It's alive! Our First Colour Proofs
After getting the all clear from our printer that our design files were up to specification, the next step saw their team undertake a test run of the book through their printing setup.
From the start of this project, Jason and I's primary goal has been to bring something beautiful into the world and so making sure the colours and alignment of each illustration were accurate when brought into the physical world was absolutely crucial.
We had a few different options to proof the printing process.
The fastest and most cost-effective was to go for digital proofs which see selections of your pages printed on a highly accurate inkjet, colour laser or other similar printer on paper that most likely would not be the kind that will be used in the final product.
The other option was to roll with wet proofs which are prints from the actual offset printer to be used in the book's production, as well as the same paper stock.
Since Jason and I were terrified of the whole process, we opted to be cautious and perfectionist and go with wet proofs. These would give us a preview virtually identical to the finished product.. at a price. It was about five times more expensive than the digital option!
From the start of this project, Jason and I's primary goal has been to bring something beautiful into the world and so making sure the colours and alignment of each illustration were accurate when brought into the physical world was absolutely crucial.
We had a few different options to proof the printing process.
The fastest and most cost-effective was to go for digital proofs which see selections of your pages printed on a highly accurate inkjet, colour laser or other similar printer on paper that most likely would not be the kind that will be used in the final product.
The other option was to roll with wet proofs which are prints from the actual offset printer to be used in the book's production, as well as the same paper stock.
Since Jason and I were terrified of the whole process, we opted to be cautious and perfectionist and go with wet proofs. These would give us a preview virtually identical to the finished product.. at a price. It was about five times more expensive than the digital option!
However, as you can see in the below video, receiving our wet proofs was a huge thrill for us and the quality of print and paper gave us a huge confidence boost as first-time publishers.
We did have some naive questions for our printer around how the paper would be trimmed and the order of the pages, but we were quickly assured that these proofs were all about colour, alignment, paper stock and other nerdy design things I can't begin to fill you in on. The main thing was: these looked absolutely gorgeous.
As you would expect, we quickly approved the proofs and gave the printer the go-ahead to put the book into production.
The next milestone in the process? Receiving advance copies of the final version of our creation!