20 Under 40 - 1996 Profile: Bolanson 'Tony' Adeshina

PRESSTIME

By Presstime Magazine

First Published: December 1996

Currently serving as a research fellow for NAA and IFRA, the industry's international newspaper technical organization, Bolanson (Tony) Adeshina is charged with studying one of their most daunting production challenges: computer-to-plate printing.

Adeshina equipped himself for that challenge during a 31-year production career that began at age 6, when his dad often took him to visit the family newspaper, The Universal, in Lagos, Nigeria. "I loved setting type," he recalls. Members of his family still own and operate the 75,000-circulation English-language paper.

The 6-year-old's early fascination with technology persisted. After immigrating to the United States as a student and becoming a citizen, Adeshina held newspaper production jobs that allowed him to hone his knowledge of printing and color reproduction.

At The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, he managed the engraving department, assisted in the transition from letterpress to offset printing, and now serves as quality-assurance manager and as a member of the team selecting equipment for The Plain Dealer's $200 million "state-of-the-art" printing facility.

In the past year, he has developed a Quality Control Handbook and quality-measurement program, established a Quality Control Committee and worked with ink manufacturers to develop high-strength color inks, reports his admiring publisher, Alex Machaskee. He achieved all this while also serving on NAA's digital-advertising and color-quality task forces.

No doubt, you'll soon be reading more about Adeshina and his research in the pages of Presstime.