INTRODUCTION

While the printing industry increases its technology and customers demand faster turnaround times, there is an ever-increasing need to improve the efficiency of the prepress workflow. As computers become less expensive and “professional” design can be done by anyone with design software, the lack of their knowledge in the printing process creates a greater potential for errors and a bottleneck for the prepress departments. Some of the major errors include improper graphic formats, missing fonts, and low resolution graphics. With the emersion of PDF (Portable Document Format), created by Adobe in order to simplify the printing process, files have the ability to be decreased in size and condensed into one file which eliminates problems such as font and image issues.

University Graphics Systems, an on-campus printing company at Cal Poly currently prints the Mustang Daily newspaper five times per week. The current postscript workflow uses Macintosh computers and a direct-to-plate system known as the Creo Trendsetter. With this equipment UGS is responsible for making sure that all of the elements in the newspaper are ready for output. The Mustang Daily also currently receives much of its advertising in PDF format and has to convert these to postscript in order to meet the newspaper’s needs.

As the Prepress Manager and General Manager of University Graphic Systems, we are looking at ways to provide more options for our customers and minimize the amount of work done to produce our printed jobs. The Prepress Manager tries to keep the company up-to-date with the newest technology, allowing customers more flexibility and limiting the number of problems that may arise in the prepress department. The General Manager, on the other hand, focuses on the financial implications of any decision made within the company and the relationships between the company and its customers.

This study will prove that a printing company and a newspaper company can convert from a postscript workflow to a PDF workflow with minimal costs using existing equipment. University Graphic Systems and Mustang Daily will be used as a model for this study, as we attempt to implement a PDF workflow in place of their current postcript workflow. This will be proved using methods described in Chapter 3, including elite and specialized interviewing, surveys and the scientific method.

The purpose of this study is to increase the production efficiency of University Graphic Systems and Mustang Daily, while also addressing the financial implications. With a PDF workflow implemented there







copyright 2003 Blake Edwards and Daniel Shaw