PrePress Intern

Today I started interning at Sierra Office Supply & Printing here in Sacramento. They’ve never had an intern before so it’s random and unstructured and I love it. The guys in the PrePress department are so willing to talk about all the things designers could do to make jobs easier. It was so quiet the first twenty minutes I was there and then once I asked a question of how they got into the business it was two hours of talking about signatures, bleeds, slugs, local designers, skill level, communication, software, iPhone 4 updates and idiots who steal cell phones. They are a rad bunch of guys.

I tried taking quick notes on all the information they were throwing at me. It seems a lot of communication is lost between designers and production. Just a simple question would clarify so much in the business. A simple phone call. A willingness to make a good product and understanding of what the presses are actually capable of. It’s never going to look like it does on your million color pixel monitor. The PrePress department would love to talk with you directly. We all speak the same language.

The most common mistake is designers who don’t properly prepare their files. They want all the information to make your product great and the amount of time wasted waiting for the correct info is amazing. Simple as images that are 72 dpi to crop marks that mess up the calibrations in the software, which is Apogee. They LOVE print ready PDFs in single page format. No need to send over page spreads.

Terms that I was thrown today that I learned about or at least jotted down to have a better understanding over in the future:

Over Print
Trap: 2 spot color overlap
4 up, 8 up, etc.
Crossovers. Remember pages print in signatures. What you see side by side on the screen isn’t going to print out next to each other.
Very few actual press checks, maybe once a week
175 lines per inch, which I saw with a magnifying glass in little dot forms
Designers always expect perfection from their work and don’t have a great understanding of what can be accomplished on a press. Sometimes it’s your design that’s the problem, but they work their hardest to make it happen.

Business is slow at the moment so the guys had time to chat about the “good ol’ days” which was amazing. Rob, the manager, has been in PrePress for 30 years and at one point would use photographic plates to set up a project for press and misses the romance of the profession. Jobs that used to take at least 16 hours is preparations with finesse now are expected to be turned around in thirty minutes, which is not the case with the loss of communication. It’s a little more impersonal. They understand the amazing ability of technology, but there’s a sense of loss of the art you definitely felt in his words.

The other Rob of the office has been in the business 15 plus years and once I asked him how he got started he was a wonderful source of information and so helpful I wanted to hug him. They all feel so bad it’s so slow, but I’m just glad to hear their stories and helpful information that it doesn’t make a difference to me.

So remember designers, your bleeds, signatures (when making booklets), crossovers, creep, trap, press checks, slug and print ready PDFs. They want the same as you. Don’t be afraid to ask. Remember there's a TREMENDOUS cost in firing up that big process press. It's amazing to watch it in action. The press operator was willing to let me run that sucker. He looked at me quizzically and said, "So you're working here for free?" To which he then offered to let me learn how to run the press.

Awesome!