For Better, For Worse

Two of contemporary publishing’s most dazzling magic tricks can be summed up in three short letters – DtP, and CtP. Relatively old tricks by 2003 standards, but still capable of eliciting a gasp every now and then.

Take DtP, or desktop publishing. There’s a program making serious waves in the industry – Adobe InDesign, believed by many to be the heir apparent to the de facto standard, QuarkXpress. Its seamless integration of the layout, imaging, and PDF-ing applications, improved productivity, enhanced creative elements, and its almost two-thirds smaller price tag are just some of the features enticing the industry to make the switch.

And switch it has. Adobe distributor, Core Group, reports a ‘massive conversion” to the new program, with major names like ThisDay and Media 24 holding up the Adobe flag.

As for the second big trick – Computer-to-Plate (CtP) – magic is a good way to describe the ability to send pages to the printer electronically, where they skip over film and appear instead on a printing plate, ready for the press. Granted, it’s not a new trick anymore, certainly not by global standards, but on the local scene, it’s still pretty big news. Because unlike their European counterparts, SA publishers haven’t all taken the CtP revolution to heart.

For those set on film, it appears the move will eventually have to be made. ‘Film is dead,” says Colin Finck, a director of Ultra Litho, who, along with Ince, was the first printer to bring CtP to South Africa. So certain is he that CtP will soon be the only way to print, that come the end of the year, Ultra Litho will be pushing to no longer accept film from clients, a move the other large CtP-printers are sure to follow.

Which isn’t bad news for the publishing industry, since there are some real benefits to be had from running CtP. Unfortunately, at present, saving money isn’t one of them. Running CtP will actually cost you a bit more in the short-term. That’s because the plates are more expensive than the traditional ones, a difference that isn’t offset by the savings on film.

Where you do score though, is on time, and as they say, time is money. You’re looking at saving a day by distilling to PDF, rather than playing out film.

Save another day by getting a digital proof from the printer, rather than a dyeline. PaarlWeb was the first to install a digital contract proofing system in its Cape Town and Jo’burg offices (now proofs come up to the Highveld via ISDN, rather than aeroplane). ‘Since the proofer is colour-controlled to the press, you’re getting proofs which are as reliable as chromalins, and which arrive on your desk much faster than a dyeline,” says Hentie Olwage, production manager at PaarlWeb.

And once you’ve signed off the printer’s proof, it takes just four minutes to go from an error-free disk to a completed plate ready for the press. That’s a 96-page mag imposed and played to plate in four hours.

In all, your average publishing print job will take about 10 days from the time the printer gets the film, to final delivery. With CtP, you’ll save a good three days.

For magazines, that’s a big benefit. Patricia Scholtemeyer, CEO of Media24 Magazines, says going CtP has meant she’s scored dramatically on deadlines, which means chasing news that much longer, and, even better, accepting more ads, especially for the weeklies, because of the extended cut-off.

And Johnnic’s magazine operations manager Jocelyn Bayer comments: ‘If you’ve worked closely with repro and the printer when first going the CtP route, you’ll find the process works like a dream. This is definitely the way to go, and we’re very happy with it.”

But like so many things in life, CtP doesn’t come without its problems. Remember that little girl in the nursery rhyme, the one with the curl on her forehead? When she was good, she was very very good, but when she was bad she was horrid.

The underlying nervousness that one often encounters when discussing CtP is fed by the stories and anecdotes of times when the process turned horrid. The Agency’s production director, Willie Esterhuizen, admits straight out that he’s nervous of CtP. ‘For every good experience I’ve had, there’s been another disastrous one, where text has reflowed, fonts have changed, and logos have disappeared. Sure, we get a free make-good ad, but the damage has already been done.” So Esterhuizen continues to supply film, ‘because with film I know that what I send, is what I’ll eventually get.”

For many people, film is still the safer option. Because, although the technology itself is perfect, the people driving it are not. When mistakes creep in to the digital process, the culprit is almost always human, and the cause almost always a lack of training.

So how do we start cleaning up our act? Pam Dunlop of The Training School believes that at some point, people putting publications together will no longer know anything about the printing process. Do we need to reinstate apprenticeships, then?

No, she says, we need to accept that skills-sets are changing, and come up with ways of catching the errors down the line. ‘Youngsters entering the industry aren’t going to want to learn all the printing nuts and bolts,” she says. ‘Luckily, the applications and programs are making things easier for those who know little or nothing about the print process, and are the saviour of the junior who doesn’t really understand the repro process.”

Most DtP programs are continually looking to fill the knowledge gaps opening up in our industry, and automatically take care of the very things that the print specialists of old used to. Distilling files to PDF also goes a long way towards ironing out potential problems. Nevertheless, it still begs the question: are we sacrificing quality on the altar of technology?

The reaction to this question is mixed. Scholtemeyer is adamant that technology has had no impact on the quality of SA’s magazines. ‘If you benchmark our top mags with the Vogues and Vanity Fairs of the overseas market, we are as good. The visual element is vital in magazines, and technology can only help us in this regard.” She adds, however, that publishers do need to make an investment in an art director, and that ‘those that don’t will obviously lose quality”.

But few magazines outside the glossy stable can boast of such a luxury. And with no overarching, design-trained eye to oversee the layout process, the bells and whistles of today’s DtP programs have a tendency to take over. ‘Nowadays, you can do anything with very little training, but the results are magazines that are acceptable, but seldom great,” says well-known magazine designer and art director, Gill Marshall.

Design consultant and art director on award-winning Visi, Jaco Janse van Rensburg, pulls no punches on this subject. For him, DtP is just another of society’s quick fixes, making it too easy for anyone who’s ever brandished a mouse to think they’re a designer. ‘Knowing how to use the DtP tool doesn’t mean you now know anything about design. It’s like thinking you can design a house because you can operate CAD.”

Looking at the mags on the local scene, Janse van Rensberg says that many DtP operators are putting design elements on the page purely because they have the tools to do so, not because these elements enhance the final result. ‘There is amazing technology at our disposal, but we need to use it to make our lives easier, not cheaper.”

And if God is in the details, some titles are fast becoming resoundingly secular. ‘It’s the details that go first, slowly eroding our tradition of quality so we don’t notice we’re actually sitting on a lower level than before,” he says. ‘Little things like ignoring line breaks, or paying no regard to widows and orphans.”

Errors also slip in because we’re sometimes moving too fast to see them. Technology has convinced us that it’s possible to have everything yesterday, that it’s possible to push the envelope and burn the fat out of the deadline, because the machines will save us. Technology gives us the ability to drop things in at the last minute. Too bad that in the stress of that last minute, we often forget to do the dropping in. I will never forget a caption in a woman’s glossy fashion spread, which read ‘Black flare trousers, RXXX.XX; frilled shirt RXXX.XX”.

So yes, it’s fair to say that we’ve had to make sacrifices in order to incorporate technology into our working lives. And some may think what we’ve gained hasn’t been worth what we’ve lost. But maybe without advanced publishing-related technology, we would have lost a lot more.

If we hadn’t been able to move faster, write more, lay out magazines on the fly, if we were still constrained by hot metal, would the printed word still be as powerful as it is today? And as printing technology continues to bound forward, we may even find in technology the salvation of this industry.

Take, for instance, the Océ digital press installed at Ince. Forget computer to plate, this press has no plates. It’s like a huge photocopier, only much faster and better quality. And it’s capable of rolling back the very borders of science-fiction. In an increasingly personalised world, the digital press lets the printed copy get in on the action. ‘With digital printers, you could produce a title with personalised content to suit readers’ preferences,” says Ince’s Alban Atkinson. You can even put the reader’s name into ads, which may sound like something out of The Matrix, but technology is increasingly making it possible.

Digital printing also makes publishing borderless. Every day, Ince receives foreign papers over the web, which it prints out on newsprint – readers can buy today’s issue of Le Monde, just as they’d find it on a Paris news-stand. What’s to stop a local paper doing the same? Just think of all those expats in London.

‘These are the kind of things which publishers will have to consider in future, if they’re to join the move towards personalisation, and continue to grow their circulations,” says Atkinson. Technology could prove the salvation of the printed word in future.

Publishing is set on a one-way path to full digitalisation. Maybe we’ll lose things in the headlong dash, but the gains we’ve already made, and the promises of tomorrow, must surely make it worthwhile.

Better Tech, Better Papers?

Can new press technology at last put a stop to the continual complaints from advertisers about full colour reproduction in newspapers?

Werner Wager, senior GM: printing and technology, Media24, says the new presses which some of the bigger newspaper printers have installed, print cleaner and with a sharper dot. ‘What we’re getting off the presses now is chalk and cheese compared to what we got off the old presses. Advertisers obviously agree, because we’ve had far fewer complaints.”

While the machinery makes a difference though, it can’t overcome the inherent difficulties of newsprinting. Consider this. The Star is printed on 20-year-old Goss presses, overhauled to the tune of some R30m, but nonetheless pretty antiquated. The Citizen is printed on new MediaMan presses, installed in Caxton’s brand-new, half-a-billion-rand factory in Industria. Beeld is printed on the new GeoMan presses, a R250m investment which Media24 made when it retired its 30-year-old Gosses.

We did a quick spot test, using a more-observant-than-average reader, Virginia Hollis, MD of The MediaShop. Can she see a major difference between the print quality of The Star, The Citizen, and Beeld? Her answer is a predictable ‘No”, although she thinks Beeld is ‘cleaner”.

Ultimately, new press or old, newspaper printing will never be as good as magazine printing, to which it is invariably, and unfairly, compared.

Caxton Printers’ GM, Peter Vos, explains that papers are printed ‘coldset’, which is quicker and cheaper. This necessitates the use of blotting paper, or the ink would wipe off. ‘So newsprint literally soaks up colour, which is further dulled by newsprint’s grey undertones. Papers also use an 85 screen, compared to the 120-133 screen of magazines – the finer the screen, the better the detail.”

So until the paper improves, don’t hope for too much, new machines or no.

Here Comes Big Daddy

There’s a new monster machine headed for South African shores in August. Caxton Printers has ordered a Müller Martini Powerliner, worth R10m, which will be the first of its kind installed on the continent. The Powerliner is used in the States, where it automatically inserts the 34-odd inserts and sections that make up the Sunday edition of the New York Times. ‘Nothing in South Africa can handle that volume of inserts,” says Peter Vos, GM of Caxton Printers. ‘Presently, we either use the carousels to insert, which can do lots of inserts, but not at great speed. Or we use our two Ferag drums, which automatically insert five sections into 30 000 papers an hour – less inserts but much faster. The Powerliner combines the best of both worlds.” The one headed for Caxton will be able to do 34 sections, into 30,000 papers an hour.

So if any publisher has been waiting to take on the New York Times, but couldn’t find anyone capable of all that inserting, you know whom to call.