Hello again!
What’s new on this side, you ask? Well, let’s see. On Thursday, September 8, Doug (circulation manager), Beate (art director) and I went down to the printer to do a press check (what we at Alberta Views refer to as a POK).
What’s a POK? It’s what magazines do to make sure that the print version matches the digital version. We know the printer does a wonderful job but there are certain things that are so specific that it’s good to visit once in a while and see the process first hand. That’s where Beate’s keen eye comes in.
If you can stretch your memory into the not so distant past you will remember that the weather was gorgeous on Sept 8. Of course, it was also the day I decided to wear a long-sleeved shirt and vest. Maybe my brain got fried a little in that heat and my memory distorted but it must have been at least 30 degrees (if not the high 20s)!
We arrived at the printer, Central Web, with only mild directional difficulty (Beate is a pro-driver! She got us there in one piece, with the help of Doug’s directions! I just sat in the back seat, watching all the cars zip around on the Deerfoot.). Once there we met Brian (our guide) and Glen (our print broker a.k.a. print guru). Glen is our go-to guy for all our print-related questions. He’s an honorary member of the AV family.
It was way cooler inside the plant. In fact, while on the tour, I completely forgot what a scorcher it was outside. (Aside: I became so oblivious that it seemed odd to see a few of the workmen with slurpies!) The printing presses were huge! They must have been at least two storeys high and at least 100 feet long. I felt very tiny next to them and at 5’9″ and in 4″ heels, I hardly ever feel tiny).
And the noise! While the presses were running, a massive hum emanated from the rollers as they ran the signatures, coating them with ink. What’s a signature, you ask? A signature is a huge sheet of paper that is printed double-sided with eight magazine pages on each side, sixteen in total. The pages are arranged so that when the sheet is folded they appear in order as if by magic. (Okay, it’s not magic—it’s a well-designed system!) You can also print half signatures, which would give you eight pages instead of sixteen. Alberta Views has sixty-four pages, which means there are four signatures to each issue.
***ACTIVITY BREAK***
If what I just tried to explain still doesn’t make any sense, here is a practical illustration.
Materials: paper, pen/pencil and scissors (optional)
Step 1. Take a standard piece of paper (letter size or ledger, whichever is handy).
Step 2. Fold your paper in half.
Step 3. Repeat step 2.
Step 4. Repeat step 2 (yes, again).
Step 5. By this point, your paper should be all folded up. Now take your writing utensil and jot the numbers 1 thru 16 at the bottom corner of each sheet of your little folded booklet (on both sides of each page).
(*Optional step 5b. To easily access the pages in the back-half of your booklet, take your scissors and cut the fold just enough so you can write the number on the bottom corners.)
Step 6. Now that you’ve diligently, and legibly, written the numbers on the bottom corners, here’s the magic! Unfold your paper.
VOILÀ! Using the creases as page borders, you can now see the orientation of all eights pages on either side of your sheet. This would then become the print order.
Congratulations! You have just created a properly paginated magazine signature!
***END OF ACTIVITY BREAK***
So, now that we’ve got a signature, how do we print on it? There are two general ways. The first way prints on cut signatures; this is called “sheet fed” printing. (It works just like a regular household printer and is mostly used for brochures and flyers etc.) The second way uses a continuous roll of paper and prints signatures that are cut afterward, called “web fed”. Like most other major magazines and newspapers, we print the second way.
Different presses also use different ink formats. The presses that print our magazine function as CMYK. That means they use four colours of ink: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. (It’s odd that black is represented by a K… but according to trusty Wikipedia this is because “[t]he ‘K’ in CMYK stands for key since in four-color printing cyan, magenta, and yellow printing plates are carefully keyed or aligned with the key of the black key plate” .) When you look at a newspaper or a magazine and see colours bled outside their lines, it is because they used the CMYK printing method but their colour plates weren’t lined up correctly with the black key. Once the four inks are applied, the paper is run through an oven that cures and dries it: curing=smudge-free! Since we were there as they were running the October issue, we got to see it literally come off the press.
Once everything was tweaked to Beate’s liking, we said our goodbyes and thank yous and stepped back out into the heat. That’s when it would have been nice to have a slurpie. I guess I’ll know for next time.
So, how was that for a glimpse behind the scenes? POK, signature, sheet fed, web fed, and CMYK—all this was new to me and I hope it was enjoyable for you.
If you have any specific requests, suggestions or information you would like to know about Alberta Views, send me an email at intern@albertaviews.ab.ca and I will do my best to answer in an upcoming entry.
Until next time,
Nicole
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