POSSIBLE JOBS FOR SERVICEMEN PRINTING TRADE

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 22, 6 November 1944, Page 27

POSSIBLE JOBS FOR SERVICEMEN PRINTING TRADE

Compositing t Two years’ secondary or technical education is advisable, and the tendency is to demand higher educational qualifications. Employment as an apprentice may be obtained on a newspaper or with a publishing or job-printing firm. Good eyesight, perseverance, and mental alertness are essential.

Lithography The printing of magazine covers, posters, illustrations in . colour, &c., has become an important branch of the printing trade and one comprising many different types of work. It offers work to commercial artists, who produce the lettering, design, photograph, or other original material from which the actual lithography must start, and also to men who retouch the material and finally prepare it for the printing processes. Openings are not numerous, but workers qualified to become first-class lithographers are fewer still. They require a combination of artistic ability and mechanical skill. A secondary and technical education, including drawing, various branches of commercial art, and

perhaps printing, is desirable. The normal period of apprenticeship has been six years. Photo Process Engraving In the main, the process engraver serves the printing industry in making the blocks needed for illustrations used in advertisements. He is a highly skilled worker, requiring artistic ability as well as manipulative skill, and the period of his apprenticeship is six years. Very few operatives are employed in this trade in New Zealand, and even at its highest peak it did not offer employment for more than 150 men altogether. Before the war there were in the trade approximately 133 men, half of whom are now serving overseas, and at the present time with reduced newspapers and reduced advertising the quantity of work available has shown a corresponding cut. The future of photo process engraving is closely bound up with the future of advertising. Advertising in this country has not yet been fully

exploited ; nor is it likely to be with our present sparse population. It seems probable, therefore, that for some years to come the mber of photo process engravers will not rise appreciably beyond the 150 peak.