In awe of print

Even though you may live and breathe a magazine through around six weeks of preparation, it’s always a sense of relief when the actual printed publication arrives on your desk.
At this stage the original ideas you held in your mind at the outset, may seem a world away. Every stage of the planning is still there on your computer, step by step, day by day, and week by week.
Indeed the entire magazine is there committed to the memory of the computer, so you know almost line by line the content of the finished publication.
But here it is. In print, as those who are readers will see it in the next few days. The result of the editor’s task in pulling it all together, marshalling and encouraging contributors, occasionally cajoling when promised material is a few days later, or perhaps doesn’t arrive at all.  All things that are now in the distance.
Although we live in a digital online world, even though publishing now relies on the digital world, I for one still get a tremendous kick, when like today, I can finally hold the publication in my hand.  A tangible result which can never be completely replaced by online publishing.
But then, I was brought up in a world of print — the unique smell of printer’s ink, and the awe with which I would marvel at giant presses producing newspapers by the, thousand and the sheer mechanics of publishing newspapers, magazines or books.

Those mechanics have changed beyond recognition over a lifetime.  But the sheer delight of holding the finished publication in my hand still gives me an unbeatable kick out of life!