Build 09/30: ETP Mini Notebook Printing Press Tour

Thursday, October 23, 2025.

⊕ show captionABOUT THE TITLE - I visited my commercial printer to see how the Mini ETP 5885 Notebook was coming along! The image depicts one of the test sheets used to calibrate the press.

Happy Thursday! Today's 30-Day Building ChallengeI am sharing "tangible things I do" related to my design business reboot for 30 days (5 days a week) to see if this is sustainable. See the October 10 GHDR Report for the details. sharepiece is a tour of Papergraphics, the commercial printer that makes my printed stationery projects possible. They're five miles away from me in New Hampshire, and have been incredibly helpful in helping me start printing quality stuff for the past 15 years. They are the best, and I'm incredibly grateful that they indulge my fussiness and helping me cost things so I can sell locally-produced high-quality notebooks instead of going overseas. As I love paper and printing, it's really a treat to have such a facility so close by.

While the notebooks themselves are still in production, I was able to grab some photos and talk to Frank, the VP who has been handling my account since 2009 despite him being super busy. He gave me a mini tour so I could reacquaint myself with the facilities, as it's been quite a while since I've checked out the machinery.

Internal Pages on the Heidelberg

The main body of the notebook is printed on nice heavy fountain pen-friendly paper using vibrant Pantone solid color inks on two lithographic plates on the Heidelberg offset press. This is different than a lot of other notebooks out there which use CMYK process color. The difference is subtle to most people, but I like it because designing for two plates of Pantone®-calibrated ink color which makes lines super-sharp and intense.

ASIDE: In this run of the notebook, I didn't update the contact information on the inner pages, so they say davidseah.com instead of dsriseah.com. Frank told me that he almost had a heart attack when the press production staff told him about the discrepancyThis attention to detail is why I respect press people so much ❤️, and I assured him that it was fine because I anticipated this was the last run of this design, and I was counting on the insert to help with the transition. Sorry, Frank!

⊕ show captionThe Heidelberg Offset Press

Here's what the Heidelberg looks like! This is the highest quality press option available here, using photolithography up to (I think) 5 plates. However, there is a fixed cost to creating the plates and setting up the run that makes it cost effective when printing a lot of pages.

⊕ show captionNotes for setting up the Heidelberg, I think

⊕ show captionTest prints for calibrating plate alignment.

Frank explained that this stack of sheets is used to calibrate the plates. You can see the bottom of the stack is misaligned, and the adjustments converge to sharp alignment. An offset press like this uses one plate for each color used. My design uses two plates, but most other output uses 4 plates at minimum. Since each plate prints onto the piece of paper, you have to align them carefully so they print clean.

In the image above, you can see that the bottom test prints are not aligned at all. The registration improves as the press is adjusted by the operator.

⊕ show captionPages coming of the Heidelberg. Credit to Papergraphics for providing this photo of the press run for me!

After everything is set up, pages shoot out of the printer, 4 pages per sheet!

Front Insert Page

The packaged notebook also includes a process-color insert. Since there are only one of these per package, it's cost efficient to print these on the digital press. According to the Papergraphics website it's a Kodak Nexpress ZX3300.

⊕ show captionKodak Nexpress digital press w/ operator. Be sure to tell the press operator that you appreciate his hard work!

ASIDE: I'm thinking of using the digital press to make short-run projects, since the cost of setup is less than the Heidelberg. What's kept me from doing this other than other work has been Amazon's irritating marketplace listing system. Hopefully I'll get a non-Amazon solution up.

⊕ show captionFinished front insert pages.

The finished pages are cut and shrinkwrapped for protection until the notebooks are ready to be assembled.

Notebook Assembly

All the components for the ETP Mini Notebook await in this staging area for when they are ready to put everything together. This includes:

• counting the pages into 46-page blocks
• add the front and end pages
• add the front and back vinyl covers
• punch the paper for double-wire spiral binding
• round the corners so the notebook won't bite you
• add the front insert, shrinkwrap, and pack

⊕ show captionFrank flips through a stack of notebook paper.

This block of paper is what will go inside of the notebook. There's a machine that automatically counts the pages while punching them, I think.

⊕ show captionSome of the components that will go into final notebook assembly.

The final result looks like this rare 8811 Full Size ETP Notebook that Frank found in a box in the storage area:

⊕ show captionAn example of a notebook shrinkwrapped with a front insert.

Availability

I told Frank that he could take all the time he needed to get to assembly and packing for fulfillment, since they are super busy right now. Knowing that they are working their assess off doing complicated and meticulous work to make my print job look as great as possible, I'm happy to give them the time.

It's probably going to be 2-3 more weeks before 250 or so of these make their way to The Emergent Task Planner 3-Month Mini Notebook on Amazon. By the time this run sells-through on Amazon, I'm hoping to have an alternative marketplace working because selling on Amazon now suuuuucks.

BUILD CHALLENGE COMMENTARY

Even though the tour itself took only about 45 minutes door-to-door, I'm only just finishing up with this blog post at 3:30PM. I've got to run to an event tonight, so this was what I could manage for today's Building Challenge.

While I didn't directly produce a tangible sharepiece myself, I think sharing the behind-the-scenes of product production is still pretty awesome.

BONUS ACHIEVEMENTS

It was great to visit Papergraphics and be reminded of what they can do there. It was even better to connect with Frank again, who has been a stalwart business partner in this project for many years. I was reminded how much I like printers and paper, and as a result I'm feeling pretty excited about doing more of this.