Stop . . . er, start the presses!

Today my boss and I got a phone call from the people at Print Services inviting us to come up and give the magazine covers a final thumbs-up while they were on the press. Turns out they were just how we wanted them. After we gave the okay, the printers offered to show us around and let us watch the covers as they came off the press.

A four-color printer like the one at the University Press Building

One of the guys took me up onto the printer and showed me how it works. At the top of each tower is a trough of dye (either cyan, magenta, yellow, or black). The ink runs down into the press and is printed on the paper in tiny dots--take a really strong magnifying glass to a colored page and you'll see them. All the colors on our cover come from dots from those four different colors. Pretty sweet.

We watched a batch of our magazine covers go through the press, saw several pallets of "True to the Faith" covers, and watched the workers spiral-bind the missionary planners (apparently Print Services produces at least some copies of "True to the Faith" but only does the binding on the planners).

It was a cool, unexpected field trip. The people at Print Services told us they'd call us when the magazine was being stitched together, so I might even get another one if I'm around for that. In any case, Eagle's Eye should be completely finished by the end of the week, and I'm pretty happy about that!