Quality time with your printer

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, March 1, 1994 by Mike Cuenca

A war of words won't get you the high standards you want from your printer. There are more practical approaches.

Quality. We hear the word all the time. We strive to make our books a reflection of our mastery of it. But what is quality, really? Can it be a consistent concept from publisher to printer? How do we manage it? How do we assure it? Of the eight definitions in Webster's Tenth Collegiate Dictionary, the second, a "degree of excellence," is probably the most accurate one. We all aspire to publish a product that achieves such a height. And from issue to issue, we do achieve varying degrees of quality.

The objective quality issues are those that can be most easily addressed, with standards set and agreed upon: Are the pages in order? Is the binding on straight? Have the pages been printed positive? The more subjective quality issues, however, are harder to guarantee: the subtle color nuances necessary for a certain ad or editorial layout, the acceptable variations in ink coverage, compromises that must be made because of imposition, or what you may think flesh tones should be.

I recently talked to a publisher here in Santa Fe who has had to fight some ugly battles with his printer over questions of quality control. In a recent issue, black ink coverage was so heavy on some pages that this publisher was forced to pay cash refunds to some very unhappy advertisers. When he complained, the printer first denied that there was anything wrong with the pages, then claimed that they were "within acceptable tolerances" for print quality. My publisher friend shot back that if the printer really believed that, then there was a rather large chasm between what the printer considered quality and what he considered quality. The publisher is still waiting for some acceptance of responsibility--and since it's the second time in recent history that this problem has occurred, it may, indeed, cost the printer the account.

Neither the aforementioned publisher nor any representative from his company was at the printer at that particular pressrun, which begs the question, "If the publisher doesn't come to the press, or at least send a representative, does he or she have the right to complain about the end result?" Yes. Absolutely. It is simply not possible for publishers to have someone at the pressrun for every issue. As long as you give your printer clear-cut guidelines about what you want, and feedback about each issue, you should not have to have someone on site every time you print.

When we first began a relationship with our current printer, Quad Graphics, I went for the runs of the first two issues. I was able to establish in those visits that they knew what they were doing and could be trusted to produce a high-quality product without me there looking over their shoulders. And I think that should be a given. That's what color keys and matchprints are for. If quality performance is assured solely by constant supervision, significant problems are going to occur whenever supervision is absent--whether that supervision is provided by the client, an in-house quality control manager or a shift supervisor. The printer must take complete responsibility--at least for the more objective issues such as binding, trimming and shipping.

But how do you assure the more subjective quality issues? I have a friend who was in production management at Architectural Digest in the early 1980s. While there, he led an exhaustive statistical study and analysis of what Architectural Digest considered to be its standards for quality printing. He then wrote up the findings, included them In their contract--and the printer was bound to adhere to them. Short of that sort of monumental undertaking, there are more practical ways to help you stay on top of quality.

Go where the quality is in control. Some printers have quality control managers and full-blown quality control departments. Others, more and more, are going to the quality control concepts espoused by the late quality guru Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Quad Graphics is one that practices the philosophy that every employee is a quality control manager and is responsible for quality control every minute of the day. The company has most aspects of its business broken down into teams, and each team bears responsibility for the quality of its work, whether it is customer service, binding or printing.

Of course, that doesn't mean there won't be times when something will slip by everyone responsible for maintaining standards. But it is an individual printer's reaction to that something--the mechanisms they have in place to fix something quickly, to everyone's satisfaction--that affects how we perceive their quality control efforts.

Make sure you are organized. A lot of problems and mistakes occur when there is miscommunication between production personnel and the printers. If you deliver your prepress materials in a confusing mess, the printer is more likely to do something in a way you had not intended. Your disorganization also means more work for the people at your printer, which stresses them and makes them less attentive.