LIA celebrates rich history

The LIA celebrates print's past, present and future

The LIA celebrates print’s past, present and future

Tales of the glory days of Australian lithography, matched with suitable wine, were on show at the Lithographic Institute of Australia’s 50th anniversary dinner. Warrick Roden, a founding LIA committee member back in 1963, now retired, took the audience through the arrival of offset litho in the early 1960s and its shakeup of the market, right through to its overtaking of letterpress as the dominant print standard, and the birth of digital print. The LIA was formed to help printers respond to these technological changes, but Roden says it was a rocky start. He says, “The unions gave us hell and it was perceived first as a bosses club and then a sales reps club. “Litho caused lots of upheaval and retraining, but we learned a lot through networking with each other and finding that everyone had the same problems.” In 1963 there were no Heidelberg litho presses in Australia – by 1972 there were 800. A quarter of a century later computer-to-plate replaced film, and early computers increasingly influenced the operation of presses and print operations. Roden says early Australian conventions were always entertaining, and an essential way of finding out where the industry was going before the internet. Prepress legend Peter O’Hanlon toasted former members and departed friends. He says, “Australia was always pushing the limits of lithography – we had the most scanners and five-colour presses per capita in the world.”

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