Magazines

Have you ever been in front of a newsstand and wondered how magazines are made. Well, the process of making a magazine is really tedious and time consuming. The next time you read your favorite magazine or go through the latest catalog that arrives in your mailbox, stop for a moment and think about how that publication came to be. First, writers, editors and designers participate in the creative process, then, printers take that creative work and turn it into the publications you read every day. Printing is a fascinating process involving huge high-speed machines, 4,000-pound rolls of paper, computers, metal plates, rubber blankets and sharp knives. Printing presses are running 24/7 to deliver all of these different titles to the reader on time.
Everything starts out in the editorial, when the editorial has all the articles, pictures and advertisement ready; the editorial sends all that information via online to the imaging department in the printing facility. Before the job can be printed the imaging personnel puts all the files together and arranges them to fit into the printing plates. When they are done they send that information to the pre press department, plate room personnel loads this plates into this machines where the information and images are transferred to the printing plates, images from the negatives are transferred to printing plates in much the same way as photographs are developed. A measured amount of light is allowed to pass through the film negatives to expose the printing plate. When the plates are exposed to light, a chemical reaction occurs that allows an ink-receptive coating to be activated. This results in the transfer of the image from the negative to the plate
Once the plates are ready they are sent to the pressroom where crewmembers load this plates into the printing units, the paper is fed through the press as one