How Are Magazines Printed?
How are magazines printed seems at first a simple question. People from an older generation would answer that magazines are printed using a typesetting press to leave an image on paper. More modern readers might answer that magazines are printed by using a computer to send a spool of information to a printer to deliver an image to a sheet or roll of paper. The most modern of users might just say, “If you want to know how magazines are printed then come watch this Youtube video!”
Magazines and periodicals originated by meticulous production in a publishing house. The original task consisted of a person moving around individual blocks with a letter or a symbol which could be combined in different ways to create a word, sentence or specific look. Levers to operate flat presses or huge cylinders of rolled presses would then transfer the information to paper by leaving an impression of the ink that had been previously applied to the type blocks.
In the beginning of the publishing industry, if the typesetter messed up then the whole page had to be redone. A mistake created waste and that cost the publisher time, money and supplies. With computers available, editing and proofreading for grammar, punctuation and spelling could be done without ruining paper or wasting ink. Then the final product was checked over and approved before being sent to the printer’s spool by the computer.
A video might show one how to do the process but even that is not comprehensive. Magazines are rapidly being offered online as web pages. So as technology changes so too does the process of creating a product to distribute to consumers. It may be that what today’s reader calls a magazine will be unrecognizable to the future reader if society moves away from the printed word towards the written word offered online or using visual presentations rather than through language if the popularity of videos is any indication.