This week, Team Banowetz has been really busy overseeing the printing of the NorthPark Fall 2014 Campaign brochure with an extensive series of press checks. Although this was no easy task, it’s always fun to see our hard work finally materializing into a finished piece, and to smell the freshly-printed sheets as they come off the press.

The thirty-two-page plus cover perfect-bound book was printed at QuadWilliamson, considered to be one of the best web printers in the country. The cover was printed on a twelve-color Heidelberg sheet-fed press on 100# silk cover-weight paper, and the interior was printed on 100# silk text on a Manroland six-color web press. Most projects we handle are sheet-fed jobs, but this was done on a web press due to the large quantity and number of pages.

With web printing, the paper is fed into the press from a large, continuous roll of paper (about the size of a large ottoman, but a lot heavier). Once the paper passes through all of the ink stations, it’s instantly heated to over 220 degrees to dry the ink, and then is immediately cooled and folded before coming off the press into neat stacks. Later, these printed sheets are combined together during the bindery process, where the brochures are assembled, trimmed and bound.

So what was our role at the press check? We meticulously reviewed the sheets as they came off the press to make sure the color was accurate, the pages were spotless, and everything looked like we planned. Once it was perfect and we gave the “OK”, things really sped up with the web press cranking out an average of 35,000 sheets per hour. Fifteen hours and five press checks later, we were finally done. We think the finished pieces look amazing, and hope you’ll agree. Look for your copy to be delivered with the September issue of FD hitting your doorstep very soon.

– Leon Banowetz & Sarah Terrell