BRIEF 13 - THREAD - EVOLUTION PRINT TALK

Jason from Evolution Print came in to talk to the second years about what they do and the commercial lithoprinting process and I thought this was an excellent opportunity to gather some research for my THREAD brief and ask any questions I have.

Lithoprinting is predominantly used when printing large runs.

The printer uses aluminium plates that are etched with the design. For a full colour print you require four plates (CMYK).  Spot and metallic require there own plates. 

This process is sheet fed rather than roll fed.

Use vegetable inks.

The max paper size is 720mm X 1020mm with a max artwork size of 700mm X 1000mm, leaving a 20mm boarder. 

They print three types of coated paper - gloss, silk and matt - but also print on uncoated paper.

Price:

The price is mainly dictated by the number of plates required to print and the makeready costs at the beginning of the job. Once all this has been paid for the rest of the cost is mainly stock as the actual printing does not cost that much.

Self-cover printing, where the cover is the same as the text, is cheaper as it is run as one print job rather than two separate ones.

Lithoprinting has advantages over digital.

digital is limited to smaller sizes and weight of stock. You also cannot have a pure spot when digital printing. 

Proofs come either as a PDF or as a hard copy depending on the job. Proofs are used to check image quality and for any mistakes. Proofs are no longer used to check colour as this is now all done by the machine.

Things to make sure you do as a designer before sending to printers:

- Bleed (3mm).
- If spot colours are not going to be pure, covert to CMYK.
- Send as pages rather than spreads.
- PDFs and original format.
- Spot colours don't work with transparency so should be printed as an overlay.
- Image size should be correct (100%0 and 300dpi.

Time considerations for commercial print:
- Set up
- Ordering stock
- Proofs
- Printing

I then asked Jason about the ideas I had for printing THREAD. My concept for the magazine at the moment is each issue has its own colour that has been taken from a full colour image on the cover. As I'd like the cover as a thicker stock to the body this has to be done as a completely separate print. The problem with this is that it will cost more so something that needs to be considered. I the cover was to be printed on a different stock, this would mean it could have a full colour print on it and the the inside could just be black and an overprint. Although when speaking to Jason about it he said that because I would want a pure spot on the inside I would want that pure spot on the cover, adding another plate and then increasing the price. 

The cheapest alternative is use the same stock throughout and to pick a colour digitally from the image for the cover, then duotone the image using the chosen cover and printing it using two plates. This would save time and cost.

The modernist is a publication printed by Evolution Print that uses 4 plates. It colour only use two but the cover stock is thicker and therefore has to be a separate print. It only uses black and a colour throughout, therefore only really requiring 2 plates. This publication is printed in an edition of 700.