SB2: Production 02

From Hannah's blog:

I experienced some trouble with the printing process but not because of a mistake on behalf of me or Becca. Despite the document being produced/formatted correctly ready to print, the book was printed with one page missing which threw the whole rest of the pagination off. This happened 3 times with the printer which delayed the production process a lot in the lead up to the deadline.

One issue that we did face and resolve during the printing process was with trying to download the typeface Ivy Mode onto the printer's computer. Eventually, we went back into the InDesign document and expanded all of the type. although this isn't a major problem, it is definitely something I will do from now on before going to print, to save time. 

Printing:

The book was printed onto Olin regular as it's a thin weight, fairly cheap paper that wouldn't be too expensive to produce in a large number. For the cover a thicker stock was chosen; matt 245. The use of a matt stock was fine as there were no high-quality images on the cover. Also, all of the images inside the guide had a colour overlay and slight grain added to them to counteract the quality of some of the photos and to ensure the images looked consistent when printed.

Binding

I selected a perfect bring for the guide as it's 64 pages which means otherwise I would have to use a form of coptic stitch with wouldn't be appropriate for a mass-produced city guide. Due to the size of the book (thickness) the book had to bound with a machine instead of by adding individual glue layers. This is quicker, more effective and provides an industry standard.

This is the book printed in its individual A3 spreads.

The first job involved laying out the pages and making sure none are missing and they're all in the right order. 

The next part of the process involved using the guillotine to chop the edge of the book that will be bound, to the crop marks. This is where the glue will be applied. 

The next step involved measuring the width of the book to figure out how thick the spine needs to be. For more accuracy, we used an electronic measurer which measured the spine width at 15.36mm. 

Once the pages were organised and lined up I handed the book to the technician to operate the perfect binding machine, as it's new equipment and I'm not trained to do it. Once the glue was applied, the publication was left to dry overnight ready to be chopped down to size.

The final part of the production process was cutting down the book and for this, I used the electric guillotine to get better accuracy.

Production Problem

Once the book was correctly chopped down to size, I discovered that the guillotine had cut the publication on an angle and taken off some of the content at the bottom of the page. There was also a white space at the top of the publication, above the crop marks, so it was very clear that something had gone wrong in the binding/cutting process. I took the book back to the technicians in the binding room and they informed me that the book had been bound incorrectly and the pages lined up at the spine on an in an odd way. Because of this, when the publication was cut down based off the cover crop marks, part of the content was taken with it. This was something completely out of my control as I had no reason to believe that the bind would be off. 

Due to the fact that the printing process went wrong so many times and with the high demand of the digital print room leading up to the deadline, there was no time to reprint the book. Had the printing process of gone smoothly the first time, and the book been bound correctly, the publication would've been printed to a really high standard because the rest of the book is really successful. The publications cost £40 to print and at this point, there isn't much that can be done in the way of reproducing it. 

I can't necessarily evaluate what I'd do differently in this situation as the problems in this instance were out of my control. I have however learned a lesson in the way of choosing where/how to print my design. There is always a risk of problems in the printing process when you hand your designs over, however, from now on I will make sure to get a test print produced so I know the publication is going to work out OK, and also would print the book externally (outside of University) If I were to make it again.

Photos of the off bind: