Press Checks: What they are and why designers do them!

In this episode of the Kirk and Kurtts Design Podcast, Kirk and Andy discuss the process of press checking in printing. They share their experiences visiting a large scale print facility, the impressive machinery and efficiency they witnessed, and the importance of press checks in ensuring the accuracy and quality of printed materials. 

They also touch on the differences between offset printing and digital printing, and the challenges and details involved in the press checking process. 

Tune in to learn more about the behind-the-scenes of printing and the role of press checks in the design industry.

Transcript

 all right, so Andy and I are just deciding to do something very cool that we normally do. We're doing a quickie. We're doing a quick show, and the quick show is going to be about press checks. Now, some of you may be wondering, what is a press check? Well, a press check is when you send something to press, and you check it.

Very simple. 

Usually... Exactly how it sounds. So, 

for bigger jobs, um, since digital is, is... I honestly don't think it's as cost affordable still when you do hundreds of thousands of units so they use offset. And offset printing is... A system that's set up with different stations that put on different colors on different plates and they make Printed beautiful full color things.

And so we're talking all come together and all comes together perfectly. So Andy Recently went on a press check 

To, uh, 

to Wisconsin and, uh, Green Bay and, and I would love to hear about this because I haven't been on a fucking press check in, dude, I haven't been on a press check, like a real press check.

Like I did some label like checks, but it was for two colors or three colors. It wasn't anything massive. It was mainly white with some black print and It wasn't like a booklet, it wasn't a printed thing, it wasn't photos. So it's always interesting to hear like, what's going on with PressCheck. So Andy!

Take it away!

Thanks Kirk! Alright, friend! Uh, yeah, so as you said, I went... Recently on a press check to Green Bay, actually De Pere, Wisconsin, which is a suburb of Green Bay. Um, but we went and, or I went and, um, it was quick. It was a very quick turnaround. It only took about a, you know, not even a day, day, all day long. And, um, I, uh, you're like, you're like an assassin.

You just 

flew in. You got your stuff done and you got 

out literally. Exactly. Yeah. I was a design assassin, press checking, but what I, the, the reason why I went and yeah, I'm just like you, like I have not gone on a press check in forever and it's been years. And so, um, but when you have really big, very, um, either it's a job that hasn't printed before, you know, it's a brand new product or a brand new packaging.

Or it's a really big job. It's a really big run and you want to make sure it's going to look amazing. And it's going to look like what you approved on the contact proofs. Those are the big proofs that you get from the printer, um, that haven't run through the press, but they're color corrected and all that kind of stuff, you sign off on those.

Right. So that's what I did. I, I, um, My client is running off a bunch of stuff and, uh, it's tricky. There's pastels being used in the background, which I knew that was going to be, that was going to be a tough thing for the press to hold. And so I, I was, I've came with all my, you know, I have my swatch books.

I have my, um, we did these scatter proofs, um, to make sure we had the right color dialed in. Wait a second. What is my stuff with me. What's a scatter proof? Scatter proof. A scatter proof is. Usually done when you have a CMYK build that you've created versus a spot color that you're targeting. Got it. And so, because we can't reference what that CMYK color is going to necessarily look like, because everything, whether you print it off at home or on the screen, the printer will set up a grid of colors, of like hundreds of colors, Wow.

on a piece of paper, and then you sit there and you're like, I like M6, uh, C3, and that's, that's the square that the press needs to hit. So now they know what that build is, so they can dial that into the artwork and then the press now knows how to create that build. Yeah, so it was, and I, we, I've done that for another job before as well, um, and, um, they're very helpful.

Like I said, when you're printing CMYK color, you're not, you don't have a specific Pantone, right? Even if you're doing like 10th, 10ths or whatever. So anyways, so, um, I, I was fully prepared to spend all day tweaking. We were doing, we were running four SKUs off and I was fully prepared to spend all day doing this, um, you know, at the press check and I show up.

It's a brand new facility. We're printing at a place called Bellmark, which is they are amazing. They've got Shout out to Bellmark! Bam bam bam! Bam bam bam bam! And, and, and the team there is amazing as well. So I show up and they already have one of the SKUs printed off. Ready, ready for me to review. At the, they had it in the conference room.

And the conference room had like sort of yellowy fluorescent lights, right? And I asked if we could go actually look under color corrected lights, color corrected lights were, you know, right near the, the, the press. And, um, at that, you know, it's like a table that's angled. And so we had to get all geared up because this place is like GMP certified or whatever.

Yes, Kurt. And color corrected lights, 

for those, for those who might be listening, are what they say. They're color corrected. So, it's the best way to measure the manner in which what you're printing is matched with the color that you're trying to get. 

It's like, it's like the most accurate lighting you can have to review color.

Right. Even though that, even though 

that, I would say that 0% of your shoppers... Whatever, think about going to color corrected light, sunlight used to be the, yeah, yeah, sunlight used to be it, but honestly, people, whoever's listening to this, I want you to take a box or whatever you buy outside, I want you to go out to the sun and hold it up, and say, oh, look how beautiful, no one does that shit, but we as designers, it has to be a go buy, mainly it's not even to, to have the color match necessarily, It's to have the consistency when you're matching colors when doing multiple runs of things.

So, that's the point. Sorry, Andy. You're 

going. That's okay. And, and so, I go out, we get all dressed up. In, in like, um, hair nets, beard nets, gotta take all your jewelry off. Which, I just have a wedding ring and a watch, um, luckily. And, because this place is food safe, like certified. So, like, it can't have any contaminants.

It's, even though they don't produce food there, this packaging will eventually go into food, go into our food system. It was, that was fascinating, um, just to see everything around that. And so we go out to the press and the press is four months old. The facility is not even a year old. So it's a beautiful, like everything's new.

The press is new. It had eight stations. And which stations are where the, the, the, the inks go. So you've got like the sea, cyan, magenta, yellow, black, and then it had some extra stations for other stuff that it could do. Um, and so the, but it's, it's not a huge press, like what we're, I guess, you know, used to seeing like on TV or whatever.

It's, it's a pretty compact press, but it is, um, It's so advanced. I roll up, you know, review the thing. We just had to take a little bit of yellow out of the, out of the, um, the design and they can do that on the press. They can dial in that particular station and they can adjust it just a little bit, um, to pull the yellow out and then they run off more copies.

I look at those copies and I'm like, yep, that looks good. And then they hit, then I sign it. Yeah. And then they run off the rest of that particular skew, however many thousands of, of, um, you know, prints they're doing there. Yeah. Um, 

this is, this is a nerve wracking process too for people. It's terrifying. Oh my God.

Like just, I mean, to reference real quick and you talked about how they had things set up for you and ready to print the amount of pages that they actually had to run first to get it corrected was maybe at least 150 or something like that. Only, 

only 150. Yeah. And so that. That's very that's that's because this this new press is so accurate.

Yeah, I think it normally takes You know 500 or more. Yeah sheets to set up a press, but this was very Small run to get it going right my father 

outlaw. He was the He was the head of creative services at Gallo and these have press checks in San Francisco so he would say it would literally take days for them to do presses because The press had to be run and calibrated, and that he sells like a minimum of like 2, prints to get it calibrated to be the right color, then they would have him check it, and if it was off they would have to redo it, clean it, and then run more and this would take hours, hours and hours and hours, but keep in mind that when he was doing press checks, he was press checking for like hundreds of thousands of units because it's Gallowayn, right?

So, it's nerve wracking because if the color's off... And this is after the design. So just at this point, fuck it. If you have a typo, 

that's, you gotta, you gotta roll with it. Yeah. Cause 

that's just going to be bad. But if you're, if you're colors off, it's really bad. And then when you get into the idea of like doing brochures, uh, this is my color press experience.

The last major one I remember, and this was 15 years ago. 16 years ago. It was a long time ago. We were running this press check and it was a program and there were tons of people in the program because it was for the Gallo Center for the Arts. And the one thing, my father in law actually went with us to this press check and we're like, oh, this looks awful.

He's like, yeah, don't worry about that. Look at the color of the person. They're pink. Like, you need to take out some magenta, you need to probably add like, or he was telling us with the two, he said granted, you know, your, your roses and your flowers may not be exactly what you want, but when you're laid out in a spread, and this is also something to think about too, the way the pages match up, because when you're printing a book, you have to print out numbers of four, so you have to do multiples of four when you're printing or add it to be multiples of four.

So. If it's, say if it's 40, you're printing like 1 and 40, 2 and 39, so the total is always one more than what you're doing. So the middle of the book is going to be what, 20, 27, 28, no, my math, math, but it's going to be like 19 and 22 or 22 and 21 or whatever the end of the middle of the book would be, right?

20 and 21. There we go. So that's going to be together, but every other page you're putting together when you're looking at a book, it's not going to be matched. So you're matching two odd colors that 

don't make sense. They don't print on the same 

spread. Yes. And so you're sitting there like, oh I have to fix this color because this green, part of this green is not going to match the other green when I put it in there, but The eye is so amazing.

When And it's fooled easily, but also not fooled. And often times when a book creases, or there's two different pages, even if the colors are slightly different, I will make them the same. Just because of the way the book's printed or how you're looking at things. So that's so cool, but fuck man, that press check took forever.

But the coolest thing that they were doing at that time, like what you were saying, was they were just pressing a button to... Change the color. Like, Oh, bring down the yellow. Yeah. 5%. And they just tapped it down and then ran some prints. And then after about 50 or 60, they start looking at it again. Um, but yeah, dude, it's amazing.

Anyway, 

back to your story. Yeah. To go back to your point around, like how nerve wracking it is you behind the press are like columns and columns of. Paper or, you know, board for the job that is just like, you know, it's thousands of pieces of board that will run through the press and get the packaging printed on it.

And that's nerve wracking. Cause it's like, um, you know, I, it's my name that's going on all this stuff as it's running through the, you know, but you can't think about that stuff because you really just have to focus on making sure that. You know, you're there representing the client and you're looking at you've heard their feedback You've does it more than likely you design the packaging.

So you sort of know it inside and out and And yeah, like but these guys made it so easy for me because this these the press was so advanced the press people were so They were amazing

I mean, shout out to Belmark, but also shout out to just the, the technicians that run these presses wherever you are. It's a collaboration. Like I think, uh, you know, sometimes, um, designers go into press checks with like a chip on their shoulder and they have to like prove something. But I never go into it that way.

I think, uh, you know, we owe a lot to pre press people and. The, the press men, the press people that, that run them, um, because they're, they're really the ones that bring it to life. Like we have our designs, but then they optimize it and then actually run it. Yes. And yeah, and, and I like just being a fly on the wall and watching them work.

It's the best. They are so they're artisans. And so, yeah. And so it was just fun watching them work. The, um, If anyone ever has an opportunity to go to a facility like this, it's such a cool thing, like, cause printing is just one thing of it. So they, you know, they print off a full run and then they take it to another part of the facility to then get punched out, you know, cause it, it printed four of the four images of the packaging on one sheet and so then it goes to this other place.

To get die cut. Mm hmm. And then it goes to another place to get folded scored folded and glued Mm hmm, and it was just cool to see I didn't get to see our stuff run, but I got to see some other stuff run Yeah, and it was just I love seeing that stuff. I mean, it's like it's like a Rube Goldberg like You know the music that do 

do do do do do do do do.

That's pretty funny in my head as, 

as I'm watching all this, you know, there's stuff flying around and chomp. I mean, it's just so cool. Yeah, it's so fun. I totally geek out on it. Do you know it's 

true and people always ask me like anytime I'm asked about printing. Anytime I always say you have to find a good printer.

And what I mean by that is you have to find people who are knowledgeable, dude. I don't know a lot about printing. I know the generics and how things work, but I don't know like, Oh, this is enough. Right. And the thing is, is these, these people do it every day. And so you, you can't go into a situation unless you do it every day and tell someone what's what.

And it's, it's just the best because they're able to, and most, and most people, most printers, if you say, Hey, I would like to have a tour. They're usually more than happy to give you a tour because 

yeah, it's 

impressive. I don't care who you are Yeah, when you see them, it's cool running back and forth and figuring shit out and like looking at things run through the line And then taking notes and taking stacks and removing them and then making adjustments on the fly of things It's it's just a well oiled machine.

It's so yeah lack of a better term Yeah, it's just amazing to see so Yes, if you have the opportunity and you have a press, a respectable, reputable press, a printer around you, then go. And this is all, that was all for offset printing. That's all offset, which means it's offset, meaning that there's different plates that are used for different colors.

And then if it's digital, it's just one machine. It's like a really nice version of your printer, a laser printer 

at home. And those are fun to watch run too, because the, the professional ones, um, they sometimes have an extra, um, station, even though it's digital printing, they'll have an extra varnish station or whatever, um, that, that they can, I mean, it's not, it's not like a UV or whatever from like, you know, an offset machine or a press, but it's still, they can do some funky stuff, um, which is, which is cool.

Um. Thank you. So they're fun to watch too, if you can't go to an offset printer. Yeah. Um, but yeah, we, we were through, so like, I can't remember how many impressions they did for each product, but it took about an hour between each one. Which is crazy. Yeah. So I was, you know, I would, I would approve it. They would run it and then they would get the next one set up.

Set up took around 15 minutes, which was crazy. Yeah. They could switch a job over in 15 minutes. And that's, and then I, it was, it was so fast and so efficient. That's unheard of. It was 

great. Yeah. Yeah. 15 minutes. It's amazing. 

15 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I know. I, like I said, I thought I'd be there for. You know, at least my flight left at five and I was like, I'm gonna be like, you know cutting it so close because I was like four they're gonna run four of these in one day and I'm gonna have to we're gonna have to do the color correcting all that kind of stuff Uh, and I really only had to adjust two of the layouts.

Wow. The other two were perfect right off the bat. That's crazy. 

That is really cool. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a, yeah, man, it's, it's so nice to hear about your experience doing, doing a press check. And it's funny, I was mentioning the wine labels earlier, my, my in laws have a winery and so I helped them with the design.

Uh, rexfordwinery. com, that's R as in Randall, exford, like an ex wife, rexfordwinery. com. Go there and buy wine if you drink, it'll be much appreciated. Um, but yeah, so they were saying, Oh, we know we had to get this done and we didn't want to bother you to check it out or look at stuff. We don't want to bother you.

It's like, motherfuckers, how are you bothering me? Just let me know. Yeah. 

Because I would like to go look good. Yeah, I want to go on a 

press check. And they kept complaining like, oh, we don't like this quality, it was better before. I was like, well, send me next time and I'll go look. And I go, also said, well, were you printing it offset or digitally?

Before. They said, oh, it was offset, now it's digital. It's like, well, that could also be a thing. That's huge. It makes a big difference. Especially when you get into really fine qualities and really large quantities. It makes a difference. Now, I'm not shitting on digital because a lot of digital now is super, super, super good.

But, it's accessible. Yes, 

but there's just something about, there's something about offset printing that's just, just, it's just like you do lithographs and things of that nature and it's just so beautiful. But, um, yeah, that's, that's awesome. I'm glad you, uh, had a chance to go. Get back to your roots because you were pre pressed for a 

while, right?

I did. Yep. I started my creative career working at a print shop. So yes, it was, but what's, what's funny is that this place was so clean and the machines were so advanced. Yeah. It didn't smell like a print shop. So I didn't, I didn't get that smell. I know exactly what you're talking about. That's okay. Yeah.

You can smell 

the ink. Yes! Um, all the mineral spirits and the cleaning cleaners and all that. Yeah, no, it's, it's a very, in the oil that they used, right? Like, yeah, the place I worked at had a, uh, had a letter press and an offset press. And so we, I got to see them both running. Yeah. Just it was, and they're so loud.

These were, these were pretty loud too, but we were able to hold a conversation like right. Two of the guys were taking me on a tour and they were able to like describe the different places you know the different stations throughout the Facility, um, and it was relatively quiet. It was crazy 

Yeah, that's that's really neat because yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about when you say that smell It is just a certain distinct.

It is and it's not a bad smell. It's just like no smell No, it's it's the Equivalent of walking into a bakery when you walk into a print shop like they have very distinctive smells and Yeah, and it's just it's so cool. But the fact that they didn't have that there and it was it I'm trying to think of it the best way to say this.

It's almost like walking into an Apple store as opposed to walking into like an Apple repair store Right. 

Right. Right. 

You go into an Apple repair store, there's always that weird smell, no matter, no matter where it is. Yeah. It's like they repair your phone and do your screen and, but there's always that smell.

There's always a smell there. Oh yeah. When you walk into the Apple store, it's like, Oh, it's like walking into a museum. Yeah. It's like walking into the MoMA of, of digital products. So 

yeah, man, that's, that's great. This place was pristine. I mean, it was just, it was cool. It was, it was, uh, it went from something that I was going to be, I was pretty nervous about and stressed out about to like, just as easy as, as can be.

Um, mainly because like I said, like the, we had done a lot of preparation beforehand and you know, obviously approved stuff beforehand and that's what they're running to, but like, you know, there were still some tweaks we had to do, but it was not like, right. The past right. Um, just, yeah, it was great.

That's awesome. Very fun. 

And yeah, the great thing is, is, and we were talking about this, the digital and the digital proof era, like basically that's what we're in now because of COVID everybody has started approving things digitally. And for me, it's always been scary, but the saving grace is, is I hate to give them too many props as Apple's monitors.

They're, Very, very good. I mean, they're very close to how, how your prints will come out. If you have an Apple monitor or an Apple computer, and that's what most of the designers, most designers use and go by. It's not a perfect system. There's no way you can match a screen to a print. Like that's just not, that's not possible.

So please don't say, Oh, he said you could. No, I did not say that. I said, the saving grace has been that Apple's monitors are pretty damn good. And they're fairly close. Yeah, they're fairly close. I mean, anything in the 90th percentile is good. It won't be exact but it'll be damn close. So, that's always 

been a saving grace.

Just get you in the neighborhood. Yeah, 

right? Right? So, and then you're able to make the adjustments on the fly at the print shop. That's great. You've listened to. Yeah. 

Print shops and techniques with Andy and Kirk. Um. Press check one 

oh one. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And just in regards to. Having final say so on things, I just, I fucking hate it, man.

And the biggest reason I hate, and for all my clients listening, this is really good. I'm not a huge detail oriented person, which is oftentimes this oftentimes why I will do something and like send it to you or send it to Nikita or send it to somebody else and have them look at stuff that I do, because it's always something I miss.

So that right there is just always so Intense for me. And it makes me so uncomfortable because I'm the idea guy. Like I'm the dude that does the concept, you know, Hey, you want idea? I'll shoot you 3 million ideas. Just don't ask me to like really find it and tune them because that shit is what takes me the longest time just because I'm so worried about making a mistake.

And so running press checks and doing press checks on on anything is pretty nerve wracking for 

me. Yeah, well, there's so many. There's so many. Touch points from, you know, a PDF, like before they do anything, you know, you submit the artwork, you, you, the designer should have already sort of circulated it with your clients to make sure everything's correct.

They should have caught things. Then it goes to the printer and they're pre pressed people loaded into their, they get it optimized. And then they, that, that then loads into a PDF approval system. Yes. Your client, your client reviews that and that's where it will have like any kind of varnish plates or any kind of special finishing and things like that.

Right. And you, so, you know, the designer can click through that to make sure those are in the right places, but then your, your client can review the content again, UPC, all that kind of crap. Uh huh. And then you get, and then you approve that and then they print off. The contact proof, they ship that to you, and you're like, yes, this is accurate as well.

So if something, and I mean, inevitably I'm just waiting, you know, cause inevitably something goes awry, you know, like there's a typo because we've been staring at this design for months now. Yep. And you know, we just don't catch everything. Like the team doesn't catch everything. Yes. But that's why, I mean, at this first check, it purely was.

About color, making sure the backgrounds look good and then the food looks good. Yes. And um, that's really, I mean, that's, you know, those are, the background was tough, but it looked good. And then the, the food was pretty easy. It's like, you can tell if food looks too yellow or too green. Right. Right. Or too whatever.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. Um, so. 

No, but. That makes sense, man. And you hit the nail on the head as far as the. The details and eyes, multiple eyes seeing things. I just, I just did a coloring book for the aquarium. I work at the Monterey Bay aquarium as a senior designer is my quote unquote day job, but I still love doing freelance and my own thing because it helps spur and spawn creativity and just making things right.

So at my day job I was working on a coloring book and I decided to do a connect the dots. I mean, who doesn't love connect the dots? So I took an illustration that was there and I started removing lines because there was no illustrators needed to and then I put all the dots in and, and then sent it off to the press check and one, two, three, four, five, six people looked at it, seven people looked at it and looked at it and finally got the print back and they sent us a mock up of the coloring book and I'm looking through and what I do whenever I do that is the actual activities.

Find the words in the crossword. I do the maze. I do it and so I started doing the connected dots. Like, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, I had 25 

twice, 

so I was 

like, Oh shit, it's an Easter egg. It's an Easter egg, 

so I'm like, Oh my God. Had I not, had I not done that puzzle, I wouldn't have found it. And so it just goes to show.

Even when things sometimes look great on screen, or if you proof them, once they're printed, something magical happens. And I don't know what it is, but it reveals all truths. The gremlins. 

It's weird. It's just the weirdest thing. Like, 

oh, I didn't see 

that before. You know? Yeah. Little design gremlins. They are, man.

They start messing with stuff. Little bastards. Bastards. 

But, yeah. Well, this has been great. You know, since Andy and I are the gurus about... Press checking, you all know where to come to for all your press checking needs. Just come to Kirk and Kurtz, but yeah, anything else you'd like to add, Andy, before we close on this?

No, this, this was fun. It was, it was good for people to know, 

but all right. I know it's important. Yeah, it's important. 

So next time you guys are looking at your Apple box, which has millions, I can't imagine doing that, dude. Oh my god. No thanks. But anyway, for those who are listening, I'm thinking next time you have your box in front of you and like, wow, who printed this?

Who packaged it? Just know that there was an incredibly stressed out designer Press checking everything that you're seeing, but all right, y'all. I'm Kirk Vaisola. I'm the founder and creative director of Mind the Font. And I'm here at my good friend, 

Andy Kurtz, founder and creative director of Buttermilk Creative.

And you 

just listened to Kirk and Kurtts Design podcast, where we reviewed Press Checks. Thank you so much for tuning in and a special thanks to us for joining the show today. Yeah. Thanks, Kirk. Thank you, Andy. Thanks for being our guest today.

All right, y'all. We'll talk to you next time. Peace.

Thank you so much for tuning in to the Kirk and Kurtts Design Podcast. A very special thanks to our guests, Andy and Kirk. They are awesome. You can find out more about Andy and Kirk since it is their podcast that you're listening to in the podcast description. Peace.