Archives for posts with tag: print
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ode to printing

Feb 17, 2006 //

I have to confess to often being in complete awe of imaging technology. Joel Snyder, my photo theory professor at Chicago, once remarked that no matter how many times he’s seen it, he’s still amazed watching the latent image emerge on exposed photographic paper that is placed in developer. Having spent a bit of time in a darkroom, I understand that uncanny reaction.

I often experience a similar feeling when I watch a press at work. Such was the case when I stopped by RIT’s Printing Applications Lab today to watch a class project being run on the Goss Web Press. It’s strangely breathtaking to observe an image appear, color-by-color, on a web of paper flowing at breakneck speeds through a press. Faster than the eye can see, for this press operates at a speed of multiple feet per second, each layer of ink — black, cyan, magenta, yellow — is applied, in perfect registration, as the paper flows from tower to tower. The paper then disappears into a drying unit and then emerges and is immediately folded and cut.

The press itself is far to large for me to take a picture of. I did manage these two shots using my cellphone. The first is of the web passing out of the magenta tower (no relation to Stephen King’s famed Dark Tower). The second is of the end result — folded signatures — emerging from the press.

Photos of the Web Press

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Categories personal, photo, praxis

Franklin at 300

Jan 17, 2006 //

Ben Franklin
(January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790)

“Tell me and I forget.
Teach me and I remember.
Involve me and I learn.”
– B. Franklin

One of the fondest memories from my time as an undergraduate at RIT was being singled out and favorably compared to Ben Franklin during a School of Printing Event. I don’t think I was deserving of the honor, but it meant a lot. Franklin and I will be getting to know each other better in the months to come. In the meantime, happy 300th birthday, oh Patron Saint of Printing. Were you alive today, you’d be blogging, and far more eloquently than most out there. Certainly more so than I.

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Categories personal, praxis

return to the pressroom

Jan 13, 2006 //

Last night, I attended my first lab class. It marked my return to a pressroom floor, though admittedly a very different type of one than those I knew in the past. The class was held in the Digital Print Lab at RIT’s Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies (CIMS).

This is the Kodak NexPress, a digital press that can be used for variable data printing. Variable data printing is a term used to refer to print jobs where each impression (printed page) is unique. No two pages printed by the NexPress need necessarily be the same (though the NexPress is more than capable of accurately printing the same page over and over again).

One variable data application for the NexPress is printing custom, personalized mailers. And that was the focus of this particular lab. Students were printing out personalized postcards addressed to customers of a fictitious camera supply store. Next quarter I’ll be teaching this lab as part of a course on Variable Data Printing.

Side notes

  • The above lab is currently being taught by the man known to some of this blog’s readers as MoFo. Again, it’s a small, small, world.
  • The pictures from the last two days were taken with my new cell phone, the Motorola e815. I have yet to blog about it, but I cannot sing the praises of this phone highly enough. While not as drop dead sexy as the Razrs, it is pound for pound and buck for buck one of the best phones out there (and far better than the currently available Razrs, too).
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Categories praxis

RIT: Day 3

Jan 11, 2006 //

Well, I’ve already slipped my “I’ll post every Monday thru Thursday” promise. Given my track record this should come as no surprise.

The last three days have been spent learning how much the School of Print Media (SPM) and RIT have changed since I graduated. This will most likely go on for a while. I attended my first faculty meeting and met most of the SPM staff. One of the things to file in the “it’s a small world” category is that my former upstairs neighbor, Dr. Franziska Frey, is now on the school’s staff. Interestingly, it was another upstairs neighbor from 195 Merriman St who unknowingly set this entire process in motion. I with hence forth refer to this pattern of serendipity as the “195 Effect.”

Today’s theme will be reading and research. Yesterday I raided the RIT Library and returned with a stack of books on the 15th century European evolution of print. I’m interested in learning a bit more about Messrs. J. Gutenberg and A. Manutius (both the Greater and the Younger).

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Categories personal, praxis
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