Offset Printing - how does it work?

[kianann]

Hey GDT people out there~

Something has been really tickling me all along, I understand and learnt over experience that when we send a brochure for printing, we must bleed the design, must convert the fonts to paths and all these... and recently, I have sent one brochure for printing - and they had to delay for a while because of some colour separation stuff.

What is the "best way" printers would want an artwork, for printing?  What are the things to note?

How does offset printing work anyway? Sounds fun to me!

[arlene]

 ???ehh... i'm wondering y you start out a topic like that... but anyway, offset printing is a type of printing that uses 4 colour plates to print...  quite long time ago .... not the lastest type of digital print...
the 4 colour plates are CMYK cyan magenta yellow and black... this type of print is not slow just that it needs to run 4 times in order for your art work to get print out... and depends on the paper you choose... time needed for paper to dry also adds in to the waiting time...

heehee but good thing is that offset printing is sharp and clear...
i'm not sure wether cheap but different printing shops veries...
One thing i can say... most advertising house and design house still goes for offset printing.

erm... if any mistakes in my explaination... feel free to correct and change....

[kianann]

I see... cos I had an opportunity to design a magazine before, and it was chaos... didn't know about bleeding and all the things...