It’s a colourful world

A large amount of the books we produce are picture books. With those it’s obviously very important that the illustrations are reproduced accurately. To make sure this happens, scans of the original artwork are sent to the printer. They will then try to match these illustrations as closely as possible and send us the results. A production controller and someone from the design department will then compare these print outs with the original illustrations to check how the colours were reproduced. This is especially important when it comes to scenes set at different times of day. A little bit too much red or blue can make a big difference when you’re trying to capture different stages of dusk. It’s also important to make sure that colours that occur on different pages of the book always look the same. For example, if the main character is an animal, its fur will have to look the same throughout the book. I really like this part of production because you get to work with the actual artwork supplied by the illustrator and work closely with the design department.

One of my other favourite bits is getting advance copies for picture books. When these come in I get a copy of the previous print run and check that the new impression looks just like the previous one. I make sure that everything is where it’s supposed to be, all the corrections have been carried out and that the colours are consistent. Especially with some of our best-selling characters it’s important that they look exactly the same in every book. I also take a close look at the cover and make sure that all the finishes came out OK. For example if there is a Spot UV (that’s the shiny bit, just in case you don’t know) on the title and maybe part of the illustration, the guide for this needs to be precisely in line with the writing or drawing it’s supposed to highlight, otherwise it would just look wrong. And if everything is OK I’ll just drop the printer a quick line and they will carry on with the rest of the books.

Most of the fiction titles are just plain black and white text so the only room for colour is on the cover and maybe the inner cover. In a lot of cases these are looked after by our in-house design team. So if something needs to be changed before a book can be reprinted I just ask one of the designers if they can do that for me. For example, if we’re changing the paper a book is printed on, this might change the spine width and we’ll have to amend the cover file accordingly to make sure the spine is just right for the width of the book. Sometimes we might use the inner cover to promote similar titles in which case the editor will talk to the designer who will then create ads to go onto the front and back inner cover.

I really like anything to do with colour just because it’s always a bit brighter and more exciting than the black and white bits. The best part is probably getting the picture book advances. It’s just so good to see that everything has come together perfectly and to replace the previous edition on the shelf with the new one.