History of publishing

History of Publishing

By Bruno Miguel Oliveira Amaro

Woodblock Printing

This very antique technique was used as a way of printing patterns or letters in cloth or in paper. A woodblock would be cut into a pattern relief and then be pressed onto the surface in which we desire to print.

Letterpress

Letterpress printing was the most common way of printing text from the 15th century, when it was invented, all the way to the second half of the 20th century.

This technique of relief printing uses a printing press with inked movable types that press against paper to create the desired pattern.

Lithography/ Offset Lithography

This method of printing uses either metal or stone. These plates instead of being raised to type patterns, the printing areas are made ink absorbent while the rest is made ink repellent. Lithography was invented in 1796 by Alois Senefelder as a cheap way of printing and publishing theatrical work.

This technique was then improved to offset lithography which retains the same principles as normal lithography. It’s one of the more common ways of publishing since the 60’s.

Laser Printing and Photocopying

Laser Printing is a digital printing process which consists of LED technology to get small particles of a toner onto paper to create the requested pattern.

More economic than other printing processes, this was invented by a team at Xerox at 1969.

Photocopying uses the same principles as Laser Printing. Photocopiers were created by Xerox and introduced in 1959.

Desktop Publishing

Desktop publishing consists of using a publishing software on a personal desktop, with your set of page layout skills. This technology allows for a wide range of publishing materials.