Lecture 1 General concept of the processes of publishing and printing production 2012
Issues to consider:
What are processes. Product creation processes. Manufacturing process
Printing process Modes technological process
Technological process Prepress production
Print production Booklet production
Binding production Finishing production
Each media enterprise is obliged to ensure the timely release of high-quality products in the planned volume. At the lowest cost: labor, material and financial. This problem can be solved only with a rationally organized production process.
Manufacturing process is a set of interrelated labor and technological processes aimed at obtaining, processing and transferring necessary information. The main task of organizing production at each enterprise is to ensure effective interaction production activities process of workers to transform objects of labor into finished products. Information is also a commodity, since it is subject to purchase and sale.
Manufacturing process- a set of labor and natural processes, as a result of which primary disparate data are transformed into systematized mass information.
The main elements of the production process: objects of labor, means of labor, labor.
Objects of labor- finished products in the form of written, illustrative, mixed, visual, audio, audiovisual material.
Means of labor subdivided into tools and material conditions of work. 1. Machines, mechanisms, tools ( ball pen, voice recorder, camera, computer, radio, frequency range of waves). 2. Material working conditions: premises, warehouses, vehicles, workplace.
Work. The purposeful activity of a journalist associated with the transformation of primary disparate information into a systematized, purposeful and adapted for a specific type of reproduction on various media (transmitters). Such information is finished goods(product) to be bought and sold.
Information is not a material object, but it is subject to purchase and sale (exchange) and therefore is a materially necessary market product that materializes into specific material values.
The main processes of publishing and printing production
Typography it's a complex production operations carried out for the purpose of producing a printed book.
Printing process consists in creating an image identical to the original from the ink layer and transferring it to the printed material, followed by processing the prints in accordance with the requirements of the customer.
The main general task of the printing process is the mass reproduction with the required accuracy of the information on the printed form.
Manufacturing process – general concept all actions and processes associated with the manufacture of products. The production process generalizes and links all the phased individual technological processes occurring (carried out) at each stage of production into a single completed stage of production.
Technological process regulates the production of products at each stage of production. The technological process is the main one for the transformation of materials that are used in production into finished products at this stage. For example, when typing text, the completed technological process at this stage is the output to the printer of tracing paper, film or paper with text. For the print shop, the final technological process is the production of an impression. Information on a floppy disk, disk, photo form or printed form at some stage of production is a finished commercial product.
Mode technological process is exactly established order and process conditions. The accuracy of reproduction of multi-color originals is greatly influenced by the properties of paper, its porosity, whiteness, opacity, and others.
In the manufacture of any product, two processes are used, the general production and regulatory - technological. The entire technology for the manufacture of printed products consists of sequentially carried out processes, Supplies and kit production equipment.
Integral part operating process is a certain number of phased operations. The number of technological operations performed in the manufacture of products depends on the nature, purpose and type of the product itself. In the manufacture of each type of product, taking into account the available equipment, each enterprise uses its own technological schemes that regulate the conduct of the technological process. There is not, and cannot be, a single standard scheme regulating the technological process for all enterprises. All printing companies take as a basis, a typical scheme of the manufacturing process. The modes of the technological process, as well as its scheme, may vary depending on the nature of the product and the conditions of the organization of the technological process. The development of technological regimes, in essence, is a detail of the development of schemes of the technological process.
The development of the project of the technological process begins with the definition of the requirements that apply to the publication, taking into account the receipt of high-quality products and the lowest costs of labor and material resources. When drawing up a production process, it is necessary to have an answer to a number of questions. Product type? Product format? Production volume? Possible layout? Type and method of printing? Illustration and typography? Basic and auxiliary materials? When choosing a process flow diagram, not only the composition of operations and technological routes are determined, but also the order in which individual operations are performed. Calculations of the technological process are necessary to determine the most favorable conditions for its implementation, planning the timing of production runs, determining the amount of materials and determining economic indicators. A modern technological process is impossible without mechanization and automation, and in recent times without computerization. All pieces of equipment are designed to perform a specific technological process. The performance and usefulness of a machine is judged by how well it is designed to perform a given process. The performance of the machine has a paramount influence on the duration of the production of products and labor productivity.
Printing production is a variety of processes performed in the manufacture of printed products.
Main technology system production of printing products at a printing company can be represented in the following form.
Printing production includes a complex technical means used for:
1. Obtaining primary information from various sources, processing the information received. Creating an image in text or pictorial form,
2. Preparation for printed reproduction, production of a printed form. The actual printing
3. Performance of stitching and binding and finishing processes.
A. Prepress From the author's original to the production of photoforms. Working with the received information. Set processes. Illustration image processing. photographic processes. Color separation, screening. Production of negatives or transparencies. Installation and production of photoforms.
To prepress processes include all types of printing work performed before the publication arrives at the printing house for printing. These works include: text preparation (typesetting, editing, editing), image processing, page layout, color separation, layout production, strip assembly, printing form production, printing test copies of the publication. At the final stage of prepress processes, photoforms are created, or the results of printing activities are recorded on electronic media.
Most of the prepress work is performed by companies that provide printing services. They complete the prepress process already in the printing house, creating printing forms for the production of circulation.
One of the tasks prepress publications - to identify all possible errors, in order to avoid them getting into the finished product. At the final stages of preparation, the layout of the publication in without fail is approved by the customer.
Main technological equipment: computers equipped with software. As well as scanners; printers (laser, matrix); phototypesetting equipment, copy frames processing units.
The technological chain of publication of a printed publication depends on its type. As a rule, modern editorial offices have their own output devices - phototypesetting machines or laser printers - and deliver ready-made photoforms to the printing house. If the editorial office has a dedicated communication channel, then a print file is sent to the printing house, from which negatives or transparencies are made.
Form Processes
Photoforms are the basis for obtaining printed forms, but if the publication is multi-page (magazine, brochure, book), it is necessary to imposition, that is, place the finished photo forms on the mounting sheet, and then on the printed form in order to correctly arrange the pages in the notebooks after folding.
Multi-page publications are required to provide printing houses with an imposition layout - a standard of the laid-out pages of the publication with their layout on a printed sheet.
Modern computer programs allow you to make electronic imposition, but, unfortunately, in Russia this technology has not yet “taken root” for many reasons. The situation is absurd: during the prepress processes, the editors try to save minutes and even seconds, spending material resources for the purchase of the most modern equipment and for highly qualified (and therefore highly paid) specialists, and in the printing house during the installation of strips, hours are lost, since this operation is performed using outdated technology:
Initially, the photoforms are cut from four sides on a cutter;
According to the trigger layout, markings are made on graph paper;
They perforate a transparent mounting base (astralon sheets), put it on a graph paper to put vertical and horizontal marks;
Next, astralon is put on the pins of the mounting table and with the help of adhesive tape (adhesive tape) they begin to glue the photoforms; after mounting photoforms for one color (if the edition is full-color), the whole procedure is repeated for each subsequent color.
It is impossible to mount photoforms for four colors in the same way, so the effect of "misalignment" during manual mounting is inevitable. The use of electronic strip editing is another “peculiar” stage of layout: instead of a separate page, a whole printed sheet is typeset. If all parameters are set correctly, the effect of misalignment is eliminated, in addition, the time spent on preparing the imposition of the strip is significantly reduced.
For getting printed forms Mounted photoforms are placed on a printing plate covered with a photosensitive layer. Illumination occurs in a copy frame with a powerful light source. Next, the printed plate is subjected to chemical treatment.
Most publications are currently printed in offset. Aluminum plates pre-coated with a photosensitive layer are usually used as a form material. Technology "Computer-printing form"
The first experiments on exposing printing plates with a laser beam (STR technology) began in 1981
In order to obtain printing products by offset printing, the following operations must be carried out
1. Typing.
2. Scanning and processing of visual material.
3. Layout.
4. Output of color-separated photoforms to a phototypesetting machine (exposure of the laid-up strips with subsequent chemical-photographic processing of the photographic material).
5. Obtaining color proof analog prints.
6. Installation of photoforms.
7. Production of printing plates (illumination of sensitized metal plates through photoforms in a copy frame.).
8. Print run.
9. Post-printing processes.
The technology "Computer - printing plate" allows to exclude operations 4-6, since the laser beam acts directly on the printing plate.
The obvious advantages of the "Computer - Printing Form" technology are that the efficiency of preparing printed products is significantly increased due to the reduction in the technological chain of operations performed. At the same time, the quality of prints is improved.
Printing processes
Obtaining identical prints from the printing plate on the receiving surface is called the printing process. Printing ink is applied to the printing plate and, depending on the printing method, transfers directly or indirectly to the paper under the influence of an impression cylinder exerting pressure.
To obtain printing products of optimal quality, the correct selection of printing materials is of great importance: with a decrease in the surface strength of paper, it is necessary to reduce the viscosity of dyes. In media editorial offices, when preparing printed publications for an output device, it is necessary to correctly set the dot gain parameters, which will directly depend on the absorbency of the paper, so that raster printed elements have a given value on the print. An error in determining the degree of paper whiteness even at the prepress stage in the production of full-color publications will lead to a distorted color reproduction of the entire print run, etc.
For each of the printing methods, certain inks and types of papers are used, all print media strive to achieve the optimal result while reducing the cost of circulation products, therefore, knowledge of the properties of printing materials, the capabilities of printing machines and the corresponding prepress characteristics are necessary for management and technical services publications of all types for successful work in a market economy.
Modern printing technology includes three main stages, without which no printing house can do: prepress, press and postpress processes.
The prepress production process ends with the creation of an information carrier from which text, graphic and illustrative elements can be transferred to paper (printing form production).
The printing process, or printing proper, produces printed sheets. For their production, a printing machine and a carrier of information prepared for printing (printing form) are used.
At the third stage printing technology, called the post-printing process, final processing and finishing of sheets of paper (prints) printed in a printing machine are carried out to give the resulting printed products a presentation (brochure, book, booklet, etc.).
Prepress process. At this stage, one or more (for multi-color products) printing plates for printing a certain type of work should be obtained.
If the print is single-color, then the form can be a sheet of plastic or metal (aluminum), on which a drawing is applied in a direct (readable) image. The surface of the offset form is processed in such a way that, despite the fact that the printing and non-printing elements are practically in the same plane, they perceive the ink applied to it selectively, providing an impression on paper when printing. If multi-color printing is required, then the number of printing forms must correspond to the number of printing inks, the image is preliminarily divided with the selection of individual colors or inks.
The basis of prepress processes is color separation. Extracting the constituent colors of a color photograph or other halftone drawing is a tricky job. To perform such complex printing work, electronic scanning systems, powerful computer and software, special output devices for photographic film or plate material, various auxiliary equipment, as well as the availability of highly qualified, trained specialists.
Such a prepress system costs at least 500 - 700 thousand dollars. Therefore, most often, in order to significantly reduce investments in the organization of printing houses, they resort to the services of special reproduction centers. They, having everything necessary for performing prepress work, prepare sets of color separation transparencies on order, from which sets of color separation printing plates can be made in a conventional printing house.
Printing process. The printing plate is the basis of the printing process. As already mentioned, offset printing is currently widespread in the printing industry, which, despite its almost
100 years of existence, constantly improving, remaining dominant in printing technology.
Offset printing is carried out on printing machines, the principle of operation of which was discussed above.
post-press process. The post-printing process consists of a number of important operations that give the printed prints a marketable appearance.
If sheet editions were printed, then they need to be trimmed and trimmed to certain formats. For these purposes, paper cutting equipment is used, ranging from manual cutters to high-performance cutting machines, designed to simultaneously cut hundreds of sheets of paper of all formats common in practice.
For sheet products, post-press processes end after cutting. The situation is more complicated with multi-sheet products. In order to bend the sheets of a magazine or a book, you need folding equipment on which folding takes place ( from him. falzen - bend) - sequential bending of printed sheets of a book, magazine, etc.
If you want to make a brochure or a book consisting of separate sheets from printed and cut into separate sheets of prints, they need to be matched one to the other. For this purpose, sheet-collecting equipment is used. When the selection is completed, a thick stack of crumbling sheets is obtained. In order for the sheets to be combined into a brochure or book, they must be stapled. Currently, the most widespread are 2 types of fastening - wire and seamless adhesive. Wire binding is mainly used for brochures, i.e. printed publications from 5 to 48 pages. For fastening with wire staples, booklet makers are used. These devices can be used alone or
in combination with collating systems. More complex work are carried out on special wire stitching machines.
To fasten a large number of sheets, adhesive bonding is used, which is carried out either with the help of “cold” glue - polyvinyl acetate emulsion, or hot melt hot melt adhesive. The spine of the future book edition is smeared with glue, firmly holding the sheets until the glue dries completely. The advantages of this technology are the good appearance of the book, the flexibility and stability of the book block, strength and durability.
In the work of small- and medium-circulation printing houses, there are similar processes. However, as the main printing equipment of these printing houses, not offset machines are used, but duplicators capable of reproducing both single-color and multi-color copies.
In the production of printed materials, the following stages can be distinguished: typing, reproduction of visual materials, layout, layout, transferring the image to the media (printing process), post-printing processes.
Consider how these processes have changed over time.
Kit. Starting from ancient times (China, 8th century AD) and until the 15th century, typing was carried out by carving in stone slabs (lithography) or wooden boards (xylography) the full text of the page, including pictorial design. This method was labor intensive. Plates and boards quickly fell into disrepair, and therefore it was necessary to renew them.
With the invention of individual letters by I. Gutenberg, the nature of the set changed - now the laborious process of carving the text in stone or wood disappeared. The letters were metal, so they could withstand large print runs. Fundamentally, this process has not changed with the invention of the linotype. Text pre-printed on typewriter, was again typed from the Linotype keyboard and turned into castings in the form of monolithic metal strings with a relief surface. Then these metal strings were inserted into the so-called. cash desk, and thus the image of the whole page was obtained.
The advent of computers fundamentally changed the typing process. Although it is carried out from the keyboard in the same way as with the help of the linotype, the further fate of the typed text is significantly different.
Reproduction of visual materials. The use of pictorial materials, apparently, began only in the early Middle Ages. And even then it was mostly initial letters, patterned screensavers. They were carved in stone or wood at the same time as the text.
With the invention of the printing press by I. Gutenberg, the input of pictorial materials took the form of manufacturing cliche. In the future, this form did not fundamentally change, only the technology for making clichés changed. They were carved on metal plates on copy machines according to the type of lathe, they were made by the photochemiographic method with further replication (plastic clichés).
Computer technology has made it possible to abandon clichés. Today, visual materials, whether they are page design elements, line, black and white or color photographs, are placed on the page of a publication on a computer during the layout process.
Prototyping. In the pre-computer era, processes prototyping and typesetting were divided. Layout is the process of compositionally placing drawing elements on a format. The end result is a layout. The latest layout signed for production is the original layout.
The layout took place in the editorial office.
Layout - this is the process of placing text and illustrative blocks on the format field, taking into account the layout design and spelling requirements. With the advent of computer technology, the process typesetting moved from the printing house to the editorial office and coincided in time with the process prototyping.
Transferring an image to paper (printing). By definition, printing is the process of transferring a coloring matter (printing ink, toner) from a printing plate to a substrate, usually paper.
Printing execution publications - the production of a material object using a number of printing processes: prepress, printing (high, flat, gravure or screen printing), stitching and binding and finishing. The level of printing performance of the publication largely determines its quality.
Printing ink is a heterogeneous colloidal system consisting of highly dispersed particles of pigments (lacquer pigments), evenly distributed and stabilized in the liquid phase of the binder.
Print form- this is the surface of a plate, plate or plate cylinder made of a variety of materials (light-sensitive layer or photopolymer, metal, plastic, paper, wood, lithographic stone), which serves to form and store an image in the form of separate areas that perceive printing ink (printing elements) and not perceiving it (blank elements). The ink from the printing elements should easily transfer to the printed material or to the transmission link, for example, to an offset sheet or a swab, so that the image is then transferred, as a rule, to paper.
The printing elements create an image on the printing plate. They perceive the ink and then transfer it to paper or to an intermediate link (offset cloth, swab), thus creating a colorful image on the print during the printing process.
Whitespace elements serve as a background for creating an image on a printed form. They do not accept ink and therefore do not transfer image elements to paper during the printing process.
The sharper and clearer the boundary between blank and printed elements, the better the printing form. The number of high-quality prints that can be obtained in the printing process before these boundaries are blurred (destroyed) is defined in printing as the print run of the printing plate.
Depending on the arrangement of printed and blank elements on the printing plate, four main printing methods can be distinguished: high, flat (offset), deep and screen.
post-press processes. These include stitching processes- colliding sheets, cutting, folding, stacking blocks, binding notebooks, wrapping covers, trimming and finishing processes - varnishing of prints, lamination, foil stamping, stamping (figurative die-cutting).
Test questions:
What did Chinese artisan Bi Sheng invent?
Who invented the first printing press?
Who first began printing Slavic books in the Cyrillic alphabet?
Why is Ivan Fedorov famous?
What is lithography?
What is woodcut?
What is an incunabula?
Who Invented the Linotype?
What is the linotype for?
What is the difference between layout and layout processes?
What is a printable?
What does the post press process include?
The available assessments of the importance and role of print media confirm the growing demand for them in the world. For example, the American magazine Time at the turn of the millennium emphasizes the discovery and use of printing in its sociocultural significance, and Johannes Gutenberg's contribution to printing is considered one of the most important inventions of the past millennium. The era is now electronic means information, but printed matter does not lose its value. For example, printed media - books, brochures, magazines and newspapers - family budget in Germany, depending on the level of education, income, etc. in 1997, from 40 to 110 German rubles were spent monthly. stamps. The market for printed products in the world today is diverse. Commercial products and periodicals are in the greatest demand. They differ from each other in the frequency of release, which determines and manufacturing process printing companies. Printing houses specialize in different segments of the printed matter market. Commercial products are non-periodic printed matter (for example, catalogues, brochures, flyers, Business Cards). The periodical, on the other hand, is printed editions issued at regular intervals (for example, newspapers and magazines, including illustrated ones). Ordinary customers of periodicals in the printing industry are publishing houses and editorial offices. Rice. Figures 1.1-1 and 1.1-2 illustrate the diversity of printed media. Another way to classify printed products is to divide them into special commodity groups. The individual product groups are briefly described below.
Books
The invention of Gutenberg and his first printed editions in the middle of the 15th century, based on the manufacture of printing plates composed (typed) from individual type characters, caused a revolution in the production of books. it 
contributed to the development of education, culture and an increase in the degree of accessibility of information to the population in comparison with previously existing handwritten books. As a result, illiteracy receded into the background in subsequent centuries. The discovery of Gutenberg contributed to the increase in the colorfulness of printed matter. For over 500 years since Gutenberg's invention in the dominant way
printing in the manufacture of books remained letterpress printing. Only in the 1970s did phototypesetting and offset printing become widespread. The book has become a relatively inexpensive medium, not only because of the rational ways of producing it, but also because of the availability of cheap paper. For the production of a printed book, not only type-setting, but also illustrative forms began to be used. There has been a transformation of fonts that mimic handwritten letters into a font designed with aesthetic requirements, readability, style, assortment, etc. in mind. The number of new titles of books published every year is constantly increasing. Today, in the era of electronic media, the annual volume of book production in Germany has reached 80,000 titles per year. Germany is one of the largest book producing countries in the world. In 1997, only China and Great Britain produced more titles (Fig. 13.3-8). In 1998, the total circulation of books in Germany exceeded 500 million copies, with a total value of over 3.5 billion euros. On the one hand, the book market relies on the demand for books, on the other hand, on the corresponding
printing performance, whether it be valuable volumes with sewing threads and in leather binding with a "golden" edge or simple, glued, cheap editions. AT book assortment there are both single-color editions and high-quality albums with color reproductions. At present, in Germany, not only the book market is large in terms of output, but also the market for other printed publications, for example, magazines, including illustrated ones, newspapers, brochures, etc.
Magazines
The range of magazine products mostly consists of periodicals. These are special scientific and industrial journals, journals for a wide range of readers, illustrated monthly advertising magazines, etc. Special journals cover a limited area of knowledge that is of interest to a small circle of readers. In contrast to books, the cost of publishing magazines is covered not only by buyers. Often, more than half of the cost of a publication is offset by advertising revenue. Magazines, as well as books, are produced mostly by publishing structures. But unlike books, they have more short term use. This is due to both the peculiarities of their content and the frequency of release. Due to the limited period of use and content different from books, magazines have a different external form. The production of magazines with large circulations is very different from the technology of making books. They are folded notebooks, glued together or sewn with wire, and covered with a soft cover. Depending on the circulation, magazines are printed on sheet-fed or web-fed offset presses. For mass production of magazines, gravure web presses and other related techniques are often used.
Newspapers
One of the most significant media today is the newspaper. The first newspapers appeared in Europe at the beginning of the 17th century. The forerunners of the newspaper were leaflets issued in the 16th century. Most newspapers are published daily in large circulations. Some newspapers are printed in the morning and evening to increase the relevance of their content. The most significant categories of newspapers are daily and weekly. Outwardly, newspapers differ significantly from magazines.
cash. Newspapers usually consist of independent sheets of large format, matched in a set. In this case, the newspaper has several sections of different content. Newspapers are printed on special printing machines. These are rotary high-performance newspaper complexes, which ensure the cost-effectiveness of issuing publications on newsprint. The classic newspaper print was black and white. Modern roll printing machines allow obes
to bake economical multi-color printing. Thereby appearance newspapers correspond to the reader's modern visual habits (color photographs, television). Colorful advertising placed in newspapers also meets the requirements of customers. Since advertisements and advertisements cover most of the cost of a newspaper, the price of a copy for the end user becomes relatively low.
Brochures
Many prospectuses, descriptions and other small volumes of various consumer products are currently being produced. These types of printed publications are called brochures. Unlike magazines and newspapers, they are not published periodically. Another significant difference between brochures and newspapers and magazines is the very low circulation. Brochures are mostly produced in multi-colour and are supplied in the form of folded sheets or bound notebooks. Brochures before
put products more High Quality than newspapers. They serve mostly to represent a company or product on the market. The costs of producing brochures are usually borne not by readers, but by customers of circulation.