Jobs in the Commercial Printing Industry

There are three different stages to the commercial printing industry.  They include: prepress, printing and finishing.  Each of these stages provides numerous different types of jobs depending upon the various skill sets you may have.  It is important to know what they are before deciding upon the right one for you.

• A prepress operator or technician is responsible for reviewing clients’ images and files to ensure that a high quality, clean print will be able to be made.  If this cannot be done, the technician will need to work with the client to make corrections.  Some pre-press technicians are responsible for creating computer files from these images.  At other times, the image will be received digitally so that the technician will only need to tweak as needed.


• A printing machine operator will receive and review the materials that the pre-press technician created.  During the printing process, they are also responsible for making any necessary adjustments to the ink, paper, paper size and pressure from the machine.  They must also observe the process to ensure that the machine is functioning properly.  If there are any repairs needed, they are responsible for making them.


• Bindery workers (a.k.a. bindery machine operators) oversee the folding, sorting, cutting and binding of the materials that were just printed by the printing machine operator.  A bindery worker is also responsible for observing the operations of computer equipment and programs that are used in deciding upon which type of adhesive product should be used, how much of it is needed and how to trim each product to the appropriate dimensions