Printing Day for COAST | A First Look Inside the Process
This week, I made the trip to Dublin to visit the printers who are producing my book, COAST. I wanted to film this stage because it’s the point where everything finally becomes real. After months of planning, editing, proofing, and screen-based decisions, the book starts to exist in a physical form thanks to the amazing backing it received on Kickstarter
The printers are McGowans, based in Dublin. They’re a large digital print house, and after speaking with a few options, they felt like the right fit for this project. Sustainability was an important part of that decision, along with the quality of the paper and how easy they were to work with from the start. The whole process so far has been straightforward, which is something you really appreciate when a project has this many moving parts.
They’ve already produced prototypes and full proofs for me earlier in the process, which I’ve shared before. Those stages helped lock in how the book would look and feel, and meant there were no surprises at this point. This visit was about seeing the final production steps and documenting them properly.
The main focus of the video is the cover being printed. In particular, the silver foil on the word COAST. This is applied using a Scodix machine, and I filmed the process as the foil was laid down and finished. It’s one of those details that’s easy to overlook when you see the final book, but seeing it happen in real time really adds another layer of appreciation for the finished cover.
I also spent time filming the printer that will be used to produce the interior pages. Seeing the scale of the machines and the pace of the workflow gives a much better sense of what’s involved in printing a book like this, compared to just sending files off and waiting for delivery.
Another nice moment during the visit was getting a first look at the bookmarks. These were produced after we hit the stretch goal on Kickstarter. Every backer of the book will receive one bookmark, chosen at random from three different designs, and it was great to finally see them printed and finished.
This video is very much about bringing people along for the ride. Most of the time, you only see the end result. I wanted to show what happens just before that, and to share a bit of the process that usually stays hidden. Massive thanks to McGowan's for allowing me into the belly of the beast to record and share this incredible process. This stage is a huge milestone, and it felt right to document it with you all.