HOW'D WE PRINT THAT?: Documenting the Big Show in Print
By Mark Vruno -- Graphic Arts Online, 10/1/2007
Thousands of attendees at Graph Expo received the Official Show Daily outside their hotel rooms each morning during the September show in Chicago. Thousands more grabbed copies of the 80-page tabloid as they entered McCormick Place. GAM edited and produced the Official Show Daily, the journal of record for Graph Expo, on behalf of the Graphic Arts Show Co. Manufacturing and distribution was handled by Print Service Group (PSG), Laguna Hills, CA, which specializes in such projects.
“Producing a show daily is like putting on an exciting event,” says Dee Faigin, president of PSG, which contracts to printers around the country. “Every aspect of the process benefits from digital and wireless technology. There’s no down time now because of the ability to quickly transfer content and print-ready PDF files via the Internet,” she says. “Everyone is using technology consistently. That allows publishers to produce more live content. We are able to run 16 pages through prepress to plates on press in under four hours.”
Each evening, files for those live pages were printed locally on an 8-color, 40´´ Komori Lithrone sheetfed at 155-employee Imagine Print Group (IPG) in suburban Chicago. There, they were married to eight eight-page signatures, pre-gathered and blind stitched into 40- and 24-page units. Extra inserts were already tipped to the front of each unit. This advance work was run on a Goss M-300 5-unit web at McQuiddy Printing’s 84,000-sq.ft. Nashville plant.
Show Daily live and preprinted pages used Adobe Creative Suite, incorporating InCopy and InDesign, and Smart Connection Enterprise integrated publishing workflow. A 40-ppm Aficio SP C811DN, loaned by exhibitor Ricoh, proofed pages on site prior to transmission to IPG. (Preprinted pages were proofed on McQuiddy’s Epson StylusPro 10600.)
Live InDesign files were converted to PDFs, then uploaded to the printer’s FTP site. IPG made its reference proofs on an HP plotter. Daily deadlines to send final PDFs to IPG were 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 6 p.m., so all three shifts saw the daily move through the 80,000-sq.ft. plant. Its all-Fuji digital workflow in prepress includes Rampage and direct-to-plate setters.
Finished books were delivered at 4 a.m. for hotel distribution, and to the convention center at 6 a.m. More than a dozen reporters and editors worked on the four Show Dailies. Art directors color-corrected images, then laid them out in InDesign on PCs. The newsroom’s network was assembled by IT pros from Reed Business Information (GAM’s parent), who created a high-resolution workflow that tapped company servers through a T-1 line and virtual private network.
