leadsandslugs.com was created by and is maintained by Bill Jones. (billjones@mac.com)
The idea is to publish resources and instructions on publishing using a mix of modern and traditional tools, processes, techniques, and resources. Plus a healthy dose of making up stuff as we go along.
I started in publishing in the late ’70′s by starting a printing business (a job shop) using hand set type and letterpress. We added offset presses and a process camera/darkroom so that we could “shoot” mechanicals–those lovely boards with type pasted onto them and mylar overlays with type and stuff pasted on for each additional color. Asymmetrical Press was in business for more than 10 years. While I only lasted for 7 years, my partner Mitchel Cohen ran the business for years after I was gone.
Along about early 1985 I bought a Macintosh 512 and soon thereafter Pagemaker 1.0 and an Apple LaserWriter. This started me on the road to leaving the printing business and forming Publisher’s Workshop with my wife Geri.
Publisher’s Workshop was totally immersed in Desktop Publishing and we offered production, training, and walk-in computer rental. We had the first black and white and color scanners around an taught many of the first desktop publishers their craft. I also provided support for other businesses that were using desktop publishing as part of their business.
We eventually sold our business and went to work for the company that bought our business. Geri continued to do design and production work and I provided technical support for the systems clients of the business. This was at the time the high end of color systems that included video capture, film recording, and the first viable color printers.
After 2 years I took a job with a legal publisher. My task was to create a desktop publishing department that was part of the editorial side of the business. I had the first “pc” in the company that was outside of marketing or accounting in this rather large publisher. We transformed the entire editorial operation off from the mainframe editorial/typesetting system to a Microsoft Word based workflow. We made up a lot of stuff along the way and produced hundreds of books using Word, and FrameMaker. We used Pagemaker for newsletters and other smaller pieces and Freehand for book covers and other things.
Along came the web and the publishing company moved everyone to the web on day 1. After a while I became webmaster full time and after a few corporate mergers I developed and ran an intranet site for the sales force. I ran those sites full time for around 11 years. Then one day I got caught up in a downsizing of the sales operations.
I am still trying to pick up the pieces since I think I am all done working in corporate America.
This site is part of the process of picking up the pieces.
I have a few web sites that I have created and maintain as a business. I have also fallen back into formatting books for publication, doing the occasional scanning project, and consulting and support for digital publishing and wide format ink jet printing.
Recently Geri and I have begun working with the Printing and Book Arts Center at the Genesee Center for the Arts and Education in Rochester, NY.
Lead type, letterpress, photopolymer relief plates, ink jet printing, books…