Quality is Job One! Quality is No Accident! Garbage In, Garbage Out! We've all heard the clichés, but in printing the term “quality” is nebulous at best. According to one printer I talked with recently, a quality job is one where the customers pays for the work and comes back again with more jobs. He's probably right, but there are standards to quality, and achieving them requires certain basic steps that many printers have long forgotten.

In printing, as in baking, the ingredients are everything. The more you understand what you're putting into the mix, the greater your ability to predict the final product. In printing, the ingredients include paper, ink, plates, and fountain solutions. The combination or mix of the varying brands and quality of these materials can either aid or complicate the print process. Having understood these basics, printers are tasked with determining whether they should know how well the mix works together before they're on press or afterwards. In other words, should printers be proactive to test the materials before going on press; or forensic, when the crime has already been committed and they're just trying to figure out what went wrong?

In printing, the ingredients are everything. The more you understand what you're putting into the mix, the greater your ability to predict the final product.