Where to Next?

[wbbugs]

First post for me but I have been a member for some time.

I am currently a pre press operator and would like to hear from people that stepped away from the tools and moved on in the industry but where to?

I have been in the print Industry for about 12 years now. From Print room to Pre press. From Printers to Global Prepress houses.

I am looking toward the future and would like some ideas as to where people moved to within the industry.
Maybe areas that people consider will be in demand in a few years.

Thanks in advance.

 

[kaiserwilhelm]

I took a look about 10 years ago and decided the following (Right or wrong). I believe that your average old prepress guru will be as out of luck as the average stripper is now - I believe that our day will come within 5 or so years.
In essence, the digital press is making us obsolete. What makes a prepress guru worth our wage? The ability to take crap and turn it into gold. IE, a job comes in 17 pms colors and has to print CMYK - or vice versa. Under the old paradigm, the worse the person making the file (secretary, college educated art dude, etc), the better I looked at the end of the day.
Now, comes the digital press. Who needs to split colors? Who needs to worry if a font does not "really" exist in the bold italic way. Just click on the Bold and the Italic and watch the digital press do its magic.
So, with that thought in mind, I decided to move into direct mail. I now sit in the data section of our company. No, I do not mess with names and numbers. Instead I take my 19 years experience in printing and prepress and make sure that our DP department is utilizing the excellent prepress tools that they are given.
Sure, maybe we won't have a "rip" sitting there in front of our plate maker in five years. However, what is important is that we have learned the processes to get a decent file into DP from wherever it comes from.
That is my goal. It is working out quite well right now.

 

[James.Costen]

I have seen prepress operators go out on their own and essentially "outsource" their services to other print companies. They essentially take on a print broker role or freelance services when printers need to pass along overflow work, or something more complex that you might specialize in.

Best of luck to you, whatever you do.

 

[michaelejahn]

I am moving to healthcare - they need to exchange reliable PDF files there;

Michael Jahn's blog