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.  -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. |
No comments:
Post a Comment