LDS Church Wins Best of Show
Having entered the In-Print competition since the 1980s, the Printing Division of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has amassed an impressive collection of awards—enough to line a long hallway in its Salt Lake City facility. And it's no wonder; the in-plant's 350 employees see their work as a reflection of their devotion to the church, so they take great pride in producing the best possible quality in every project they undertake.
Still, despite all these awards, the top prize—Best of Show—has always eluded the in-plant. Until now.
Out of the 16 Gold winners in the offset categories, a case-bound book produced by the LDS Church Printing Division was selected as the 2013 Best of Show winner. Director Craig Sedgwick is elated.
"We tried for so many years, and it's just wonderful to finally win the award," he remarks.
The winning 208-page book, "Daughters in My Kingdom," is a history of the church's Relief Society, a 171-year-old women's organization. It covers the evolution of the society and profiles every president since it began in 1842.
Color on Every Page
The in-plant initially printed 1.5 million soft-bound copies of the book for distribution to members of the society. Then a run of 1,000 hard-bound copies was ordered, to be sold at the church's Deseret Book Co. Producing this elegant keepsake—which sports an Invecchiato leather cover that is embossed and foil stamped, and features silver-gilded pages—was quite a challenge, not so much for these tasteful touches but because of the amount of color on the inside.
"There's not a page without color," says Sedgwick. Every page, even the "blank" ones, has a color tint along with a screened-back floral design along the edges. Nearly 240 color photos and drawings fill the book. Keeping that color consistent throughout the run was the in-plant's biggest challenge, Sedgwick says.
The fact that the in-plant is G7 certified on the five-color manroland Lithoman IV web press that was used to print the job certainly helped. Also beneficial was the GATF training that all staff receive. The in-plant also has a Quality Assurance program with employee incentive rewards. But ultimately, Sedgwick points out, "quality is the operators' responsibility."
The Early Stages
The project started when Sedgwick met with Relief Society Past President Julie Beck and designer Tadd Peterson. Peterson showed some mock-ups, and they discussed a cover design that would look good with foil stamping.
Once he had designed the whole book, Peterson put PDFs on the in-plant's FTP site, and the prepress staff checked the files and impositioned them. Proofs were run by Larry Gunn and Tom Kane on an Epson Stylus Pro 4880 using CGS ORIS Color Tuner. Plates were imaged on a Kodak Magnus VLF platesetter by George Darrington, Mark Combs and Steve Shepard.
Printing the book on the shop's five-color manroland Lithoman IV web press took a full 24-hour day—two shifts, with four operators per shift. They pulled sheets to check consistency throughout the run. Quality assurance was aided through such tools as a QTI management system and a Techkon dot reader and spectro-densitometer. The book was printed on 80-lb. Sterling dull paper from NewPage.
Pages were folded and sheeted inline on the web press, then hand collated before being sewn by a Meccanotecnica sewing machine. The book blocks were then capped, and the edges were gilded using Ochsner equipment, after which a ribbon was inserted using a Sigloch inserter.
Meanwhile, staff made the covers using an SC2 casemaker from GP2 Technologies to wrap the imported Italian leather around the board. Kluge equipment was used to blind emboss the front and back covers and to foil stamp the front cover and spine. The book was bound using a Kolbus Compact 60 case binder.
Altogether, Sedgwick says, about 80 people were involved in producing the winning piece. He's very proud of them for the spectacular work they did on this book.
"We have the best staff, we really do," he lauds. "They're so conscientious; so excited to do their best all the time. And this is just one example."
Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 180 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.
