Printing “Voice of the Eyes” (part 6)

“Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.”
| Henry David Thoreau

My book “VOICE OF THE EYES” is finally printed. Together with my friend and partner Sébastien Caduff, we made the journey across the Alps to Italy to be present at the printing of our book. We were warmly welcomed there by Team Printer Trento and its founder and CEO Dario Martinelli, who introduced us to their workplace. It was an incredibly exciting process, after three years of development, to be present at the creation of the printing plates and then the first prints, reviewing them for color control and adjustment.

It was after this, my first self-directed book printing, that I first realized how many different “proofs” there are in a printing process and the importance of them. These proofs are critical steps in self-publishing and they serve as quality checks. There are many such proofs that must be accepted by the author.

– In the pre-process, there is the so-called “content soft proof“, in which the PDF with the book content is checked after processing the preflight software of the printing house. This is followed by a “color contact proof” of the cover and the content as a physical print, color-matched on the final, selected paper but with a digital printer.
– During the actual printing process in the offset print, the color application on the individual pages is checked and – if necessary – adjusted column by column. This is done page by page in order to finally check the adequacy of all adjustments before printing goes into series production.
– Once these processes are in the desired form, the next step is the post-process proofs. Here you receive the completely printed book, but still unbound. In this last stage, the correctness of the page arrangement and final quality checks can be made. In the Book Adherence Proof, you receive up to five copies of the printed and bound book before the final binding starts.

The challenges in printing “VOICE OF THE EYES” are essentially that I take care of images from 31 artists, try to print their images in their intention, but at the same time achieve uniformity and balance throughout the book. Fortunately, we had an outstanding partner in Printer Trento, who provided us with a great deal of expertise, helped address any discrepancies, made the necessary corrections, and perfected the printing. The final result, or rather the last proof I was able to see, looked stunning. I am happy. Thank you, Printer Trento.

Preorder the book at: https://voiceoftheeyes.com (pre-order up until end of September).