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.

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I’m not just talking through my hat, printing is a strange and wonderful miracle. The printing press has been named as the most influential invention of the last two thousand years. The most influential invention of the last two thousand years–wow! Without printing, knowledge would be limited to a very small class of people. 99.8% of us would live in ignorance. Without the printing press none of the modern day communications would exist. Do you think the telephone and electric light would have gone anywhere without an educated public? How would the engineers, and scientists collaborate if not through the printed word? This computer I’m typing on at the moment, would never have existed in a world without the printing press. Think about it. We wouldn’t be much better off than the serfs in the dark ages without the amazing transformation made possible by the press.

As enamored as I am with the miracle of printing I live and breathe in the actual world of printing,  and I’m here to tell you that keeping a printing press in good working order and producing excellent products is a challenge. I’ve heard a great many words spoken about presses other than miracle or fantastic.  Those other words are  known as printer talk. Printer talk consists of a wide range of impolite four letter words. You know the kind of language I’m talking about, don’t you?

If you see a press operator with a sprained foot and notice dents in the side of the press you can bet it has been a bad day for someone.

You’d think by now,  the science and art of printing would have resolved all of the issues. You might think that, but you would be wrong.  See, printing is a dynamic business. Things are always changing. Everyday there’s a new ink, a different kind of printing plate, and some exciting new paper that just came out. The varieties, colors, and weights, of paper can be daunting even for the experts.

The number one question I get from graphic designers is about paper. What kind? What weight should I use? Will it look good if I design this, that, or the other on it? I’ll tell you a little secret. The paper mills develop a new paper and send their mill reps out to promote it. The reps spend a lot of time getting the graphic designers stirred up about it. The designers go to the printer expecting to get the same results as the samples given to them by the mill reps, but in the real world, not the world of paper marketing, the designers have half the budget and half the time and they are often working with printers that have not yet experienced that particular paper and don’t have a clue as to how well it will print or what the challenges will be.

I remember a few years ago the rage was translucent papers. I was hired to produce a direct mail project for a prominent advertising agency. The artists were in love with the idea of a see-through envelope. The paper salespeople were excited to have someone order a large amount of stock for the mailing. I was going to get a good commission so it appeared to be a win-win-win for everyone. Wrong. No one knew just how brittle these new papers were. When they went through the mail, with the usual US post office’s normal careful handling, they looked like they had gone through a shredder. The agency was mad. Their client was mad. The paper merchant shrugged, and I somehow got egg on my face. I didn’t specify the paper. I didn’t manufacture the paper. I had never been involved in the printing of that brand of paper and yet I was supposed to intuit the immanent disaster. I’m not Jewish, but Oy Vey comes to mind.