The Monday before Christmas, I had the pleasure of visiting Global Traveler’s new printing plant. While we are still printed by Brown Printing, we’ve moved to the East Greenville, Pa., facility. The plant is only about 45 minutes from my house and just over an hour away from our headquarters in Yardley.

I was excited to tour the facility and see a printing press at work. After arriving, I was taken through the exact process each issue of Global Traveler goes through on a monthly basis, from pre-media to binding. After all the electronic files are approved, checked and checked again, the pages become plates — thin sheets with the text and images lightly noticeable. I’m not sure what century I was stuck in, but I imagined the plates to be much chunkier and more three-dimensional. From there, I watched the color matching process, as the technician adjusted the ink levels to perfectly match our PDF files. Then, I watched as the January covers of Global Traveler came hot off the presses. Later, I watched other magazines be bound and packaged for shipping. The machinery and the technology were simply fascinating!

— Kimberly Krol, managing editor