This week, Rowan and Skye joined us from Penrice Academy. They are both interested in design and media, and we gave them the opportunity to design and print their own business cards. This included coming up with the design, going through the pre-press, printing and finishing process.
We asked Rowan and Skye to write about his experience here at St. Austell Printing Company:
Working at St Austell Printing Company has been a great experience that has opened our eyes to the printing industry.
Going into it we felt nervous as it was a new environment but we felt welcome and soon settled in. It was a great opportunity to discover different sectors of work including digital, pre-press, print, finishing and mailing.
We chose to come to here because it is organised and based around topic areas which we both have a passion for – design and media.
We enjoyed designing the business cards because we were able to express our creativity and then watch the whole process develop into a business card to take home.
In pre-press we watched our plates being made and finalised our designs. The plates were thin aluminium sheets which had the outline of our business card designs engraved into them.
During the printing portion we learnt how the machines work and the variety of job roles that are involved.
Then we moved onto finishing which both Rowan and I enjoyed the most as it was not too strenuous. In finishing they do things like folding, binding, laminating and cutting.
Finally we went to mailing and fulfilment where we made book covers with the nice team there.
Overall we could both see ourselves working here because it is a lovely environment that isn’t boring like you might expect. This gave us an opportunity to use our creative skills and watch them develop from ideas to physical cards. We have discovered how important the printing industry is to businesses and individuals both in and out of Cornwall.