My Time in Prepress

Away from tiny print shops and into mass commercial quality printing. This was a journey I enjoyed and learnt a lot of respect for the printing process.

Starting on the factory floor I had to learn the ins and outs of each machine. The different process each print piece goes through and how every department keeps track of their part and where the job travels to next towards its completion.

After the various processes of cutting of these sheets and folding I was given the task of helping feed the sections and pages of books and magazines through a binding machine. stitching the books and calendars together which itself was a tedious process to get right for each different measurement.

The publications in a warehouse setting just before packing and shipping was the perfect place to start, this was to gain experience from the process of digital to print. Then I moved to more of the digital side of things in prepress which was a lot of making sure everything was approved before it set out to print. These involves so many different factors. I began helping operate platemaker machines (lithography) to transfer digital images that were setup in 8up 16up page spreads etc, these metal plates would tell the ink channels CMYK where on the paper spread they needed to be with extreme accuracy.