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HOME / WHAT WE DO / ROLLSIGN MAGAZINE
Rollsign Through the Years
by Daniel T. Lenihan, Rollsign Director
(Originally published in Rollsign, March/April 2009 Issue)
The June/July 1968 issue of Rollsign introduced another change to the masthead (in the image at right is the August/September 1968 front cover with this masthead). We still produced 10 issues per year at that time. In December 1975 the price of Rollsign increased to $1.00, in 1982 to $1.50, and 1987 to $2.00, in 1995 to $2.50, and in 2002 to $3.00.
Our annual listing of MBTA vehicles started with the November/December 1971 issue and gradually expanded. The first inventory listed only buses. George Chiasson and Jonathan Belcher have done all the inventories to date. With the November/December 1975 issue, Rollsign went from 10 times a year to bi-monthly.
The first color cover appeared in the January/February 2004 issue and color pages came in July/August 2005. Today, a copy of Rollsign typically is produced by compiling and editing news articles and contributions from our readers and others. Photographs to support the resulting articles are processed in Adobe Photoshop and converted to CMYK images for printing. A final draft with photographs is composed and printed using Adobe InDesign, and the files are burned onto a CD and taken to our printer. Here, the photographs and text are merged and converted to plates, and the press runs are made. After a day of drying, the printed sheets are folded, cut, collated, stapled, boxed, and shipped directly to our mailing house.
Typically, an electronic address list with the latest changes is e-mailed to the mailing service. Here, the electronic copy is printed directly on the manila mailing envelopes by ZIP code. Employees stuff the inserts and the Rollsign, tie and bundle the mailing, and then take it directly to the local USPS distribution center where the Association has an account.
Overall, production and mailing is fully electronic, with material handling done on a contract basis. This results in an extremely high efficiency operation, leaving more time for our volunteers to produce Rollsign to focus their efforts on article writing and creative design.
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