A HISTORY IN DIGITAL REPROGRAPHICS, BRAND, PRINT & EXHIBITION GRAPHICS

PrePress UK: Over 37 years of prepress, design & print expertise

PrePress began with a Mac in 1989
Who is PrePress?
Why experience matters
More than a production company
Explore PrePress
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PrePress began with a Mac in 1989

PrePress began in 1989 with an Apple Macintosh, 4 MB of RAM and a determination to discover what this new technology could do.

At the time, digital prepress was still in its infancy. Photoshop, PageMaker, Illustrator and PageMill were pioneering tools rather than the familiar software they are today. There were no YouTube tutorials, online forums or instant answers. If something didn’t work, we reached for the manual, experimented, and worked it out. That hands-on experience became the foundation of PrePress.

From those early days we developed a deep understanding of how digital design, typography, images, colour and printing work together. We prepared artwork for professional reproduction, worked with CMYK colour, scanning, platemaking, RIPs and emerging digital workflows, and learned the importance of getting artwork technically right before it reached the press.

PrePress first Apple Mac and printer in 1989

Our first Apple Mac and printer in 1989

The system cost nearly £6,000 and had just 4MB of RAM and limited hard-disk space. If only we’d bought Apple shares…

Not long after we bought our first imagesetter, a Hyphen Spectranet an excellent high quality device. The biggest problem was storage, Zip drives did not arrive till 1994 and still with only 100mb of storage, we had to order so many. CD ROMs did not appear until early 2000.

Over the following decades, technology changed almost beyond recognition. The floppy disk disappeared. Film disappeared. Traditional typesetting disappeared. Desktop publishing became digital publishing. Digital printing, large-format graphics, packaging, exhibition graphics and increasingly sophisticated automated workflows became part of the production landscape. PrePress changed with it. What hasn’t changed is the principle that good production starts with good preparation. There is no print without PrePress.

Who is PrePress?

PrePress is an independent UK design, prepress and print-production specialist with roots in digital reprographics dating back to 1989. Our experience spans graphic design, artwork preparation, reprographics, colour management, print production, packaging, brochures, corporate literature, publishing, exhibition graphics and digital production.

Over more than three decades, we have worked through several generations of design and print technology. That gives us a perspective that is increasingly rare: we understand not only today’s digital workflows, but how the industry arrived here.

PrePress sits at the point where creative ideas meet technical production. We understand what a designer wants to achieve, what a printer needs to reproduce it accurately and what can go wrong between the two. That understanding is at the heart of PrePress.

Why experience matters

Modern software has made many aspects of print production easier. It has also made it possible to create artwork without necessarily understanding what happens to it afterwards. Our experience comes from working through the entire evolution of the process.

We understand the difference between artwork that looks right on screen and artwork that will reproduce correctly. We understand colour, resolution, typography, file preparation, image reproduction, printing processes and the practical realities of production. That knowledge helps us identify problems before they become expensive problems.

It is also why PrePress has always believed in sharing knowledge. Many of the questions we receive are the same questions designers, marketers and businesses have been asking for decades – even though the technology used to answer them has changed.

More than a production company

Today, PrePress is evolving again. Our aim is not simply to sell design or print. We want this website to be a useful source of knowledge for designers, printers, marketers, businesses, students and anyone who wants to understand how professional design and print production actually work.

From colour management and artwork preparation to typography, digital printing, packaging and the future of prepress, we share the knowledge gained from more than three decades in the industry.