The printing industry is an industry that a lot of people don't really think about.

You go to the store and you see boxes sitting on the shelves, and a lot of people don't think about how they got there.

And when people think printing, they think of the printer sitting on your desk attached to your computer.

And it's a lot more in-depth than that.

There's a lot more work that goes into printing the things that you see in everyday life than just clicking print and it happens.

So a lot of things have to come together for that to happen.

I'm Jordan Freezer, and I'm a pressman at Grit Printing.

All right, welcome to my office.

So a pressman takes customers' artwork, and we take paper and we load it into printing presses.

And we use those printing presses to put images on paper, which are then finished, either cut, folded, glued, and we provide finished, printed products to customers.

I got into the printing industry on accident, actually.

I wanted to be a graphic designer in high school, and I signed up for the graphic communications program, thinking that that was graphic design.

And when I showed up on the first day of the class, there were all these machines around.

I was, well, what's all this?

And I stuck with it, and I learned that I liked working with machinery.

And I went to Pennsylvania College of Technology for graphic communications.

And this was my first job out of college.

I've been here for 15 years.

And this is one of our test patterns.

It's called NCP.

It's a nozzle check pattern.

And we're just looking to make sure that we don't have any nozzles that are firing improperly.

You can see some here, but the machine can compensate for that.

But it's just making sure that the printheads are working as they should be.

Every day when I come in, I look at our schedule, and I try to prioritize jobs that are a rush.

And if there's no rush jobs, then I order jobs by sheet size and by sheet type.

And I'll load paper.

I'll queue the images up.

And if we're running the older machines, we'll mount plates.

We'll put ink in the machines, and then we'll start printing on paper.

Okay, before we start running, we inspect the printed piece for defects.

We make sure that the colors are aligned.

So we use a loop.

It's basically a magnifying glass, but we use it to inspect.

We have crop marks on the sheet.

Make sure that our colors are lined up.

And then if there's any print defects, we can inspect them.

Make sure that everything looks good.

The offset machines that we have require ink, water, an aluminum plate.

And setup can take an hour and requires 300 to 400 sheets of paper.

And with the inkjet machine, I can be ready to run as little as five sheets.

There's no plates.

It just needs ink and a couple other chemicals to run.

That was much faster, much less paper waste, and it's more efficient.

At least a high school diploma.

If you can get into a college that has a graphic communications program, that would certainly be helpful.

Give me one second.

I have to clear the machine out.

But we have trained people from Bindery running folders or other machinery to run the presses.

And we sent them for additional training elsewhere.

I think if someone wanted to be a pressman, it helps to be very detail oriented.

It helps to be mechanically minded and enjoy working with machinery and knowing how machinery works and being able to fix problems that arise.

But most importantly, paying attention to detail, because we are paying attention to very minute defects that will show up in a printed piece.

Being able to see those and know how to take care of those is very important.

I enjoy photography, and so I like going hiking.

I'll take my camera with me.

This job allowed me to purchase the camera equipment that I wanted for that.

I go to Delaware.

I camp on the beach for two weeks every year.

It just allows me to do the things that I enjoy doing.

One of the coolest things about being a pressman is when you go out in the world, you get to see the fruits of your labor.

We print for a local amusement park.

You can go there and you can see the maps, the brochures that you print.

Or if you go to a visitor center, you'll see some brochures that we printed.

It's cool seeing things that you've made out in the wild.