Design & Print & Digital Marketing Services

The Printing Business in in Los Angeles as I remember it 1960s – 1982 

Growing up in So Cal I remember going to my Dad’s printing business on a few Saturdays to watch my dad work in the print shop from concept to completion for our Holiday cards that Dad designed and printed.  His company was located on Temple Ave off the Hollywood Fwy. I vividly recall the strong smell of the printers  ink my 1st experience of getting ink into your blood as they would say. 

My Dad's company would later become a full-time job for me.  I started as a floor boy in the summer of 1972 at his plant which had moved from Temple Ave near downtown LA in 1966 to a larger facility located at 120 West El Segundo Blvd in South Los Angeles.  As a floor boy and pressman’s helper my job was to keep the shop floors clean and do wash ups on the printing presses between jobs to make the ink fountains and offset blankets ready for the next print jobs. 

After the Summer of 1972 with ink in my blood I decided after graduation from High School to pursue a career in the printing industry and attend college to earn a degree in Printing Management which I obtained in 1977 from California State University Los Angeles.  I started my formal printing education at Pasadena City College under the direction of Professor Wally Bennet who was also one of my instructors at Art Center College of Design where I took some night classes. After Pasadena City College I transferred to Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York majoring in Printing Technology. After a year at RIT I transferred back home to California to attend Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Majoring in Graphic Communications before finally finishing my Printing Management degree at Cal State Los Angeles.  After graduation my Dad made me an offer I could not refuse to work at his Printing Company Porter and Griffin Printers & Lithographers as an Outside Print Salesman. After a brief training program, I hit the road running. Within a few years on the job, I was able to earn enough money from sales commissions to buy my first home at the age of 24.   Most of the Printing companies we competed against in addition to my Dad’s company are no longer in Business or have been swallowed up by other companies. The companies I remember still stick in my mind along with the individuals who I competed with in sales for many years. North Hollywood Printing Co, Penn Litho, Scott & Scott,  Anderson Litho, Color Graphics, Welsh Graphics, George Rice & Sons, Parker & Sons, Kenyon Press, Columbia Litho, Sinclair Printing, Queen Beach Printers, World Color, Graphic Press, to name a few of the top LA printers back in the day. 

With all that said printing is alive and well although different. The Digital world changed the Printing Industry drastically and eliminated photo composition, film, stripping etc. Today digital presses and offset presses are in almost every larger print facility and the price for printing jobs has been reduced due to the digital prepress and digital print options. 

At JBGmg today (yes we still have ink in our blood) we represent a wide variety of design/prepress/digital and offset print facilities across the nation as broker manufacturers agent and invite you to give is a call on your next print project.   We Design and Print  Business Cards,  Folders,  Envelopes and much more through our suppliers located all throughout the USA.