Betsy Kelley

I've spent about 25 to 30 years in print production, and I was literally born with ink in my blood. My father worked in lithography after he got out of the service, shooting giant cameras and doing color correction for magazines and newspapers, and I would go in there as a little kid and just play on the equipment. I've always been kind of artistic - I danced and did performing arts in high school and college, minored in art, and I draw, paint, and sculpt. My career began in flexographic printing, which is labels and packaging, then I learned offset printing at Line Graphics in Denver where I worked for many years until the owner retired. That's when I decided to transition into magazines because I wanted to get out of the printing atmosphere and into pre-press. I found Active Interest Media and worked there for 13 years on magazines like Backpacker, Yoga Journal, Clean Eating, and American Cowboy - very eclectic magazines specific to particular interests. When Outside Magazine purchased those titles, I transferred over with them and became their pre-press manager for almost 5 years. I did all the covers, retouched all the images inside the magazine to make sure they were clean with good color and ready for print, checked all the pages before they went to the printer to ensure there were bleeds and spot colors were named correctly, and made sure we followed printer specifications so we didn't have any expensive redos. They eventually decided to outsource the work and shuttered the department, so I got laid off. I'm both creative and technical, which is why I love this work - it supplies both interests for me. I really enjoy photo retouching and Photoshop work, and I've done catalog images for Zeo Graphics Optics and Born Shoes. Right now I'm looking at freelance and contract work in pre-press, flexographic printing, and photo retouching, and I'm excited to learn more about AI and see where the industry goes.