Friday 18 February 2011

At The Printers

The East German sheet-fed printer is the business.
Plain paper in this end. That's a huge stack of it on that pallet. Each station is a different colour, plus a fixer and machine in the middle to turn the paper to print the other side.
Sideburn! You're up.
CMYK.
This fella loves printing and motorbikes. He gives Sideburn special attention. His desk scans the colours and shows the parameters on the computer screen. Then it's tweaked till it's as lush as possible without being over-saturated.
The colours are super-rich and you can see individual MetalFlake flakes on the Krook Street Racer's tank and every weld on the Metro Racing Outlaw. That's down to the paper and the print quality. This is a 32-page section before folding, binding and trimming. There are three 32-page sections and a cover in every 100-page issue.

I called in at the printers yesterday. I've worked in publishing for 15 or 16 years and I've never seen a magazine I've been involved with being printed. It's a good feeling.
We could easily get Sideburn printed for at least 20% cheaper than we do, but the printers we use now are brilliant, miles better than our original printers (in our experience). And we have to pay for that. But after spending six months on and off, working on the magazine and a lifetime to regret cutting corners we're willing to do that. With this in mind, the photo below made me laugh. G

12 comments:

KrookStreetRacing said...

I've been to a lot of print shops in my day, and though I enjoy seeing professionals at work, I can't help worrying about if I remembered doing that last change to the copy, or if I chose the correct CMYK-blend for that logo, or...

That's why I prefer making web sites.

747 said...

Very cool.

Motorcycho said...

you should come watch me print mine... Throw some dvds on the TV, crank up Little Stevens Underground Garage, and crank up the press (s). Maybe do a little wrenching on a bike while the press is running. Quality is job 2!

Nick said...

Like your Ethos, and impressed with the results

Unknown said...

I too have been to a lot of printers... mainly because I work in one. My average day consist of sitting with designers tweaking their copy, removing rogue spaces they have spotted last minute. Understanding print imo is vital to good design and vise versa. Great work guys!

Anonymous said...

jus tell him to get a move on so we can read the results!!.

motoguru. said...

Being around some of this stuff from time to time, I can really appreciate the work that goes into each issue. Keep up the great work fellas!

Guy@GK said...

Your attention to detail and love for what you do shows on every page. The new issue looks and feels beautiful. I need to start cutting fewer corners.

carlito said...

last month I did the same

I love seeing it come to life

http://tran-scend.tumblr.com/post/3034907599/were-coming


carlito

Anonymous said...

Nothing beats approving your job on press. The smell of fresh ink on paper is akin to Castrol R at a classic race meet.
Great mag as always. As RingAdingDoo says understanding the process is vital to good design. Unless I'm very much mistaken you missed the typos on pages 15 and 44 ;-)
Keep up the good work – looking forward to #8!

Sideburn Magazine said...

Hi Adrian
I did spot those typos from afar but it was already too late
"always room for improvement".

Or as Chris Carr would say
"If you aint crashing you aint riding hard enough!"
BP

Darrin said...

Argggh KBA decks. I work for one of their competitors in the Metal Deck world. I,ll be touching a competitors work!