Magnum Contact Sheets – Production

The next installment in our Life Cycle of a Book series follows Production Controller Sadie Butler to South Korea to discover more about the production processes behind Magnum Contact Sheets.

checking proofs against the printed sheet

As Andrew explained in his entry about commissioning Magnum Contact Sheets, the development of a book such as this can take many years. The production cycle by comparison is a relatively short period that sees the book through from its digital form to a physical object. There are schedules to be planned, papers to be chosen, binding materials to be considered and proofing to be undertaken, all within a specific budget and time-frame. Johanna has given us a brilliant sense of the talking, thinking and agonizing that goes on with the design development, and this strand continues through right up until the book is bound and delivered!

Once the design for the insides of the book had been finalized and all of the text was in place, the layout files and digital images were handed over to me for proofing. This is the process of taking the book from its existence on-screen to a printed state. The proofs allow me to see and adjust how the book will appear on press and give the editor, designers and the team at Magnum a chance to make any comments or changes. Seeing a full-size printed version of a layout can sometimes give quite a different impression to what it looks like on a screen. The first proofs for Magnum Contact Sheets were double-page spreads with all the text in place so that we would have a good overall sense of the design.

plotter proofs

The paper we used for proofing was a white matt art paper, the same as for the final book; using something different would have had an effect on the appearance of the pictures and possibly have been misleading when it came to making corrections. As well as seeing proofs for the images and text, it was useful to be able to see proofs of the Pantone red and the endpapers because it’s not always easy to judge what the colour will look like from a small swatch.

swatches

It’s not just the paper that can alter the way the images appear – it’s also really important to view proofs in controlled light. The consistency of the light is crucial because looking at the proofs next to a window or under fluorescent lights can completely change the colour and tone. Although the person who buys the book is not going to read it underneath a light box, we can be confident that the printed result is accurate if we stick to using controlled light.

light box

As well as checking the proofs for colour and tone, I also made sure that none of the images were flipped or missing and that all of the designer’s instructions to the repro house had been followed. For example some images had to be cut out to torn or uneven edges and some needed to have the backgrounds extended to bleed off the page. The colour corrections I made to the proofs were varied. Some pages needed quite a broad overall correction, such as black and white images appearing too heavy, too cool or too warm. By adjusting the balance of the cyan, magenta, yellow and black, the repro company was able to re-proof pages until they got a good result. Other pages needed much closer work, with hours spent agonising over the exact tone of a single shadow or highlight. I was also keen to keep the character of the contact sheets with the ragged edges, hairs and dust spots. It’s tempting to clean these things up, but they are part of the artist’s original and give the reader a sense of the sheets as physical objects. There is one image taken from a notebook with a spiral binding, it looks almost as if you could lift it from the page and hold it. There was a lot of back and forth between T&H and the repro company until the proofs depicted what we wanted to achieve on press – hence the big pile of proofs I ended up with in the end!

a pile of proofs

Once the images and text were all finished, we sent the files to the printers in South Korea. They supplied us with a final set of proofs (known as plotter proofs or ozalids), which gave us a last opportunity to pick up on any mistakes with the text or alignment.

plotter proof, marked for correction

Once the plotter proofs had been approved we were ready to print and I headed off to Seoul to see Magnum Contact Sheets on press. This was a nice opportunity to meet the people I had only been communicating with by email so far. Although I didn’t get to be a tourist, I did get to eat brilliant food!

Seoul

a Korean supper

For a production person, going on a press pass is great and appeals to the inner technology geek – sophisticated machines and knowledgeable press operators – but it’s also a good opportunity to gain more experience and to see the presses in action.

a Heidelberg press

tins of ink on the press

everything in order around the press

press operator feeding unprinted sheets into the press

The book was printed with 6 pages up on each side of a sheet, so when the sheets are folded they form 12-page signatures. The printing plates are made up as one for each colour on the sheet, so there is a cyan, magenta, yellow, black and Pantone red plate for each. That’s a lot of plates for a book with 508 pages.

the plate-making machine

pantone plate ready to be used for chapter 5: 1980-1989

Each time a new sheet came off the press, the printer and I would check the 6 pages against the approved proofs that I’d sent from London. Using our comments, the press operator would make adjustments until a good match had been achieved and then he would print all of the copies of that single sheet.

perfecting the press for print

Depending on which pictures appeared in track with each other, the checking of a sheet could be a quick process or take a lot of tweaking. The press operators kept all of the approved sheets close by so that they could compare pages later on – either where an image was divided between two sections so they could be sure the two halves would match, or where there was a recurring colour or image (as with the chapter openers).

notes for the operators’ reference

Once printed, the finished sheets are stacked on pallets and taken to the quality control area where they are checked for marks or errors. Sheets with any problems are discarded and the rest kept together until it is time to bind the books. It is amazing to see how the printers co-ordinate such a big book printing in numerous languages – they have to be sure to keep the English version separate from the Dutch for example, so that when binding starts the correct sections are collated into the correct editions.

printed and ready to bind

Johanna described the development of the binding choices and packaging for the book in her blog entry. The trade edition of the book is bound in a printed cover with a jacket over the top. The design of the jacket meant that we needed to consider which materials to use to get the best contrast in textures between the varnished MAGNUM lettering and ‘label’ and the matt black background. We ran some trial proofs and opted for an uncoated paper stock with a spot varnish on top. It took a few rounds of proofs to settle on Pantone colours but on press this was pretty straightforward. The final stage is to bind, jacket and shrinkwrap the books, and then they are ready to ship.

Missed any of the posts in our Life Cycle series on Magnum Contact Sheets? Click here to read them all.