Printing tips from the color print pros.

Create That Lasting Impression With Your Graphic Design

The impression you create in the first few seconds is your best chance of making a sale, opening a dialog, beginning a relationship. Everything about your business - logo and typefaces, quality of your printing, packaging, web site design, communication style and direct mail pieces - is part of that impression. All those elements and more should be working together powerfully to help you succeed and all with an eye towards branding.

Your corporate image is priceless, but design assistance does not have to be pricey! In fact, your graphic designer can actually help you save money, if they are knowledgeable about a wide variety of printing presses and commercial printing and other printing production techniques. Your Printing By Design graphic design professional can bring the broad strokes and fine touches needed to make your printing and marketing communications successful, and can do it in the most cost-effective ways possible. You will get someone familiar with all the critical stages of the printing production process, someone who can create flexible graphic designs that won't be outdated overnight and that are adaptable to the printing press of choice, web, and even broadcast mediums. As your combined commercial printer and graphic designer, Printing By Design can ensure a consistent graphic design style and can enhance and safeguard your corporate image in all the important ways you communicate.

Is it time for a redesign Even companies that can afford an in-house design staff know it makes sense to use fresh talent when it's time to freshen your image. Use Printing By Design as your creative graphic design team to create a compelling sense of your company and your message!

Graphic Design Color Tips For You

"A word to the "Color-Wise"!
Every designer likes to make mid-course changes in color when in the computer phase of the art. To find the right answer makes it worthwhile. BUT...make sure, before you close that file, that you "discard" ALL non-utilized colors. That reduces the file size, and when multiplied by dozens or hundreds of files, translates into more usable storage.

"Golden Rule" Rule
(Same goes with) "Page Rulers." Shut them off, also, when closing a file. The space per file is not much to speak of, but keeping a hundred or more rulers on, chews up a few parsecs of storage space."

Proper File Construction For Commercial Printing

Setting up your printing files for press is an important element in your graphic design. The output you send the printer can either be easy or a nightmare. Depending on the type of press, with smaller pure digital ones the more critical, files that are unnecessarily large can crash the RIP, thus preventing output. Your images, if they too are overly and unnecessarily large can force them to 72 dpi as a result of the default settings on press and thus not be print worthy.

Never downsize an overly large image in the document program (Quark, In Design, etc.) but do so in Photo Shop. Size your image to the final size before placing it in the document, otherwise you are creating a file that is too large.

If your design calls for a bleed, than make sure what you give the printer contains an image area extending at least 1/8" on ALL FOUR SIDES of your page. Do not assume that because two pages connect or "trap" together that this will suffice, as without the bleed on each side, there is nothing to trap accurately to. Also note, due to the high speed of the paper rolls, that web presses may require a 1/4" bleed. Check with your press.

Many presses today and most web presses require an Acrobat PDF and not native applications such as In Design or Quark (Never Word or Publisher, please). Always ask the press what their PDF presets are for their press RIP. In none specific, use Acrobat 8, as that will flatten your file and create a less likely chance that an image or text box will "go missing".

How To Avoid Gradation Banding

Reduce line screen (if 150 go to 133)

Compose screens of as many process colors as possible. (When they overlay each other they tend to cover better.)

Boost fountain steps to the maximum (256+)

Always check your individual plates (CMYK): Some proofing mediums will not show light screens or gradations well.

Saving Money On Film With Older Presses

If you are using an older press at your printing company of choice and they are still using film to plate, you can save money on film costs by setting up your smaller documents to print as spreads. For example, having your service bureau output your 8.5 x 11" pages 2-up on an 11 x 17" page will save you 25% compared to printing two individual 8.5 x 11" pages. Remember to check with your print vendor to see if they will require "reader's spreads" (page 1 & 2, then page 3 & 4, like the reader will see them) or "printer's spreads" (paginated in the order they will be fed into the press, which often is very different.)

Setting Up Your Disk For Digital Output

Use only PostScript fonts or Adobe Open type fonts for printing. True Type fonts do not output as consistently in this form of printing, since there is an inherent tendency for the digital RIP to use its own resident PostScript fonts as replacement for any True Type fonts it encounters in a document while processing. Don't forget to include the printer fonts along with the screen fonts; also, it's important to include all original images with your output file.
Avoid large solid areas in your design, as they do not print well. All scans should be saved as CMYK or grayscale in TIFF format. Do not use RGB images or JPEG's.
When using graduated blends, please note that lighter ones are preferable as darker blends tend to band. Introduce noise to blends to help counter banding problems.
Make sure all your Pantone colors are converted to process CMYK.
Never hand off a disk for output with anything other than the files to be output. It can cause confusion and waste time and your money.
ALWAYS include some form of printed proof with your file; that will allow us to check that what we print looks as you intended (otherwise we may not be able to catch text re flows or color shifts). If your job is to be folded, remember to include a folded proof so we can verify that your pages are printed in the proper order (because of the pagination difference between reader's spreads and printer's spreads, discussed above).

Digital Printing Separations

"Running digital printing files for digital printing or film separations, if you are still using them, can be easy or it can be a pain, it all depends on a number of things. 1. How clear the output instructions are. 2. How well the files were built, for ease of output or for ease of design. 3. All fonts must be supplied with files to output. 4. All images must be setup properly, CMYK or Pantone depending on output requirements. 5. All EPS, TIF or other images must be supplied with files to output. 6. Information must be clear, what versions of software the files were created in. Also what type of color proof is the designer supplying, is it accurate 7. It must also be clear what kind of final proof is necessary to provide to the printer from the final film. 8. Were the files created on PC platform or Macintosh platform All these items are important to obtain the best output for the least amount of money."

Todd Meisler, Graphic Designer