We’ve Come a Long Way Baby
Renée on press at Sheridan Printing Company in Minnesota
Back in 2004 when I first started working for Bookhouse the print industry was in its infancy of using software files to send to printers. We used to use boards to layout our designs. You needed to have four boards per page, one for cyan, one for magenta, one for yellow and the last one was “K” Black (Key Color Importance: Black is considered the “Key” color because it provides the most definition and detail in printed materials. It is typically used to align the other colors during the printing process).
Back then we used Quark as our design software, but the industry has mostly moved on to using Adobe InDesign, a more intuitive software. We can now create our layouts, make a PDF of the design, send to our clients for approval. Once approved we create a high resolution PDF to send to the printer and voila, all we have to do is a wait for the print job to be done, then the book is sent on the client.
The printing process, too, has changed. It used to be that one side of the signature (eight or six pages of the book on one sheet of paper) would be printed then we have to wait for it to dry before the other side could be printed. Now both sides are printed at the same time cutting down printing time.
We used to go on press checks (and still do when a client wants one to five thousand copies) to make sure the colors are consistent with the proofs that were sent to us for approval. But now the machines are so good even the press checks are unnecessary.
Another thing that is major, is the images themselves. We were still shooting with 35 mm film, and that film was developed into slides. Once we chose the slides we wanted to use by putting them on a light table and looking at them through a loop, those slides were sent off to be digitized and put on a CD. Now almost all cameras are digital so once our photographers have taken their pictures they send them to us over the internet for us to pick and choose for our books.
I personally am amazed at how far we have come over the last 22 years. I was using a flip phone back then, now I’m using an Android phone that literally does everything. I no longer am carrying a Day-Timer or a Palm Pilot. My phone is a flashlight, GPS system and all of those things we are now used to. AI is now the thing. We may be changing our website using AI. When you see our home page change, you will know something is afoot.
