Typically, my day begins around 7.30, when I get into the company
to organise and package the jobs that have been printed.
I try and get all that done before the floodgates
open at eight o’clock and we begin trading.
Good morning, Simon speaking. Can I help you?
Hi, Bob. How are you going? Good, Simon.
What do you think of this brochure here? Do you think it’s working well?
It looks OK. We could maybe work with the colour a bit more.
Each job is unique in its own sense, varying from
business card jobs right up to full fledged magazines.
My job is a digital pre-press operator.
The average perception is that with a magazine, you would have
a graphic designer designing it and a printer printing it.
But what a lot of people don’t understand is that there is
a big gap in between the graphic designer and the printer,
who actually makes the job work, organises the graphic work to something
the printer can use to print the magazine. And that’s what my job entails.
This job only requires a short run.
It’s actually only 100 copies so what I would do then is I would
direct that file to the Indigo which is the short-run, digital press.
Hey, Tim. How are you going? Good.
With this one here, the client just wants us to lift the cyan
a bit just on the cover, you know. The rest of it’s fine.
Just the cyan? Just the cyan, yeah.
As technology moves, so does the print industry.
Turnaround times have gone from two or three days to almost two or three hours.
Now with the introduction of this Indigo press, we are able to do that.
It’s instantaneous. There are no plates and it
comes off dry, ready for the client to pick up.
On the other hand, there is still the need for conventional printing
Jobs, some jobs do still require thousands of copies, so what
that would then entail, is going on to the traditional press.
Traditional printing is still a vast area of my industry.
This press, as opposed to the digital Indigo press, is a more
conventional press. Although it is fast, plates do have to be made.
A press operator has to make ready but as you can see, it can run
15,000 full-colour sheets per hour, which is quite astonishing.
This is Hal. He’s the printer.
It’s his job to keep this press running to make sure that there’s ink in the ducts and
to make sure that there’s paper running through this for eight hours each and every day.
Warren’s job is basically what I do in the morning.
He’s responsible for taking the printed job and organising finishing,
deliveries, dealing with any problems, dealing with couriers and also delivering jobs.
Andrew’s our guillotine operator.
His job is to make sure that the paper is cut to the right size for the press
and also, once the job is printed, that it’s printed to size
for delivery straight to the client or to the finishers.
I think we should run it.
Sweetan is the manager. He organises what job is put on
the press and how long it should be on the press for.
He also deals with clients and any problems that might arise.
16 hundred – is that correct, Sweetan? Yep, that’s fine.
I got into this job through doing an apprenticeship.
I got in contact with the printing governing body and then sat an examination.
From that examination, I was lucky enough to get myself an apprenticeship.
I like this job because I get a great sense of job satisfaction.
I enjoy seeing a job from initial conception right through to the finished product.
I enjoy dealing with digital files. I enjoy the deadlines.
I don’t enjoy not sleeping but I do enjoy the buzz of being in a
production environment and producing something that is mass produced.
If you wanted to get into this industry, my best advice would be to get
in contact with the governing body and even do some door knocking.
Knock on people’s doors and ask is there any chance of work experience,
because you’ll find that a lot of companies do offer work experience and a lot
of companies are quite happy to take young kids on as a learning process.
We also offer VET for students who are still at high school who are thinking of
getting into the industry and that gives them a sort of feel for how things work,
why they work and just to help them make up their minds – is this what I want to do?