This morning I went to my first-ever press check at Papergraphics, a printing company based in Merrimack, New Hampshire. The press check a final form of approval, pulling the first few sheets from a press run to make sure the color looks right and that there are no final issues. I was mostly curious about what the inside of an actual printing shop looked like. Our representative, Susan, was very patient in answering my questions and in allowing me to take pictures. Printing is awesome. There’s something magical about watching a blank sheet of paper make its way down the press to emerge, transformed, into something much more.

PROOFING AND PRESS CHECK

By the time I arrived, the press had already been set up and had printed a few hundred sheets of our 18,750 sheet run. The press guy pulled a sheet off and handed it to Susan, who then put it up under a light to compare. Everything looked fine to me, until I noticed it looked too good: the printed area of the page was perfectly centered. However, our design is off-centered on purpose, as to provide space for hole punching for those who need it. I had not caught this in yesterday’s proofing check, but the press guy said that it could be adjusted by just moving the cropping marks. He made a sheet that described the changes (see picture below), and then painted out the crop marks on the actual plates.

PRINTING PRESSES ARE COOL

As this was going on, Susan showed me around the press, pointing out its various features. It was a 5-color press, meaning it could print up to five different inks at a time. We’re printing the Emergent Task Planner as 4-color process. This refers to the use of 4 standard primary inks: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The inks come in cans (below, left) which they sometimes mix themselves for custom colors. A gallon of ink is good for “thousands of impressions”. A plate is a piece of flexible metal (bottom, right) that fits over a roller in the press that has been treated to hold ink (bottom, middle). When the plate rolls over the paper, the ink of that color remains.

I liked the smell of the ink, which had a slightly sweet smell. There is something intoxicating about it. I was also enthralled by the printing process itself, because it requires an attentive eye to maintain quality throughout the run. I could imagine myself working as a printer if there weren’t any computers around. Going back even further, I probably would have been a clockmaker or a blacksmith.

Watching a pile of blank paper get transformed into an actual product was one of the most quietly exciting things I’ve experienced. There was something kind of calming about the experience. It may have been the press guys around the room that exuded that sense of quiet competence. Pretty awesome.

It’s just hitting me that this is a moment I have been waiting for my entire life. For the first time, I’ve created a physical manifestation of my own product. I’m glad I had a chance to see the printing process first hand; it just wouldn’t have been the same ordering over the Internet.

On a side note, 55 of the 86 pre-order confirmation emails I sent out have been been acknowledged, which means that I probably won’t lose money now. If you ordered an ETP pad but didn’t get a pre-order email last night, leave a comment here and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

The next step, once the pads are delivered to Manchester, is to actually create some packages and price out the postage.

Yesterday I met up with my buddy Scott to have a look at the printing proof for the pre-printed Emergent Task Planner pads. I know it’s been quite a while since we kicked off this project, so here is the current status:

• We have our costs finalized ($12 per pad, which now includes a cardboard backer) and are going to press this week, perhaps as early as Thursday morning. I’m hoping to be there with a camera to document the process.

• Once we produce the pads and get them back, we can finalize both the packaging (simple envelopes, boxes and stickers) and the shipping cost (the post office refused to quote us anything until they saw what we wanted to ship). Shipping is extra, so I’ll find out what shipping options and cost will be from New England. We have about 90 orders to move, if all pre-orders decide to follow through.

• We will be targeting the domestic US first, perhaps Canada if that is doable without having to fill out a separate customs form for every package.

• I have upgraded my paypal account so I can use Website Payments Standard for accepting payments. I also have set up a separate email account for handling product-related email.

• I have not yet sent any email to people who have pre-ordered, though now that I think about it I should have confirmed them all…hindsight, 20/20, etc. I had thought we’d be going to press much quicker than we did, so I thought we would have had final costs emailed to everyone by now.

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p>To recap, here’s the current specifications:

• US Letter (8.5″ x 11″) on a pad.
• Simple cardboard backing.
• Top-glued for easy tear-off.
• No pre-punched holes, but there is space on the left of the form to allow for hole punching.
• Printed on Cougar Opaque 80LB Text White Smooth stock. It’s a substantial paper sheet that should hold up to daily use.
• 75 Sheets per Pad: This seems like a decent number, and allows us to ship a pack of 5 pads to cover a year.
• 4 color printing: I had pushed for custom inks, but this adds to setup cost. Looking over the proof and discussing options with the printing folks, 4-color looks a lot better than it did even 4 years ago, with 150- and 175-line screens pretty common. I would have liked to design to the raw capability of the imagesetter (the machine that actually creates the metal plates used on the offset press), but apparently they are so automated now that the kind of control I used to get in the early 1990s is no longer necessary or even provided. Or so I am told…I am not entirely convinced.

…and the biggy:

• No pre-printed 2007 in the upper right corner. You fill the year in yourself. Aesthetically this is a small step backwards, but functionally it means that these pads will not be out-of-date when 2008 rolls around.

Here’s what the current sheet design looks like:

ORDER STATUS

So that’s the current status. I will email people tonight to confirm interest, shipping address, and number of pads. Then I’ll be able go to the post office and find out what actual shipping cost will be, and provide the PayPal payment information in a follow-up email.

Please note that pre-orders have been closed, but we will probably do a second run around the end of the year if we sell-through and the interest is there. The profits that come from this run will help fund the next round of expansion to online ordering and fulfillment.

UPDATE: I have emailed everyone in the United States and Canada, a total of 86 names. If you had placed a pre-order and didn’t get a confirming email from “DSG Product Division (products*davidseah.com)”, then you should email me at productservice at davidseah.com, or use the contact form.