In a previous blog post, I referred to catching the printing bug as having printer’s ink in your blood. There is something about printing that gets one hooked. You can stray away from printing, but eventually you’ll circle back around and find yourself umbilically attached.

In my case, my printing career began right out of high school. I heard from a friend that a newspaper printer was hiring. I was the second to lowest employee on the totem pole, just ahead of janitor. I was a jogger. I think the hourly wage in 1968 was around $.75, maybe a buck and a quarter, I don’t really remember for sure. A jogger’s job was to stand at the delivery end of the press and scoop his hand between the conveyor belts, gather a stack of papers, and place them on the string bundler. There was a kicker that would knock a paper a little askew every 50th signature. This way we knew how many papers we were stacking. When the right quantity was reached the flyboy, (another name for jogger) pressed the foot pedal on the bundler. Heaved the bundle by hand over to a pallet, and scrambled back to the press to do it all over again.

Soon, because I looked bright enough, I suppose, they began teaching me how to make plates, hang the plates on the press, shaft the paper rolls, and fill ink trays.

OMG -- that really smells bad, and not in a good way.

It was dirty work, and because I was still the low man, I usually pulled the dirtiest jobs. When I think about it, I can still remember the smell of the developer, the ink, and even the paper.   The developer fluid was the most pungent. It made the entire press area smell bad. With today’s presses, they’ve either done away with plates, or plates are processed in a totally contained plate processor that doesn’t smell. Not at all. Whew — I thank you, my nose thanks you, and my clothes really thank whoever invented that dandy machine.

Part of the reason I chose a career in printing was because I thought it was a stable industry. After all, people will always need to get things printed — right? What I didn’t count on were all the technological changes in the business. Now they happen so quickly that it puts a kink  my neck as I whirl around  just trying to figure out where they are coming from next.

Negotiate This

It feels like Han Solo negotiating the asteroid field in the movie Star Wars. When he found what he thought was a nice safe cave to land in, it turned out he was very, very wrong, and barely escaped with his ship, friends, and life. I’m not saying that printing is life threatening it’s just difficult to know which way to go.

I was doing a press check at a web offset printer the other day. The presses are ever-so-more sophisticated than in my cub days. Many of the adjustments can now be done off of a computer console which keeps the press operators from running back and forth turning ink keys or adjusting registration.

Other things have also improved, for example, web breaks were common in my day. A web break occurs when the paper coming off the roll snaps apart. Snap is the right word but it doesn’t do justice to the event. It’s like a starting gun was fired. Pressmen scrambled like the Keystone Cops to get to and whack the big red STOP button. The goal was to limit how much re-webbing they’d have to do. No one breathed until they found out how much tail was left to splice before the whole (*@#&) press had to be re-webbed.

#%*&@

If the broken web wasn’t caught fast enough, it would take precious time, and many four-letter, red-faced printer words to fix it. Mule skinners had nothing on printers, I can tell you.

Today’s web presses have sophisticated roll changing systems that not only automatically splice, but keep a constant tension, so that the web won’t suddenly jerk when a roll bump suddenly happens. Have web breaks been completely eliminated? Ha, it just means that they happen less frequently. Are there fewer emissions of printer talk? Double ha! Web breaks aren’t the only things that go wrong. I like to say that printing has so many things that can go wrong it’s a miracle anything goes right.

One thing that hasn’t changed though is the job of jogger. The joggers are still there at the end of the press scooping up the printed press signatures and taking them to the pallet. My hat’s off to joggers. At least something, so far, has remained the same.

Unsold books are just landfill. If you or anyone you know has published their own book, marketing is critical. Learn the ins and out of social networking, Amazon, and other resources to sell the book. There is even  weekly computer coaching to keep you on track. Visit TAP (The Author Platform) and check it out for yourself.  You’ll be glad you did.

What is a crossover? A crossover is an image that crosses over the center-fold in a multiple page product, like a magazine, or catalog. Your printer will try to explain the difficulty involved in producing crossovers, but until you’ve been up-close-and-personal with a project  where the crossovers failed, you won’t completely understand.

Why is that a problem? This would be easier to explain if I were face-to-face with you, but since I’m not I’m going to attempt to lead you through a little demonstration.

1. Get a piece of paper, size doesn’t matter, but make sure you can fold it easily.
2. If your paper is the standard 8 1/2″X11″ fold it in half so it is now 5 1/2″X8 1/2″.
3. Keep the fold at the top and fold in half again to 4 1/4″X5 1/2″.
4. This particular fold would result in an 8 page form.
5. Now with the folded form, keeping the fold at the top, begin numbering the lower right hand corners–1 through 8.
6. Be sure to number both sides of the paper or you’ll only have 4 instead of 8. If you don’t get 8 you’ve missed something.
7. Open your sheet of paper.

Notice that on one side the page numbers are 1, 4, 5, and 8. On the other side the numbers are 2,3, 6, and 7. Now notice where the numbers are in relationship to one another. Numbers 2 and 3 are on opposite sides and so are 6 and 7. Are you with me so far?

Refold the paper along the original creases. Take a pair of scissors, or hand rip the folded top off. What you have is a little booklet with all of the pages numbered consecutively, but it wasn’t that way before you took of the top fold was it?  The only pages on the flat sheet that were next to each other were pages 4 and 5, which is what we call the center fold. The center fold is a breeze, but it is the other pages 2 & 3 and 6 & 7 that cause the problem. If the press operator is unable to make a near perfect color match from one side of the sheet to the other pages 2 & 3 for example when brought together for the final product will look very odd. One page could be more blue and the other more yellow. That would be an unfortunate look for a landscape, but a total disaster for a portrait. Color shifts are very visible in flesh tones.

If you look at the double-truck catalog spread example below you will notice a definite color shift in the background.

Assuming that this all made sense, what can a designer do about crossovers?

A reader of  Talking Through My Hat, Mr. Greg Exelby from Bellingham, Washington, phoned me Monday to discuss some of my thoughts about beng a print broker. I don’t know how much help I was to him because the business is such a double edged sword. There is tremendous freedom in running your own business and being your own person, but actually a good print broker doesn’t really have much freedom. Instead of working for one boss, you now have many bosses to please. My wife complains that I am unable to take a vacation, if I ever get one, without the cell phone ringing. Freedom for the self-employed is an illusion. To be fair we didn’t discuss the freedom aspect during that phone call, but I should have told him.

We did discuss the difficulty in starting this type of business. The old saying, “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door” is not true. It is more like, build a better mousetrap, figure out how to convince people that they need a better mousetrap, then sell, sell, sell until you are sick of selling.  Honestly it is sometimes a challenge to save a drowning man from drowning if you don’t first convince him of the advantages of not drowning.

Answer this question, “Who is the largest hamburger chain in the word?” If you didn’t say McDonald’s I’d be surprised. If you don’t know the brand McDonald’s you must be from the bush or under one year old. So why do they still advertise? Do you need to see another TV commercial to learn about McDonald’s. No, but for them to stay on top of the heap they have to keep telling us how terrific their burgers are. I’m not going to debate the value of the product, if marketed right and continuously anything will sell. It doesn’t have to be the better mousetrap. It’s all about marketing.

Greg sent me a promotional letter that he wrote and his resume.  He is representing himself as an International printing consultant . With over 30 years of technical and practical experience, he has the credentials. He is the real deal–the better mousetrap. Both Greg and I have witnessed customers befuddled at a press check, uneducated customers struggling with details, and customers who are clueless about the processes. Greg thought that those customers that need to use his expertise would understand the need and call him. Unfortunately, that is not the way it works. People don’t always know what is best for them, and they often don’t trust people who do know. There’s an old sales adage that says that people buy from friends. Thus becoming a friend is often more important than having the best solution or the best price. How does one become a trusted friend? It takes time, it takes patience, it takes effort. Hanging out one’s shingle isn’t enough.

To Greg and all the other Gregs out there I want to wish you luck. Becoming a print broker, printing consultant, or independent print buyer isn’t easy. It is as difficult a task as starting any business, but if you enter it as a business, and develop it on sound business practices, it can be very rewarding.