in seven colours, exquisitely foiled, embossed on all 64 pages, section sewn, onionskin dividers, fold out pocket with gusset for 8 inserts on the inside back cover, neatly die-cut, overall gloss uv’ed and just the correct amount of spot matt uv to break the contrast around the logo and as you page, all 4 sections of the text fall out of the cover. You phone the printer and he says: ‘‘But you wanted the cover uv’ed on both sides’’ Then you say ‘‘But . . .’’ Nothing is sane anymore, you want to laugh or scream, maybe cry! As you start reading the text, with the phone still in you hand and the printer on the other side, you see that somehow the font you used has defaulted to capital fullstops all over the show and just to make your day, they are all upside down!!! What now ?
The objective of this publication is to freely distribute and communicate these everyday potholes and landmines that we all tend to sort of forget when the going gets tough, the deadline lurks, the client is going overseas and the planes on the airports are slipping because of all the wet ink jobs that was delivered. Info and tips gathered, tested and tried, not to constrain creativity but rather compliment it, walk side by side and learn from each other to benefit all. Designers do not just design and printers does not just print. Those days are gone forever. Together they create a masterpiece in communication.
Glad it worked for you.
