The Olden Days

Twenty-five years ago, the responsibilities in the graphic arts professions were rather clearly defined, and there wasn't much overlap of skills or responsibility. Designers knew a bit about prepress and printing endeavors, but they usually weren't required to perform any work typical of those operations. Design was a more hands-on process involving more hand drawing and pen-and-ink work. Production artists created page layouts by gluing down photo prints with wax or rubber cement to a piece of thick illustration board, creating a mechanical (short for mechanical artwork). We did type corrections with X-Acto^® knives and rubber cement, sometimes going home at the end of a long day with words glued to our elbows and the occasional consonant stuck in our hair. Who knowsmaybe that was the inspiration for refrigerator magnet poetry.

The design and print process moved at a slower pace than it does today, largely out of necessity. It's certainly not that we were more patient in those daysit's just that all that handwork took time. There was more specialization. Dedicated typesetters generated text using phototypesetting equipment (after the demise of lead-based hot type), trade shops employed cameramen to create color separations and shoot line shots of mechanicals, and dot etchers performed color corrections by etching film with acid solutions to change the size of the dots.

Film strippers combined line shots and color separation films from the camera to create final page film. Page proofs were created by exposing the final composed page films onto photosensitive materials. Color Key proofs consisted of individual color overlays, one for each printing ink. Matchprint proofs consisted of color layers laminated to printing stock. And Cromalin proofs were made by dusting pigment onto a sticky image. Sounds primitive now, perhaps, but we were high-tech in our day!

Proofs and film were given to the printer, where imposition took place (although some trade shops also did imposition and shipped plate-ready films). Bluelines (single-color proofs that actually weren't always blue) were exposed from the imposed flats, and then folded up to check the mechanics of the page contents and imposition. Plates were burned from the imposed flats, then mounted on the press. Using the page proofs from the trade shop, pressmen adjusted ink coverage on the press during the process of getting the press up to speed and the ink behavior optimalreferred to as makeready. Then, when everything was up to speed, the customer might be asked to attend a press check to assure that everything looked good. Some of these processes, such as Cromalin proofing, no longer take place. Some have morphed into digital versions. Imposed bluelines, for example, have largely been replaced by output from large-format, inkjet printers. Press makeready has been streamlined by technological advances. But you'll be happy to know that press checks are much the same as they have always been.

In those (relatively) ancient times, the workflow looked something like Figure 1.1. There were variations, of course. Some design houses had in-house typesetting and photography, and some trade shops supplied finished plates to printers. Some printers had in-house designers as well as prepress departments to perform trade shop functions. And then, as now, some printers used outside firms to perform specialty finishing such as embossing, foil stamping, and die cutting.

Figure 1.1. Historically, functions were divided between trades and professions that specialized in an individual aspect of graphic arts and printing. Designers designed, trade shops assembled all the pieces, and printers printed and performed finishing. Typesetters were often independent providers, although many design firms had in-house typesetting. Photography studios, while usually separate companies, were occasionally part of a design firm or a department within a trade shop providing photography services. The advent of desktop publishing changed this ecosystem radically.

The introduction of electronic scanners and color electronic prepress systems (CEPS) revolutionized the art of color separation. What had been a nuanced and specialized undertaking involving masking, tricky exposures, and chemical baths became accessible to a wider range of graphic arts professionals. Old instincts for camera work and dot etching were channeled into scanning and onscreen color correction. It was a wonderful new world. And our hands healed up as a result.