Publishing, Seybold & Print Software (video): Writer, Laurel Lindstrom

In the following video interview, Writer, Laurel Lindstrom, a.k.a. Laurel Brunner, mentions book publishing, Seybold Publications, & Markzware FlightCheck, print software for preflighting. (Markzware develops software for printers, publishers, graphic artists, and the like.):

[TRANSCRIPTION:]
DAVID: Good Morning, Laurel. I’ve got the technical difficulties worked out. Maybe it’s just the Monday morning difficulties. How are you, today?

LAUREL: I’m very well. Thank you, David. Very well, indeed.

DAVID: Today, …

LAUREL: Thank you for inviting me to do this.

DAVID: Oh, for sure. I really love this. And this won’t be your normal Markzware video about our software or about industry things. Oh, we might touch, a little bit, about Laurel’s background, because she has a very interesting background.

But Laurel’s writing a book, not about graphic arts, or print media, or printing processes, she’s writing about, well, it’s a fiction book. It’s called The Draftsman.

And before we jump into why Laurel has written this, and where you can get it, and all that kind of great stuff, maybe, for those who might not
know, maybe you could tell us a bit more about who you are, Laurel, and what you have done, and what you do.

LAUREL: As a novelist, my name is Laurel Lindstrom, but as a journalist, my name is Laurel Brunner. And, for years, I’ve been writing about graphic arts technology, going back to the mid ’80s, I guess.

And that’s always been what I write about, non-fiction, technical stuff to do with digital production, for the graphic arts industry. And it’s taken me on a very interesting journey, a very long journey.

And, then, a few years ago, I was looking at some stuff that I had done, many, many years ago, when I was still at university in California. And I found some fiction work that I had done, and I thought, “I had some of this stuff published. I think it might be a good challenge, to see if I can write a novel.”

And it’s much harder than you think it’s going to be, not just because of the need for ideas, but also, when you’ve been writing about technology and software, for so many decades, it’s really hard to get away from that mindset.

DAVID: Yeah.

LAUREL: Yeah, so, that was, kind of, the biggest challenge, I suppose, was crossing over, from being a technical writer, to being somebody who’s writing fiction.

DAVID: Right. And before we jump into the book, I mean, your background. You lived in California. You worked for, I think, Seybold, in the beginning. Now, you have a very interesting background. Maybe you could tell us a bit about that.

LAUREL: The reason I got a job with Jonathan Seybold, years ago, in Malibu, was because I needed work, to get me through university. And we had a partnership that worked quite nicely.

He didn’t need anybody full-time, but he needed somebody full-time, right before his seminars, for three months or so, before the seminar happened, to do that kind of organizing and preparing materials for everything, liaisoning with the hotels, organizing the catering, all of that grunt work that has to be done, to pull off an event.

And I needed a job that would pay, might help me pay my way through university. So it worked out, as a very good partnership, and we were both… He was obviously of Seybold, renowned for Seybold Publications, started by John Seybold, Sr., and run out of Media, Pennsylvania. And Jonathan was writing for that Seybold Report. And I did a lot of proofreading, for him.

I learned an awful lot about the technology. And, at the time, it was when print unions, in the UK, were actually, absolutely, holding onto the old hot-metal technology. And it was a time of wapping. It was the time when the Atex systems were being developed and implemented, in Europe and lots of different countries.

So, I was fascinated by this technology, and that’s what kept me going all through and throughout the history of the graphic arts digital history, if you like, for the last 30 or so years. And it’s been fascinating, absolutely fascinating.

DAVID: Yeah. Wow! So you were there, in the beginning of Seybold, actually.

LAUREL: I think I was employee number six. The Seybolds had been published, since 1971, and I pitched up at Jonathan’s office, in a police car, but that’s another story, …

DAVID: Another video. (both laugh)

LAUREL: … in 1979. And, so, the Seybold Reports had been going out, for about eight years, I suppose. And we had some editors and production people, and subscribing subscriber people, administrative people, in Media, Pennsylvania, but I was the first person on the west coast.

DAVID: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s what I meant.

LAUREL: Yeah.

DAVID: The whole Seybold Seminars. And that’s where Markzware, I mean, that’s where FlightCheck, our flagship product, that’s where it took off. I wasn’t there, then, I came like six or seven months later.

But, from what I understand, they went there with a beta, or an alpha, version of FlightCheck, just to show to people at Seybold. And they spent a lot of money, to get a little booth, there.

LAUREL: Yes.

DAVID: Took a gamble and, thanks to you, Laurel, it wasn’t cheap, but it was well worth it, because all the… Yeah, it was a great avenue to meet the real users and they were just… How do you call it? Thrilled with what FlightCheck could and would show them about their digital files, without having to open them and dig through the file, to get a pre-flight report, …

LAUREL: Yeah.

DAVID: … which everyone knows about, nowadays, but, back then, it wasn’t in the applications.

LAUREL: Nobody knew that it was necessary, and that’s the thing that’s made those early years of, just in publishing, so absolutely fascinating, is because we were uncovering the things that we didn’t know we didn’t know. And pre-flight checking was one of them. And RIP processing was another, and color management was another.

DAVID: Yeah.

LAUREL: And all of these things, they go wrong and, then, you identify ways of fixing them. And the Seybold Seminars… The whole idea was that we wanted to create a kind of something, kind of, not random exactly, but something where things could happen, and also have a kind of intellectual oversight. And that’s what the editorial team at Seybold Publications did.

So, they were very separate from the exhibition/seminar part of the business. And it did turn, very quickly, into an exhibition business. Our first proper exhibition was a Seybold desktop publishing conference. It was in Santa Clara. And thank you very much, Apple, because they took up the biggest sort of, like, massive stand.

(man in video speaks) “The Seybold experience is unique, in all of the high-tech industry. There is and always has been an amazing feeling of community, here. There’s a strong sense of purpose and direction. When you come to Seybold, you get the feeling that users are still driving this industry, because, in fact, you are.”

And I remember, when I went around at the venue, before this thing was all up and running. And the people from Apple, they said, “Well, yes, we definitely want to. We want to take space, here.” And I thought, “Great! What sort of size?” And I thought they’d say maybe, you know, 10 x 20, if we were lucky. I think it was 16 x 30. A huge …

DAVID: Wow!

LAUREL: … anchor stand for the event. And, you know, it just grew and grew from there, because we were fortunate enough, that there was so much going on around, in terms of technology, in terms of communications changes, later on, the internet coming on, …

DAVID: Yeah.

LAUREL: … to become yet another channel for communications.

DAVID: Oh, yeah.

LAUREL: We were hugely fortunate, but it was because it was an interplay, between the people, like Markzware, showing new software ideas. And, then, Seybold Publications journalists, who were professional, graphic arts industry, knowledgeable people, who had the whole hot-metal history, and the whole digitization of scanning, for example, different types of technologies that went digital.

You had this incredible balancing act going on, where we had critiquing. And you had the critique from the audiences, and you had people brave enough, (David laughs) to take a punch …

DAVID: Yeah.

LAUREL: … and see if it went.

DAVID: Yeah, it was very exciting days, for sure. Yeah, very, very interesting. I might ask more about that, at the end of this interview, but we’re here for the book, right now.

And, before we go further, Laurel is also Founder, I believe, of Digital Dots, DigitalDots.org, and that’s a very interesting site. That’s what they do, nowadays. And they cover a full range of… Well you have, like a newsletter, as well, I believe, right?

LAUREL: We have Spendrift.

DAVID: Spendrift! That’s right.

LAUREL: What we try to do is to explain how you can make it easier, because people are still very confused by color management, for example. I think that’s probably one of the biggest areas and, obviously, pre-flight checking, and document control…

DAVID: Right.

LAUREL: … and having access, keeping everything accurate, as it moves through the digital workflow. And digital workflows, nowadays, are so complicated.

DAVID: Oh, yeah.

LAUREL: There are so many things that happen to a file, as it moves from somebody’s head into a piece of print or into something online. And everyone uses different types of tools.

DAVID: Automations.

LAUREL: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it makes sense, when you think about it, that the substrate is the thing that reflects the light, …

DAVID: Yeah.

LAUREL: … hitting the page, filtered by the inks. But that substrate’s going to have a certain texture, etc.

DAVID: Yeah.

LAUREL: To make it …

DAVID: Yeah, very …

LAUREL: Also, viewing things. You know light changes what a color looks like. So, there’s still room to educate people about the application of the technology and the things to watch out for. So, we, with Digital Dots, we try and write a lot about that kind of thing.

We also, over the years, both my husband and partner, Paul, and I sit on ISO standards committees, for the graphics industry. He represents Sweden. I represent the UK, along with other people, and that is very fascinating work. So, we tried very hard, very much, to write about what’s going on, as the ISO standards developed.

So, for example, things like the PDF/X series, things like the 12647 for process quality control, for different types of printing methods, all that sort of stuff.

DAVID: Has it always been your dream to write? Well, I guess you’ve been writing fiction, like you said, since you were… when you were younger, but …

LAUREL: Yeah, I had always written, but I was never very good at it, in the way that young people… You think that just because you’ve written something down, it’s great. Well, it’s great that you tried. You made an effort at it.

And, at UCLA, I did a couple of creative writing courses, and my major is in… I had linguistics and in English literature, so. And I did. I had a couple of things published and I enjoyed it and, then, got caught up in work, and making a living, and supporting myself and, increasingly over the years, that took over.

DAVID: Yeah.

LAUREL: And it wasn’t something that ever really went away. So, you can find, somewhere on YouTube, you can find a version of the drupa song that I wrote with somebody else, who’s a musician.

DAVID: You did this song. I think, was that in 2000 [actually 1986], or …

LAUREL: I can’t remember which year it was, but we wrote the drupa song, together. And I’ve always written creatively, for people’s birthdays, or like poems for someone’s christening, or whatever.

And then, I looked through a whole bunch of old stuff that we found up, in the loft, and thought, “Why don’t I do that again? I really enjoy writing, without the constraints of it being about technology. And also a bigger question was can I make that crossover, from technical writing/non-fiction to fiction?

DAVID: Right.

LAUREL: And it was a big challenge, not the least because a novelist is so non.

DAVID: Yeah.

LAUREL: But it’s the head, the mindset. And my character. We do have a few little passing references to the graphics industry, …

DAVID: Of course.

LAUREL: … because The Draftsman … Yeah. That’s what I know, so. They always say you should write about what you know. So, this character is, well, he’s a very brilliant man, who is a little fragile, in a number of ways, and when he’s 16, he gets all of his exams, with super, super good results.

His family and his school expect him to go to university, and he says, “No, I won’t do it. I won’t, because I don’t want the stress. I want to work in an office. I want to just go to work, every day, and do the same thing, every day. I don’t want ever to think about biology, or physics, or maths, or anything. I just want to have a quiet life.”

So, he gets a job, as … it’s kind of like a dog’s body, in a shop, in an office, where they do drafting of documents. And they’ll create architectural drawings, drawings for patent applications, stuff like that. So, he gets a job. He’s 16. He’s a bit strange, very… Everything for him is binary, black and white, no gray, at all. Everything is black and white.

And he’s turned out to have quite a talent for drafting, extremely good at hand-eye coordination. And he gets asked to turn a rough illustration into a proper drawing, for a patent application. And the drawing that he’s been given is an inkjet printing head. And this is where my technical stuff is.

DAVID: Yeah, you can dive right into that.

LAUREL: So, if you look at early print, digital print, sorry, inkjet printing heads, you know how they’ve evolved, over time. You can see that there are certain things that change, sometimes big changes, sometimes not so big.

Well, this young man looks at the drawing and says, “This is wrong. It doesn’t… It’s not right. I don’t know what it’s supposed to do, but there’s something wrong.” He gets quite upset about it.

His boss arranges a meeting with the people who asked him to do this work. And they explain to him what an inkjet printing head does. And he gets it, very quickly, and, then, says, “Well, I would like to make a change, suggest a change for you.

But he has, in his head, the figure of 25,000 pounds, because his father once said this to him, when he was… The mother and father were arguing. Somehow, 25,000 pounds was a number that was desirable. Okay?

So, it goes on, and the conversation continues. So, the man that’s with him, his boss, tells him to stop and starts to take over the conversation, and says, “If this young man can, in fact, improve your inkjet printing head, will you give him a contract and give him a percentage of the revenues?”

And they think, these people think, this whole thing is ridiculous. “Oh, yeah. Right. We’ll do that.”

“Okay,” he says. “Well, I’ll draft up a contract.” Then, he does. And the young man comes up with a slight modification to the drawing, which it does, in fact, make it much more efficient, keeps the flow of fluids much smoother, much more even, much easier to control, as well.

So, less money on the page. But the contract also says, “If this arrangement can be scaled up, or if the business is ever sold on, the contract remains in place.”

So, suddenly, this young man is… He’s got… He gets a bit of income from his suggestion, stays working with his boss, because he likes the routine. And, then, suddenly, they sell the company, and he’s earning lots of money. He doesn’t really know how to deal with it.

So, he buys a flat in London, in a very, very posh, expensive part of town, penthouse flat. He has all the walls knocked down, so that he doesn’t have anything interrupting his view. Everything’s black and white, in this flat, absolutely filthy. A horrible, horrible hole that he lives in. He never cleans anything, has various weird sexual encounters.

His family get a bit concerned. And his business manager also says, “We need to… You need to spend some of this money.”

“Well, what about this house?” He buys a house, down in the country, and he’s binary, this guy. So, he immediately decides that the house is never going to be dirty. It’s always going to be pristine. He relates to people, in a very odd way, along the same lines.

He gets to the house, finds that it’s something he’s never experienced before. He’s out in the countryside.

DAVID: Yeah.

LAUREL: He’s never seen the landscape, before. And he becomes interested in the history of his house and the people who lived there, particularly events in 1945.

He becomes fascinated by the people who used to live in this house. It was requisitioned, during the war, so, he’s interested in that. This is the first time he’s been interested in anything, in his life.

DAVID: Wow!

LAUREL: The stuff he’s always done before has been for exams, or because he’s been told to. This is the first time he actually is interested in something. So, he learns a little bit more about the history of the place. And, essentially, the book is about how he heals.

There are certain things that have happened to him, in his childhood, that are really rather ugly, that are repressed and squished down. Gradually, they start to come out. And he starts to understand that his own frailties and his own vulnerabilities …

DAVID: Wow!

LAUREL: … and is more able to reach out to other people, as the book goes on.

DAIVD: Yeah.

LAUREL: Then, there’s a horrible thing that happens, at the end, that I won’t tell you about, that helps him resolve something.

DAVID: Yeah? Wow! So, I’m curious. So, I’m curious how it ends, if it ends good or bad or, you know, but I guess you have to read the book, right?

LAUREL: Yeah. He’s been pursuing a mystery to do with one of the people who lived in the house, before, in 1945. Certain things happen. Obviously, the end of the war, but …

DAVID: Right.

LAUREL: There were certain things that happened that were never fully resolved. And he thinks it’s strange, and he has the sense that this is… there’s more that needs to be uncovered, other than everything that people thought, so …

DAVID: Right, right. Interesting, interesting.

LAUREL: Yes. It’s going to be hot off the press.

DAVID: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you could read the whole book to us, but that would that would defeat … You don’t have time for that. I’m curious about the Unbound site, where … because you’re self-publishing this book, I guess you’d call it, right?

LAUREL: Yes. Yes. No, it’s not self-publishing, at all.

DAVID: Oh!

LAUREL: It’s some … Unbound was set up, by a couple of publishing industry – What’s the word? – veterans who wanted to have a publishing company that was a bit different. Their whole idea is to encourage more diverse books, fiction and non-fiction.

So, what they have is a crowdfunding model. And they have two different categories of publication. They have a Digital First list, which is the one I’m on and, then, they have a more conventional model. In both models, they decide whether they’re going to accept something or not.

And it seemed to me like it was sort of an elaborate, self-publishing model, at first. But, actually, it’s not, because I’ve spoken with people who’ve tried to get their books published with Unbound, and they haven’t said yes, so, …

DAVID: Oh, interesting!

LAUREL: Yes.

DAVID: Okay, so, there, it’s not really self-publishing; it’s more like self-service publishing. They have to still be approved. You would still be approved, the work.

LAUREL: Exactly. It’s their platform.

DAVID: Right.

LAUREL: So, what they do is, if they approve your work, they’re essentially offering you a platform, …

DAVID: Right.

LAUREL: … plus the support that goes along with the normal publishing process. And what they do is they say, “Okay, well, we’ll accept this. We will give you a platform, and you need to sell your book, in advance.” So, they give you the …

DAVID: Yeah, which is …

LAUREL: Yeah.

DAVID: The crowdfunding, yeah.

LAUREL: The crowdfunding idea. They give you a target, and I think you have, I don’t know, up to a year, to achieve the target. We were quite lucky with The Draftsman. I think we hit target, within three months. So, yeah, I was really pleased about that.

Then, the next step, once you hit the target, and you can do this, … I didn’t do this, because I had already finished the whole book, but you can do this, with just an idea.

So, if, David, you wanted to do a non-fiction book about the history of preflight-checking, or Markzware‘s history, or how you and your colleagues came together to do this business and run is very interesting. Here, now, you could … Well you could write the first three chapters and they just have a synopsis. And Unbound will look at the three chapters and the synopsis, and say, “Yes,” or “No.”

DAVID: Alright. Yeah.

LAUREL: So, you don’t have to finish the whole book. No, just, but probably write the chapter outline and, then, yeah.

DAVID: Interesting. Yeah, it’s a really nifty site. I mean, I’ll put links to this and I’ll probably show some screen recordings of that, in between, when you’re talking here, because it is …

LAUREL: Yeah.

DAVID: It was very professionally done. I mean that’s part of what drew me to this was, of course, your name. I mean, I’ve seen you around, for years, and then the site was all in a nice combination.

LAUREL: Yeah.

DAVID: So, the book, itself, are you going to be laying it out in InDesign? How does that all work? I mean, are you using QuarkXPress? Affinity Publisher maybe.

LAUREL: No, they use a software called Press Sense.

DAVID: Press Sense?

LAUREL: Yeah, which is you combine … This is, I think this brings me full circle, because, yeah, it’s a piece of software like InDesign or XPress, but it’s, like, I don’t know, 200 pounds for a 10-book license.

I don’t know what Unbound‘s arrangement is, but an author can get a copy of it for free and lay out their whole book. So, they use that.

Then, they use – What’s the other thing called? What is one of the other things called? – They have an HTML converter, so it takes … It’ll take HTML, turn it into PDF. It’ll take the laid-out page and turn it into HTML.

And it’s software that I had never heard of, because the software we’ve always dealt with has been kind of high-end, but actually it’s, nowadays, you don’t need to spend a lot of money on it, on page layout and document design.

DAVID: Good point.

LAUREL: You can do it at a very fairly low price. Yeah.

DAVID: Yeah, good point, I mean, it’s not needed. It’s really not needed. I mean, for pure authorship, which is what you’re doing, at this time, you don’t need all that, a full InDesign, actually.

LAUREL: No, I don’t, at all.

DAVID: Yeah. Interesting.

LAUREL: What happens is that I had to submit my manuscript to them, in a certain format that they wanted. And, now, I have no idea what’s happening to it, because it’s in the editing process.

DAVID: Not your problem anymore, on that end.

LAUREL: Yeah. Yeah.

DAVID: And like the book cover. Are you going to have a book cover design done, or is that done, as well?

LAUREL: Unbound will do all of that.

DAVID: Yeah? Wow!

LAUREL: I don’t know how long it takes. I think the person I’ve been dealing with, I guess it was my publisher, has said that it is about seven months from when they get the finished manuscript to publication. So, they had the finished manuscript October-ish, in mid-October, I think.

DAVID: So, sometime first or second quarter.

LAUREL: May, June, yeah. Somebody actually …

DAVID: 2020.

LAUREL: Yeah. Next year. Somebody actually suggested that I should talk to some of the digital press manufacturers and ask them to print it on their digital devices. I don’t think Unbound would really like that, because that’s giving the book away, but what we might do is let them ask Unbound about this, to see whether we could have a couple of chapters published.

DAVID: Right. For promotion. Yeah, yeah. Interesting.

LAUREL: Just for the fun of it.

DAVID: I’m curious how they do their book design covers. They probably outsource it, I gather, but you never know. Maybe they have internal…

LAUREL: They’ve got quite a few people working there. I’ve been up to the offices, a couple of times. And it’s a proper set up. They’ve got lots of copy editors and lots of production people, there. The copy editing is probably the part that I know least about, because, I mean, I’ve been writing articles, for years and years and years.

And I’ve never had anyone come back to me and say, well, maybe, a couple of times, “We want to make this change, or that change.” People will often come back to you and say, “You’ve talked about this technology, but you haven’t talked about that one. Why not?”

DAVID: Right, right.

LAUREL: Things like that.

DAVID: Different. Yeah, different. Okay, cool. Very cool.

LAUREL: It was important for me to show how serendipity can shape your life, because my life has been all over the place. I’ve lived in many countries. I think I was in nine different schools, before I was 15 years old. So, if it… When you live all over the place, you have your own concerns, your own baggage. But, also, serendipity plays a role in, for instance, making things get better.

DAVID: Yeah. Oh, it sure does. That’s a great point! It sure does. Serendipity is amazing! Really. I mean, if I could ask, what’d your father do?

LAUREL: My father is a jazz musician. He’s still alive.

DAVID: Oh, wow! Oh, great!

LAUREL: He stopped playing, about two or three years ago.

DAVID: Do you think he’s at… ?

LAUREL: He’s going to be 87 in February.

DAVID: Well, I don’t know what it is, but jazz musicians seem to live forever, don’t they?

LAUREL: Yeah. Well, he’s a drummer. So, he’s a very high-energy person. My mother and he divorced, when I was, I think, eight or nine years old. And we moved to Germany, and that’s where she met my stepfather, who was serving in the American army, and one way or another…

DAVID: And that’s the American, yeah.

LAUREL: Yeah, ended up in New York City and, then, came back to England, back to America. We toured, went back and forth, a lot.

DAVID: Oh, wow! And, yeah. Amazing, yeah. And, then, the whole graphic arts industry and that whole segment of your life, as well. I mean, just you have an incredible life. You could write a book about yourself, next time!

LAUREL: No, someone else is doing that. (both laugh) Anyway, … I will carry on, writing fiction, because I do enjoy it and I like the challenge of it, too.

DAVID: Excellent, excellent. Well, Laurel’s book. I’ll put information on where you can get it, The Draftsman. It’s coming out, in about the middle of 2020, maybe a bit earlier. And it’s very exciting that someone whom we’ve known, in the print media business, for years, has, sort of, yes, done her… You’re doing your dream and you’re doing something you’ve always wanted to do, and you’ve done it.

LAUREL: I’m really enjoying it.

DAVID: Yeah. Congratulations!

LAUREL: It makes a change from writing about the environment, as well, because I do a weekly blog for the graphics industry about the environment, on the Verdigris website.

DAVID: Oh, wow!

LAUREL: And I’m up to number 389 blogs, I think. Yeah, so, that becomes much easier, when I’ve been doing some of the fiction stuff. I don’t know why. It’s just because it’s comfortable and it’s familiar, I suppose.

DAVID: Yeah, let me just show people, here, real quick, the web page I’ll open up.

LAUREL: Okay.

DAVID: Laurel can’t see this, but this is the Unbound site. And, there, you’ll get all the information on The Draftsmen, with Laurel over here. And, yeah, “A brilliant but damaged man – this is a story of his genius, his healing and a forgotten mystery.” I mean, it’s a great… That’s what got me, too. I was like, “Well, you know I’m going to buy it. Why not?

LAUREL: Thank you. I hope you enjoy reading it.

DAVID: I was hoping it would be here by Christmas, but I’ll have to wait, so.

LAUREL: For the book, yes.

DAVID: Yeah, no problem. But what’s also nice with this, if you sign up via Unbound, Laurel has like, I don’t know if there’s, like, a frequency, when it comes out. But, every once in a while, you get short stories about the bees.

LAUREL: The three bees, Burly, Twirly, and Curly.

DAVID: Yeah.

LAUREL: As a thank you to people who pre-ordered the book, I thought I should give you something, in return, before the book comes out. So, I thought, we keep bees.

And one of the things that is really fascinating about bees is, first of all, they’re amazing at what they do, and they produce honey, for us, and they produce wax, and propolis, and all these great things. But actually learning how a colony works, and what the bees do, and how they do it, and why they do it.

These three bees are drones. And drones are the male bees, and they have only one function in life. And that is to eat, and get big enough, to be able to fly out and mate with the Queen. I’m not going to tell you what happens. Not yet.

DAVID: (laughs) Sounds like a good life. Anyway…

LAUREL: It is a good life, except at the end of the summer, if there are any drones still left in a hive, the worker bees, the girls, will take their wings off, clip their wings off, and kick them out of the hive.

DAVID: Oh, yeah. Back to reality.

LAUREL: “Reality, yeah. So, freezing cold, no wings. What am I going to do?”

DAVID: So, that brings the next question. Are bees in The Draftsmen in any way, shape, or form?

LAUREL: No.

DAVID: Okay. Oh, interesting. Yeah, okay. I expected. Yeah, okay, no. Fair enough.

LAUREL: Now, it would add… It would have added a complicated dimension to the story, because this character would not handle bees, at all, well. He’s frightened and he wouldn’t deal with it.

DAVID: No, not his thing.

LAUREL: No, because there’s something wonderfully mysterious about bees and how they function, and he doesn’t like mystery, at all. He has to have everything…

DAVID: Yeah, black and white.

LAUREL: Black and white, very, very rational. Yeah, so, that was the idea, with the three bees stories.

DAVID: Interesting, yeah.

LAUREL: And I was going to do them, on a more regular basis, but I didn’t have time…

DAVID: It’s okay.

LAUREL: … between the second one, and the third one.

DAVID: It was a nice bonus, unexpected bonus, in that. And I hope everyone here will check out Laurel’s book, and I know there’s going to be a short video of this interview and there’s going to be a longer video.

So, you can, on one or the other, whichever one you happen to be watching now. And, really, because I can just go on asking Laurel questions about her Seybold days. I mean, it’s just so interesting, about your history and background. I mean, you were right there, in the beginning of digital publishing, which is just fascinating.

LAUREL: Yeah, it was fascinating. Wonderful years. I wouldn’t change it, for anything.

DAVID: Great! Yeah.

LAUREL: But I’m glad I came back to England. I had a lovely time, living in Southern California, and all the things that we did, but I’m glad I’m home in Europe, again, now.

DAVID: Yeah, I could imagine. I lived in Southern California, for a while, too. It’s very crowded. Well, it’s crowded in The Netherlands, too, but, anyway, it’s …

LAUREL: At least we have a functioning public transportation system.

DAVID: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. It’s a totally different framework, over here, as compared to U.S.

LAUREL: Yeah.

DAVID: It’s just different. So, anyway, Laurel, thank you very much for your time.

LAUREL: Thank you very much, too, David. I really appreciate it.

DAVID: No problem. We appreciate doing it.

LAUREL: And have a Merry Christmas!

DAVID: Yes. You, too.

LAUREL: And a wonderful new year.

DAVID: Alright. Okay. Take care.

LAUREL: Thank you!
[END OF TRANSCRIPTION]

“The Markzware team develops revolutionary software to help you meet print quality challenges. FlightCheck enables PDF file users to preflight in a fast, effective way.”

Source: https://www.ibsproduces.com/blog/category/printing/3341/how-to-preflight-pdfs-for-print-quality-control-via-pre-press-software

Benefits of FlightCheck print software:
• drag & drop in a stand-alone app, for easy print quality checks, after which you can assure clients that print files were checked thoroughly.
• allow team members to collaborate, via a single print-job folder, and customize file checking, with flexible Ground Controls.
• check PDF, INDD, PSD, AI, QXP, PostScript, EPS, TIFF, and other print file types, while saving money on print materials, by avoiding additional print runs.

For more information on Markzware‘s pre press software to check digital files for print quality control, see the FlightCheck page. For more desktop publishing (DTP) and printing solutions, see the Markzware Products page.

Please feel free to subscribe to the Markzware Mailing List and interact with Markzware on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube.

Publishing, Seybold & Print Software (video): Writer, Laurel Lindstrom