Notepad

     Our first big assignment is to make a personalized 5 x 7 notepad (with an 1/8th inch bleed) that could be used for personal use, and it gives us a good introduction to the process of a print job from inception to a physical product.

      The first part of the process is the brainstorm session. I had to think of a way to more or less show a part of my personality using pictures on a piece of paper. I consider my personality hard to describe, everyone can say they're driven, loyal, and creative, but how does that make you different from the millions of other people that use those same exact words to describe themselves?

     So, I guess the kind of personality that I try to emit would be, memorable. I try to act in a (positive) demeanor that if someone brought up my name randomly, you'd say "Oh yeah, I remember him, he's a good kid and he does good work.". I try and use this in my designs so that if someone asked about my work they could have some examples right off the top of their head. So while my ideas are considered "abstract", at least you'll remember them.

     Above is my initial sketches of ideas I had. As of right now, most of my inspiration is drawn primarily from the gamer/tech/nerd culture. Geek before it was chic. The very top is a dinosaur taking over a city a la Godzilla, below that was a circuitry pattern I was toying with. Both of these designs were made for horizontal use. The third row and the first pictures on the last two rows (video game console and what is suppose to be a pseudo-communist propaganda poster.) were made for vertical use. The last one in the bottom right, with the stick figures, was a quick sketch for what would be a pack of zombies chasing after a man with a gun.

  I decided to go with the dinosaur taking over a city because that image (in my mind) is memorable enough that you'd notice it very quickly in a pile of random stationary.

   

   So we (the class) decided to add a QR code that will sent viewers back to this blog. It's a pretty good statement on how much technology and social networking have merged over the past few years. You see a design that you like and you want to meet the artist, snap the QR and you're on their website/blog. That's near instantaneous communication over what could be the globe. I went to http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ to make the QR code, all you have to do is put in your URL and hit ok. Save and you're done. Beyond simple.

    

    Anyways, I decided to go with the dinosaurs over taking a city skyline (ala Godzilla). I decided that vectors would probably be best since I'm not so much a classically trained artist as I am a digital one. Also, it give the picture a kind of grungy, graffiti inspired look. I got the dinosaurs from http://vectorstuff.blogspot.com/, a blog with a new free vector almost every day, and the skyline came from http://www.snap2objects.com/ another blog site that not only shows vectors but just really cool designs to get a little inspiration going.

     This is what my final version looks like. My first draft was horizontal  with the dinosaurs switched and sized a bit differently. But, thanks to the critiques of my classmates, they convinced me to try out a vertical design and I have to say that it looks much better this way. The crop marks and bleeds are not present but those should be taken into account upon viewing. When it's printed the dinosaur on the right has his tail cut off a little and the trim is quite close to the curvature of the tail on the left. I made the dinos grey so they could pop against the background a bit and tried to scale the buildings so that they look big, but do not take much space.

     The dialogue was just for fun, I think it'd be hilarious to see two dinosaurs smashing a city while acting like "gentlemen". I have what they call absurdist humor.

     Thank goodness we have the on campus print shop. A printed proof of the design only cost 5 pence and getting a 50 page pad only costs me around $2.47. This includes binding and cutting. 

Business Card Mockup

Yesterday, we had to do a mock-up of a business card based on a folding dummy we were given. It was about 6.375"x 2" and if folded vertically a little off the center (2.75" to be exact). It was a fairly easy job and the vector I used was a crown that I put on top of my initials. On the inside of my card, I briefly highlighted that I dabble in video production along with graphic design and a little photography. On the inside it says "film, shoo,t edit, photoshop, indesign, illustrator" it's a quick and easy way to tell you what programs I'm versed in. (side note: the photos are in jpg because blogger doesn't like things like pdf's)

 Here is the front page, just a simple red on black with my initials on the front.

Here is the inside. Like I mentioned it quickly tells you what programs I know how to use and what kind of multimedia I primarily utilize.

The card is a 6.375"x2"trim with .125 trim and bleed.The text was a font that was manipulated in illustrator and turned into a vector for ease of use between InDesign and Illustrator. I saved two copies of the file and rotated them individually in illustrator so there are no complications during print.

The crown was also manipulated in illustrator and only illustrator so there would be no troubles. Since I used a vector from a previous assignment I knew that the elements would be ungrouped, it will be in CMYK and that it was at 300ppi.

Chapter 1 & 2 reflection. (Long post)

Past and Present
   
     Print making has grown by leaps and bounds over the past 25 years. While the process is pretty much the same at its core, there has a bigger emphasis on have a good knowledge over each part of the process as opposed to just knowing the responsibilities of your specific position. Of course there were more manual instruments being used (x-acto knives and rubber cement as opposed to a computer) and the process was noticeably slower (out of necessity). The picture below presents a pretty good idea of the how the process use to work.

Graphic provided by McCue, C. (2009). Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications. Berkeley Old Tappan: Peachpit PressPearson Education Distributor

    Basically, functions were divvied up between companies and individuals that specialized in a specific purpose of graphic design. Designers did the designing, trade shops put the pieces together, and the printers did the printing and assembling. Typesetters were usually outsourced, though in-house typesetters became more and more common.

     With the arrival of the Apple desktops, anyone could now immediately go head first into the world of printing. All you needed was a computer and printer and you could easily do near every job in the printing process. The pace of the print was accelerated and it also ended up redistributing the responsibilities of each persons job.

Graphic provided by McCue, C. (2009). Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications. Berkeley Old Tappan: Peachpit PressPearson Education Distributor

     The above chart shows the redistribution of tasks in a modern print house. Tasks traditional to a print shop, like retouching, can now be done by a designer, photographer, or a printer. Because of the current technology, one person could technically run every aspect of his own print shop. This not only saves money this also helps with turn around time if you can eliminate the downtime between the first and last step of the process.


Jobs


  Probably the most important information for most graphic design students; what positions are available to me and how much can I get for them? Here is a quick breakdown:


-Sales Rep/Customer Service (~$65k a year)
     - Sales and customer service can be generalized as "accounts" the jobs of these people are to make sure that the client gets exactly what they want in the printing job. They are usually the first person that is contacted for a job and they make sure that there is no confusion between what the client wants and what they (the press) can do. After the job is set in motion the next person in the chain is the customer service representative. Now-a-days this can be one in the same person. But, with the CSR, any questions that they staff has about the job is expressed through the CSR. They also usually have a better idea of where your job is on the production line. Also they are used as a sort of ambassador between client and company.


-Estimator (~$50k a year)
     - Estimators figure out the overall job costs, this includes paper, ink and proofing materials, as well as press and bindery time. In some shops, estimating and planning are combined. But after the costs are figured out, the job is usually sent to preflight.


-Preflight Technician (~$45k a year)
     - A preflight technician makes sure that your job is free of any errors or problems before they start printing things out. Usually a shop uses a combination of manual checking with dedicated preflight software. It's completely possible that one could miss a mistake that the other picked up on.


-Prepress Operator (~$39k a year)
     - Back in the day, the prepress operator had a bevvy of responsibilities. From film stripping, to page proofs and color keying, the prepress operator had to make sure everything in the actual printing phase was perfect. Since most shops now do most of this electronically, the preflight operator is a kind of "overseer" to the final phase.


Key Terms


-Imposition - Printers often use large sheets of paper that they fold, and cut to the finished size. The pages themselves may not be printed in the same order that they will appear in the finished product. Getting the pages of your document into reading order is called imposition.


-RIP - the RIP (raster image process) takes the information about fonts and graphics that describe your file and turns it into an image composed of individual dots that a printer can output.

-Trapping -  Trapping files is the process of compensating for the possibility of error on the printing press by printing small areas of overlapping color where objects meet. Trapping makes the gaps less noticeable and sometimes, invisible.


-Die Cutting -  One of the last steps of the finishing process, diecuts are areas of the job that are cut, shaped, or cut-out in a variety of shapes.


-Halftone Dots - Halftone images are a series of dots in a specific pattern that simulate the look of a continuous tone image.

-DPI (Dots per inch) - Used for describing the resolution of an imaging device such as a printer, imagesetter or platesetter.

-LPI (Lines per inch) - Describes the frequency of halftone dots, measured in a row of dots.

-PPI (Pixels per inch) - This describes the image resolution. Most jobs are between 250-300 ppi. The general rule of thumb is to have your image be 1.5 to 2 times the printing screen ruling.


-CMYK vs RGB - CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (Black). These four colors can make just about every color in the visible spectrum and are the most common colors used in printing. Instead of having a million buckets of different colors, you only need four. There are limitations though, CMYK barely runs the visible gamut and for things like that you need spot colors.

-Spot Colors - A spot color is a specially made ink used in printing. Spot colors come in a lot of colors, including some specialty colors such as metallic and fluorescent. Unlike CMYK or process color which creates colors by laying down layers of just 4 specific inks, spot colors are pre-mixed and you use one ink for each color in the job.


-Registration - The alignment of one color of artwork with another. Multi color prints require the different colors of the artwork to line up correctly in relation to one another.


-Rich Black - Rich black is an ink mixture of solid black over one or more of the other CMYK colors, resulting in a darker color than black ink alone makes.

-Color management and environment - In order to make your work as true to the colors as it can be, you need to work on color management. This usually involves calibrating your monitor so that the colors are show in the exact way they're suppose to be. Color management is an advanced skill, but there are a few things you can do to make sure your print will be correct:
   - Minimize outside light interference
   - Get a plain colored background
   - Calibrate your monitor
   - Take care of your printer and don't skimp on ink and paper
   


*All photos are credit to: McCue, C. (2009). Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications. Berkeley Old Tappan: Peachpit PressPearson Education Distributor.