Yesterday I spent the day at the printer’s getting our big, beautiful brochure printed. It’s fun to see the huge printing presses at work. This particular one is about 80 feet long with giant piston-like moving parts that distribute ink over the plates evenly. There’s a giant piston and a plate for every color in our brochure. I was able to walk along a sort of running board on the side of the press and see our special-order metallic inks get squirted out onto our plates. It’s amazing how little has changed about this process since the invention of the printing press around 1440. Although now the plates are made from electronic files and run mechanically, and the ink percentages are calculated and adjusted electronically, The essential ink on a plate pressed on paper seems pretty much the same to this layperson.

Gutenberg Press

The press was one of several in a huge warehouse that smelled delightfully of new ink; the way a brand new book smells when you open it. Our pressmen were a couple of serious career guys who are real craftsmen. They stand all day at this press, tweaking the percentages of each color until the printed sheets match our photo proofs. Once each 16-page sheet was perfect, I would sign it with a flourish and they would begin to run the thousands we’ll need for the brochure while I waited to do the next sheet. Since ours is a big, 56 page book rather than a typical brochure, I did this 4 times as the day went on.

I know the print industry has suffered in the electronic age — and I’m all for progress, don’t get me wrong — but I hope there will always be a place for this kind of artful process that produces something tactile and glossy; something that makes you want to sit in an armchair and turn its pages.

Modern Press