My first commercial printing machine!
The first few years of the new century were the period of the “colour revolution” in the world of newspaper printing, coinciding with a change of format (more manageable and compact) and graphics.
This was not something that was taken for granted as it appears to be today. At the time, only the front page (possibly also the third page) and certain advertisements were printed in colour.
Some people thought that readers would not welcome the change: they continued to think that serious and independent news came only in black and white, and that saucy and unreliable news came in colour.
Supporters of colour replied that every paper in the world was making the same change: cinema had been in colour for half a century, television was broadcast in colour, the weeklies and the monthlies were printed in colour and people’s everyday life was in colour.
One by one, all the main Italian newspaper titles would decide to buy new rotary presses to enable full-colour printing, i.e. to print every page in colour, thus embarking on an adventure that would entail changing everything while keeping their identity intact.
These were intense years, during which I had the privilege of taking part in emotional moments, such as the publication of the very first issue of many papers with national circulation.
Who could have foreseen the crisis which would hit the world of newspaper printing only a few years later?
Fortune decreed (though I don’t really believe in fortune) that in those very years, fresh opportunities for working with new and established clients would come my way: for example, in the field of commercial printing presses, which are in many ways very similar to the giant rotary presses used to print daily newspapers, but are different in other ways.
I had the good fortune to work for the first time on a 48-page manroland Lithoman, at Graphicscalve, with a very experienced printer, who with great patience explained all these differences, introducing me to a world which operates with different rhythms, different dynamics and different consumables.
But what a pleasure it was to find myself here too with old friends whom I had met during previous jobs, such as Luca and Beppe!