Questions about PRINTING, FONTS, GRAPHIC DESIGN go here

I will start.

I am looking into the possibility of doing a small run (say 30 editions) of a 20-page zine/catalogue/booklet and am wondering how is the quickest and cheapest way to go about this. I know there are sites like LULU and BLURB where one can do this online. Is this the best way to go or should I be looking for a small local press? Anyone who has had experience with small print publications, I would love to hear from you!

Kinko's?

Is that the best?

I want something that is as cheap as possible, but still looks good, desirable. I will be doing all the layout, etc. and have never done anything like this before. And I have only a few weeks to get it done, haha.

What are you selling in the catalogue?

It's for an art show, so we're not really selling anything.

not sure where you live, but www.inkerlinker.com/ is a great resource for printers.

I am in Los Angeles, on the East side.

ah ok. I'm NYC based, so I'm not as familiar with West Coast. You can try Inker Linker for LA shops ( http://www.inkerlinker.com/by-location/ )

I usually just go to print shops in the area vs online. Although UPrinting.com did my business cards for me - I did a promotion through them so they were cheap, but came out pretty great quality. They usually have some sort of promotion going on.

Also...totally rudimentary question...when you send these places a file (I'm guessing a PDF?), what is the easiest way to create such a thing? Photoshop/Illustrator? This would be text + graphics + photos.

Also totally flummoxed by the whole 300 DPI thing when dealing with stills captured from video...

Use Photoshop to create the image and Illustrator for layout and to create the PDF/EPS files.

Never, ever used Illustrator in my life.

This seems simple though, no?
http://www.blurb.com/create/book/end_download

You can create text in Illustrator? And import from like a word file or something?

I would just paste the text in and arrange it around the image(s).

Or you could just do it in word and PDF it if it's mostly text and a very small amount of image.

probably not going to help in to throw dissenting, not particularly researched opinions into the mix, here, but from limited personal experience i'd vote for InDesign over Illustrator, here; i just find it very easy & kinda made for making a book or laying out preexisting objects on a page in a way that i didn't quite get w/Illustrator. all of this providing you have access to either/both, obv

multiple dpis can be confusing, though i think the act of exporting what you've made into a PDF will cap the DPI of the whole thing, so you don't really need to worry about it once you've placed your still.

did you see the deets about the zine that grady made, admrl? if he is around maybe he can offer experience, it looked pretty rad & was iirc made at kinkos

InDesign is definitely better for this sort of thing than Illustrator.

You really need to use a page-design program like InDesign or QuarkXPress, or leave it to someone who does. Photoshop is a pixel-based image editing program; Illustrator is an object-based image editing program. Both could technically be used for page layout, but it's like using a paintbrush to eat peas or using your fingers to butter your bread.

I have CS5.1 so am assuming I do have all of this stuff. Where is Grady's zine? Maybe I will use Kinko's but those places drive me nuts. If the price is right, though...

xp - yes, OK. I don't really have the time or resources to find someone to do this stuff for me this time around, though maybe next time if it works out. So this has to be something I can do more or less myself.

Am prepared to spend an entire day doing Linda Tutorials on InDesign if necessary

i am not great with this kinda thing but have found indesign real easy; there are afaic two things you need to know to do most of the basic stuff: that if you want to place anything on a page, you have to draw a box for it, first; & that you need to learn the distinction between the two cursors (one black, one white), in selecting objects, for when you want to colour them or transform them or whatever, as they both have slightly different purposes. if you just want to place text and images on a page and fuck with typefaces & export to pdfs, it should be straightforward, hopefully, and i think it's set-up so you can be designing like 'a book', though i've only ever designed a page or a poster or w/e.

there's also this thread for indesign q&a stuff: t/s: Quark v. InDesign

this might be an obvious thing, but at some point, maybe once you've worked out how you're printing it, it might be worth checking in about deadlines etc - it's perhaps not such a big thing with such a small run, but it's good to know when you need to have something done by to take into account drying times, other people's jobs, etc.

I'm nervous about doing this, but I need feedback on a thing. I AM NOT A DESIGNER and I don't have a good image editor, I had to use Pixelmator and the options in it are limited. Also this is a draft, not a final. Uhhhh...comments? Advice?

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e66/LimitedLiabilityGirl/NYCD_class_flyer_zps4a88c550.jpg

The story is that my dance group doesn't have a single designer or web person associated with it, and we don't have any money to hire one, so all our materials invariably look like someone's mom made them out of clip art in 1998. It's embarrassing. I offered to make us a new...I don't know what you call it, a flyer that will prob only be used online? I don't rly expect to print this (ironically that's the part I could actually do).

This already looks massively better than mom's clip art effort!

One thing strikes me so far is where the infobox is: it's overlaid on some other stuff and it's very close to the edges of the page. I'd be tempted to try it in the bottom left — there's a big empty space there, and it's where all the people are facing, so the reader's eye will go to it after passing over the dancers.

To avoid it being too close to the edge, line its left edge up with the "N" of "New York". I'd also think about playing with the text inside that box — it's a little bit lost. You could either shrink the box if you think the text is the right size, or blow the text up more. (It's worth using bold with white-on-black text, too).

Omg thank you so much, stet. So the info box is there to hide the ugly/pointless blue "YOU ARE HERE" sign behind it, which I wished wasn't in our shot. Is it not really working? Point taken about ppl looking to the bottom left so maybe it's where the info has to go.

We have an official logo that I was saving the bottom left for but I'll play with it and see.

I wanted the red boxes to be angled on the same line as the dock edge, and to be separated and have "banner" ends and not obscure that ship's mast between them but Pixelmator thwarted me.

Would the logo work over the YOU ARE HERE? If it's not big enough, clone out the bits that still show? Haven't used Pixelmator, but guessing it has some kind of clone stamp tool.

It does, yeah. I'll just have to figure out how to use it....

I hope the logo will be edit-able so I can resize and maybe change the color of it or whatever, the person who created it knows even less about graphics than I do. Clearly we're a talented bunch! Ty ty ty.

Anyone else?

I like having the info box at the bottom right - the red from the top banner, the ship, and "$14" are distributed evenly. I fear that if it's moved to the bottom-left corner, it'll crowd the perspective sight lines from the pier's planks that naturally draw your attention to the three dancers.

Before changing the size/weight of the info text, reduce the width of the white outline around the box and try putting the name/address on two lines.

I took stet's advice but the info didn't fit on the left--it crowded the dancer. So I had to move it back but I did give it more space on the side and more weight/size in the type and played around and came up with this:

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e66/LimitedLiabilityGirl/NYCD_flyer3_zps3e60c576.jpg

This is at least respectable, right? We can put this out and not have to apologize for it?

Not that one HAS to apologize for anything, but it's not, like, aesthetically embarrassing?

i like how the red and white match the ship.
something about "beginner class" weirds me out though.

I'll look at the sizes and fonts when I get back!

oh i don't mean the design! just the phrase, "beginner class"
it looks great -- thumbs up!

Oh, heh, I can't change that, it's actually the name of the class.

Thanks, you guys! I feel good about this thing, I know it's nothing special but I was starting from scratch and it took me the first few hours of cursing at my computer to figure out how to use the layers an shit in the editing program. I may have just dug my grave, I mean confirmed my appointment as the "designer" of things for this group now but I don't even mind!

gain one new resume item - looks great!

it looks good but you should probably save it as a png instead of a jpg to avoid the compression artifacts you can see in the solid red areas

looks very nice. perhaps remove "www." from the facebook url?

I was WONDERING why the red looked so muddy. ilx is so helpful.

Uh the file size is over 13MB. Is that insane? I wanted it to be scalable so it'd be clean on larger monitors or in case anyone ever tried to use it for print, but that's big.

how large is the image in pixels?

2600 x 3800, roughly.

if it's for screen only it doesn't need to be that large i guess.

O...kay. I don't know how to decrease the um density? of the img layer without affecting anything else.

i'm not familiar with the program you're using ... the image is made up of layers?

The full ad is a lot of layers...every text box, every shape, and every text LINE is a different layer. I may have done that wrong, I wish all the elements that are the same type/class as each other were one layer but maybe I'm thinking like a printer and not like a designer (one film each for CMYK and one for black text).

The photo it's all laid on top of is its own layer too.

right so for the final image you'll flatten all the layers ... which will result in a smaller file size.

btw nothing wrong with layers for everything.

For online use, just save it as a reasonably sized png and tuck the print size thing away for use whenever necessary.

otm layers are your friends

for screen display the typical DPI is 72. you can change the DPI of an image without affecting its dimensions by unchecking "resample image" when you change the DPI in the resize image dialog. that should reduce the file size. if you want to save a version for potential print usage it should be at 300 DPI. imo 13mb isn't so bad for an image that isn't going to be used online but just saved for potential use later.

you can use layer groups to keep like all of the text layers together, that way you can move them all at the same time or w/e

I merged/flattened the layers and it's still 13MB as a .png. If that's okay, I'll just leave it?

xp So THAT'S what "Group layers" meant!

How similar is Pixelmator to Photoshop? I'm just wondering if some of these directions she's being given might be wild goose chases if the programs don't function in a similar manner.

I second removing the "www." from the facebook url and also maybe making the font size a little bigger for it + the email addy but otherwise yeah this is p damn solid! The text in the bottom left rly balances it out.

Also IANAD but would it be too cramped if you moved the black and red text boxes at the top down a smidge, like maybe 50% closer to the body of the black ship, or would it look too cluttered? If you did that you could chop off more of the top of the image which would reduce the canvas (and thusly file) size. Also if you made the infobox + text in the bottom right hand corner larger you could further reduce the final image size w/o too-tiny text.

13mb is like downloading 2 or 3 mp3s each time the page loads. You'll want about 1mb or less.

Update (thank you all for your patience btw): I unchecked "resample" and set the dpi to 72 and then flattened and saved as a .png and it's still 13MB so maybe I just don't understand how file size happens. But the red is clean!

xp Hi, Stevie! I did take out the www but I haven't increased the type size because there's a logo still coming to me that has to go above them so nothing's really final until that's in and I see how they balance.

I wanted to keep the full height of the img because of the verticality of the buildings and the ship masts. Maybe that was a red herring (oho)?

Are you still saving the web-use png at 2600x3800?

Try a width of like 800 or so, which is still plenty big enough for any conceivable browser setting.

If it turns out I DON'T have to fit a logo in the lower left corner maybe I'll crop from the bottom and move the info UP instead of the banners down. I liked the neg space of the empty dock but maybe it doesn't need as much as is there.

xp I'll try that.

well at 2600x3800 the file is just gonna be big no matter what. for online usage the size that it's at in this thread (like 535px wide? at least with the stylesheet i'm using) or a little bigger is probably fine; it will still look the same on larger monitors. if you want to save a copy for possible print use you should keep that one large.

Also maybe you could change the "Scottish Dance" to a font like

http://content.altfonts.com:81/img/O/L/Olde-EnglishA.png

and the "New York Attitude" to something sassy like

http://content.altfonts.com:81/img/0/0/14-minutes-sharpA.png

or even

http://cdns.designmodo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/curlz.jpg

Yeah, always make a web-use version and save the original as its own file for print (or other) use. xp

Wait. I chose an 8.5 x 11" template when I started, why is my image 36" wide and 53" tall?? I could make a subway platform poster out of this thing!

xxp lol I hate you. Also I read the 20 Principles of Graphic Design or w/e and kept it to like 2 fonts overall.

I'm a total graphics dummy, I appreciate the coaching.

hahaha yeah novelty fonts are like the *worst* thing imaginable and an excellent way to get ppl to never take your design seriously

Was your original 300dpi or 600dpi or some crazy high resolution? Because yeah...poster size is needlessly enormous.

http://origin.myfonts.net/116/fs/u/d6/4d998edc8acd5f4468bd01124b0576.gif
http://origin2.myfonts.net/a_91/u/86/716b4060d811527ceb0c37d1a01f38.gif
http://blogs.westword.com/cafesociety/guyfieri_web.jpg

The original image was an 8.5MB jpg, with dimensions of 36 x 54". I have no idea why.

I still hate you. HOW DID YOU DO THAT SO FAST?

lol i just generated sample images from myfonts.com and found a picture of Guy Fieri (it's just 3 separate images)

but the finished product made me completely lose it and now my diaphragm is sore

so your master image (with layers etc) is 36 x 54" at 300dpi?

It's 300dpi and 8.5 x 12" now, but still 13MB as a .png.

That's flattened!

that sounds about right. that's the image you will use for print.

for screen it's too large. it needs to be set to 72dpi. you'll notice the pixel width reduce from 2550 down to 612. this will make a much smaller file.

^ this

WAIT I think I did it!! All the resizing has to be done BEFORE the layers are flattened! It worked!!!! It's now a 1MB png!

OH MY GOD

WOO HOO

Although there are some weird artifacts now, like the black text banner has tiny white rules above and below it. But I think I'm starting to grasp this process.

How much would it fuck shit up to just export it to the 13mb that looks correct and then just scale it in another program? I mean I know it's not the *correct* thing to do per se but will it actually mess stuff up?

The problem is, what other program? Illustrator is $600 iirc?

Are the white rules something you added to create the black box? Maybe they can be disabled now that the box is made?

I dunno. Pixelmator is alien technology to me.

you could just resize it in preview tbh

Late to the game here but this is so much better than any shitty clipart thing and there's no shame at all in putting this out exactly as first posted.

The one part I keep going back to is wondering how it would look with a small gap between the two red boxes at the top so they're not flush with each other, and wondering how the rounded corner box would look with a thinner stroke and square corners. But I'd probably just toggle those back and forth for a while and not really have a good answer.

try flattening and *then* resizing. guessing pixelmator did a bad job scaling your layers.

Also explaining image dimension and format and resolution was a big part of my last job and could be the most maddening thing ever and hard to wrap your head around at first. There were certain people I did this for repeatedly and it felt like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vw2CrY9Igs

btw if you want something almost-Photoshoppy for $0, GIMP is *the* standard for open-source photo editing software as far as I can tell. Kinda steep learning curve though

http://www.gimp.org/

They were originally separate, jg. I never wanted them to touch at all. I guess I went with the touching reds when I gave up on being able to make or import what I really wanted, or to get the text on an angled plane, and then just didn't look back? I'll try your suggestions tmrw before I finalize.

xp I TRIED TO DOWNLOAD GIMP A MONTH AGO AND I COULDN'T GET MACPORT TO WORK.

Boy, if you think this is fun, wait until someone tasks me with redesigning the website. It's going to be great.

There's a free download of Adobe CS2 here, which is pretty much all you'll ever need:

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/

First off, good work in orbit. As others have said, the first version was nothing to be ashamed of.

Now if I may hijack, does anyone here know anything about prepress? I'm mostly a web person and have only done a couple of print projects like 10 years ago. Even though I've been at this for ages I still get confused and intimidated by color profiles and all of that voodoo. I'm designing something for print which is not for work, but is an important personal project and I have several months to finish it.

So I guess my question is, should I try to learn about prepress myself and just figure it out? If so, how and where? I tried googling but after a few articles I was even more confused. Should I hire some kind of local prepress person to help me out? Or is that even a thing? Can I go sit with them? I know in the past I printed something out myself and sent that in as a rough proof to match colors. Is that still done? I think the colors still didn't really match though. That was a work project and I didn't really give a shit.

It seems that I need to understand ICC profiles and find out which profile is the right one to use for whatever paper stock is being used by the printer, is that right? But in order for that to have any relation to what's happening on my monitor I would need to calibrate it. Should I bother with calibration and all of that, or leave it to some kind of prepress pro?

Leave it to the pros imo. You can do a basic preflight that checks for bleeds and image links and stuff, but the color curving depends enormously on the printer's inks, presses, the color of that batch of paper (which admittedly is pretty stable with quality papers but still).

How important are these colors? Important enough to pay them for multiple color-accurate page proofs and to check them against your original art/references under a lightbox and then have Prep go back in and spot color-correct?

Forget calibration, totally. As far as I ever understood it, it seemed like a very difficult thing that, if one's employer had made a VERY good deal with a major print vendor, one could maybe get the vendor to install ONE calibrated monitor/viewing station. If it's really all that complicated, don't fash yourself for one project.

On the previous job, the thing you printed out and sent as a color reference or "matchprint" was, like, just sort of an ideal target. It's very possible the matchprint wouldn't even be achievable, because the way it prints on your laser printer bears no technical relationship at all to how it prints at the printer. Or maybe one color area could be matched, but trying to hit the others would throw everything off and turn the people orange, for instance.

If you send a matchprint again, it helps to highlight which part of it is most important to match, for instance if it's really important that one vivid purple be as faithful as possible, it might mean sacrificing a blue or red (or a brown!) somewhere else in the image.

I'm kind of insanely picky and the piece is very colorful with some difficult colors that can easily go bad. Unfortunately I'm not the one printing it and I don't know how much communication I'll get to have with the printer. Is this something where I can get a pro to do the prepress process locally and pay for it myself and then end up with files that I can confidently send off to some random printer and hope they come out right?

ah yes, matchprint! like I said it's been probably 10 years. good to know though. I've received psds of posters and billboard at work a lot that were professionally finished and sometimes they have all of these little eyedroppers on them. Is that a thing you can do? Like reference the important colors to pantone numbers or something even though you're not printing with spot colors?

I wouldn't think so? Pre-press and color-curving are done for specific equipment, is my impression. You can insist on going on press, if you really want, although I have no idea of the cost of that. That's kind of the top level of pickiness.

xp You can include PMS chips to indicate what your targets are but bear in mind that some shades aren't possible in the CMYK color world, or won't be achievable without disturbing other parts of your image. Hence spot colors in the first damn place.

right, that makes sense. thanks!

After a whole day of design frustration, I feel like giving my knuckles a good crack and having a drink to celebrate actually knowing something! Woo hoo, production and manufacturing!

I'd suggest you try to find a pre-press house that has working relationships with a few different printers in the area or state or industry, because they may have different presets for each? Like you said, it's basically inextricable with having some knowledge of where it'll print. Will it be in the US, Europe, or China?

the other thing that worries me is that I have mis-registered halftone screens already in the image that are part of the design, like an Art Chantry sort of thing and I'm dreading how that's going to turn out. I guess they'll know how to deal with that?
xp

I actually have no idea where it will be printed. I think US, but probably not in my state. So basically at some point closer to print I should find out who the printer is from the person who is paying for it and get more details from there? I think you've convinced me that I just shouldn't worry about it until I can get some kind of contact with the correct people. For now I can just continue to work in srgb or something?

I think you should convert all images to CMYK and be working in that, but that's maybe a question for designers? The printer is eventually going to need them all in CMKY and I don't know if there are any advantages to working in RGB up until that point.a

Re the screens and art elements, you're going to send a full set of lasers with your files for content, right? They just won't be for color.

haha I don't know? so you actually send in b&w laser prints of the c, m, y, & k channels?

but yeah I think as far as I understand it's ok to work in rgb (higher color space) then convert to cmyk at the end?

Oh no, nothing like that. Just normal full-color laser printouts that the printer can refer to for content and positioning, but just not for color because they won't be color-accurate. Normally a pressman will work with a complete set of content lasers and maybe a few or a handful of color proofs for certain pages--one really red page, one really blue page, etc--that have been previously approved by the customer (you).

Color approval is tricky! This is why you should really let the printer's prep dept walk you through it, I think.

ah, gotcha. thanks for all of your help! do you work in printing?

I did manufacturing & production for a major children's book publisher for 10 years. Just left the job in February to make a total career change (as yet undefined). It actually feels good to pull that info out now that it's not my job. S'okay, it'll all be out of date in 5 years.

haha yeah one of the tutorial articles I read that left me a little more confused had a big argument in the comments section with people telling each other they were 10 years behind the times and throwing around various color profile names. it's kind of weird how much voodoo there still is with this stuff. the web is nice because you just have to accept that your colors will never look the same twice, and then you can stop worrying about it.

my god, all of this color stuff is so fascinating! I am learning so much itt!

How did you get into that career field? Did you study printmaking in school? I want to learn and subsequently get paid to do colors.

nate, I tried to dl AI from that link but it won't work because "PowerPC is not longer supported." Apparently my computer is too new.

Stevie: I was an English major! I don't know the first thing about art and just a little about color theory. I didn't know production or printing even existed, I had no idea how books were made, I wanted to be an editor...until I started working with editors. Over 15 years in publishing I just moved to Production and stayed there.

The best ppl in the world with color are arguably a) Dan Selzer (who by the way should have been answering all the questions on this thread), and b) 2nd and 3rd shift late-night pressmen who are trusted to print alone all night and have everything be perfectly satisfactory in the morning.

Thanks. All I know is that it's either really hard to know or really expensive or both. I hadn't seen this thread till now. Good think I occasionally search my name to see if anybody's talking about me!

A quick scan of the above and I'd just say that the conventional wisdom is/was that you should convert to CMYK because a) you'll be less likely to use out of gamut colors, and b) in the olden days an RGB image that wasn't converted to CMYK before film/plate separations would not separate correctly and you'd just end up with a mess.

The newer conventional wisdom is that more up to date printers have more advanced RIPs, so if you have some hi-res RGB image, their workflow will know better how to convert to CMYK for it's own press than your copy of photoshop.

I also think the RIPs are just more advanced and will probably convert to CMYK at some point down the line, unlike back in the day where they'd just bounce the job back.

But that whole thing with the more modern rips, that may work if you're talking to them and know what's going on. Otherwise probably safest to save as CMYK.

but I don't really understand color profile usage properly despite reading up on it a bunch of times.

I'll read more of this thread later and respond more. I used to work more on the prepress side when I was just starting out, but mostly work on the production artist side, where it's more layout oriented with a bit of prepress, but as a letterpress printer and as someone with a print-shop background, I have a slightly better understanding of prepress than most graphic designers/production artists.

also, printers will never match a laser you send in. You can send in something used as "proof for layout only" to make sure nothing screwy happens with line breaks or art dropping out, but for color to get closer you have to use a contract proof, which used to be an official matchprint, which was generated from the actual film, but that's a dead technology now anyway. matchprints went digital but your proof has to be printed on something that is calibrated to something SWOP or GRACOL or whatever. It used to be high end Kodak or Fuji approval printers or whatever, but now it can even be an epson inkjet...so long as the person outputting it has it calibrated and profiled. It also helps that these proofs now emulate the dot pattern of offset printing, so you get a much more accurate idea of the print than you'd get with a laser print.

I've used this service:

http://expressproof.com/

I can't afford rounds of proofs, so for one job I made like a contact sheet. The same part of the image with 5 or 6 different levels of darkness, and sent it to them. I couldn't use that as a proof since it's not the actual file, but I was able to pick an image to use and have a ballpark sense of how it may print. It was something I scanned with my pretty old somewhat decent scanner and cleaned up/retouched on my barely calibrated monitor with my not-pro retouching skills, so having that feedback was great.

I never found that Epsons had a real dot? Good enough to be a contract proof but not the ACTUAL dot, in the sense that you couldn't compare the size & concentration of the CMYK dots to each other. Still, they are a lot cheaper than Kodaks, and Kodaks are a lot cheaper than pressproofs/wetproofs.

I will say though that every time I had a PROBLEM with the color in an Epson, the customer rep would invariably tell me, "Well, you know, it's CLOSE, but it's not the REAL color it will be on press...." Wish they could make up their minds tbh.

I've never compared, just glad to get a ballpark sense of the color/contrast better than what I see on my screen or could get from a laser print at staples!

I wish I had worked with more designers like you, in that case.

also, printers will never match a laser you send in. You can send in something used as "proof for layout only" to make sure nothing screwy happens with line breaks or art dropping out, but for color to get closer you have to use a contract proof, which used to be an official matchprint, which was generated from the actual film, but that's a dead technology now anyway. matchprints went digital but your proof has to be printed on something that is calibrated to something SWOP or GRACOL or whatever. It used to be high end Kodak or Fuji approval printers or whatever, but now it can even be an epson inkjet...so long as the person outputting it has it calibrated and profiled. It also helps that these proofs now emulate the dot pattern of offset printing, so you get a much more accurate idea of the print than you'd get with a laser print.

I've used this service:

http://expressproof.com/

I can't afford rounds of proofs, so for one job I made like a contact sheet. The same part of the image with 5 or 6 different levels of darkness, and sent it to them. I couldn't use that as a proof since it's not the actual file, but I was able to pick an image to use and have a ballpark sense of how it may print. It was something I scanned with my pretty old somewhat decent scanner and cleaned up/retouched on my barely calibrated monitor with my not-pro retouching skills, so having that feedback was great.

aha, all of this helps a lot, thanks! So I could probably pay for the proofs myself, and do them with an online service or locally, then have more confidence that the files I'm sending off will be good? and then I don't have to bother the person who's handling and paying for the actual print job with all of that.

Is the poster still a work in progress? If i was making design changes to it, I'm a big fan of simplifying. Two things I'd do is a) get rid of the rounded corners on the lower right hand box, I like rounded corners but square would recall the boxes up top, and b) I wouldn't indent "Monday.." and the address. You're already differentiating "Beginner Class" from "Monday..." by going from bold to not bold, no need to also indent it. It would look cleaner flush left. Just some imho thoughts.

wk, I don't really know what the odds are that a printer's really gonna make the effort to match anything anyway! I've worked for some big companies and the way it works is countless rounds of proofs, retouching and even then, you send someone to stand over the press and tell the press operator to tweak densities here and there. The proof will help you make sure you're in the right ballpark, and give them something that they're supposed to match, but I don't know if that's guaranteed unless you have the $$$

They pay attention really well once you've rejected a whole run of printed sheets.

hey dan wanna pay me to work for you I have excellent communication skills and a friendly, professional demeanor and make excellent coffee

I'm deep in debt, work days at a corporate job churning out hundreds of layouts and nights and weekends in my printshop. I'm most interested in finding out what I'm going to do for a living when I realize I won't be able to make it full-time working for myself with the printshop and freelancing part-time. Like a full-time job in the lucrative music business. Or a food cart where I make sandwiches.

Cool! I'll start Monday!

I'm fine with minor differences. It's just at this point I have no idea how to even trust what I'm seeing on my monitor. I see pretty radical shifts in saturation and gamma when I look at different color profiles or on different screens.

IANAD but I was under the impression that you're not supposed to trust anything you see on your monitor. Just assume the colors you see are broadly representative of basic categories like "light," "dark," "red," "green."

I also think the RIPs are just more advanced and will probably convert to CMYK at some point down the line, unlike back in the day where they'd just bounce the job back.

Or just mash it all into a really dark b&w image, like our RIPs used to.

Adjusted version of my flyer here, I esp like the separated red banners but wondering if they + the black still need some repositioning.

Can anyone tell me why the black box and banner now have white lines around them?? I would really like to know that.

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e66/LimitedLiabilityGirl/NYCDFlyer72_dpi_zpsbb719d76.png

assuming the white lines aren't appearing on the original full size 300dpi version? Just the resized one?

Also I liked the transparent info box but maybe that was a symptom of liking the functions of the program more than the function of the design?

Nm about the white lines, I figured out that shapes have a fill color AND a stroke color! I am learning so much but it's all the hard way, which is muttering things for 45 minutes while I read about every menu option that seems vaguely related.

the red and black banners look good, though i might try moving them down a little. a couple of things that caught my eye: the $15 should be moved down slightly so it is centered in the red circle; the address should be moved left to line up with the mondays.

the solid black box looks better ... matching the black title banner.

I'm having trouble with text boxes because they all want to be centered in their box and since that second line is shorter, it looks indented. I guess every line has to be a new box? Geez louise.

is there a setting to left-justify the text?

Couldn't find one, just made it a separate box. :)

The person with the logo may not respond for days, I'm pretty happy with the adjustments all y'all suggested, I feel close to wrapping up. It's a good feeling.

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e66/LimitedLiabilityGirl/NYCDAd72_dpi_zps6303039a.png

I still miss my transparent rounded box with a white border, but I'll sneak it into something else that doesn't use lots of squares.

looks great!

i approve of the newly left justified time/location!

Looks great, L! To my eye the text $15 is maybe a bit too big (or the circle too small), all other boxes have a fairly consistent amount of padding but that one doesn't, but not on a way where it seems like you did it on purpose either.

What if the black box doesn't go all the way to the edge so you can see the photo on the sides there?

The $15 could use some breathing room, I agree. I was lamenting that the very limited fonts available put the characters so far apart but I was reluctant to make the burst larger. I don't know if this program allows hand-kerning? Dan, I'll try making the black banner narrower!

i think the $15 looks fine. there's plenty of space above/below.

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e66/LimitedLiabilityGirl/NYCDAd72_dpi_zps6a1496c6.png

Better? I don't love that the black banner type is now close to the same size as the red banner type. I can't tell if I like the floating box or not.

just a quickie for fun, this is what I would do. excuse the hacked retouching. There's nothing wrong with any of the above, just my personal preference. This way lets the photo take more precedence, gets the headline copy bigger and mimics the two lines above. Also moved over the "class" copy in the box.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3848975/ds.png

I dunno, maybe I'd also make the red boxes touch or make the black headline boxes not touch. One or the other.

excuse the hacked retouching.

Hon, it looks about as good as my actual document and it didn't take you 7 hours so bravo.

I'll think about that layout.

don't worry I won't be offended if you don't take my genius advice.

I like your advice, but I have to give my own genius room to, you know, flourish and...grow, or whatever that does.

My initial reaction is to knock the size of the $ down a couple points - it'll still be recognizable as a price and you could nudge the 15 over to the left a bit.

I also think I like the "New York Celtic Dancers" all on one line but running to the edges; the two sets of staggered boxes starts to feel a bit too Barbara Kruger for some reason.

http://greatartinuglyrooms.tumblr.com/image/53288504378

FINAL FINAL versh, you guys are awesome, I appreciate everyone's continued participation. Dan, I did move the info type over in the box, you were right that the longest line was too far right and I hadn't noticed it. Until next time!

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e66/LimitedLiabilityGirl/NYCDAd72_dpi_zps1f026d49.png

I like the ($15) as is; it looks like something you'd see on The Price Is Right

can you learn how to be a graphic designer y/n

no problem...

http://www.cranbrookart.edu/Pages/2D.html

can you learn how to be a graphic designer y/n

― kenjataimu (cozen), Saturday, June 29, 2013 9:47 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You can learn the technical skill set yes. Creativity and knowing how to problem solve in the design world is much harder.

Yeah you can learn techniques and software and history and theories and such but I really think you have to have some innate "eye" or sense that a lot of people just don't have.

Not that there's anything wrong with that lacking that, of course, but it's sort of interesting how many people just don't make distinctions between any design elements whatsoever.

Plenty of people make an ok living doing shitty design. So learning the basics of the software and the basics of design theory you can fake it pretty well and luck yourself into a career. Still, you're better off getting familiar with web stuff than print stuff, as the print world is definitely shrinking.

Plenty of people make an ok living doing shitty design. So learning the basics of the software and the basics of design theory you can fake it pretty well and luck yourself into a career. Still, you're better off getting familiar with web stuff than print stuff, as the print world is definitely shrinking.

― dan selzer, Sunday, June 30, 2013 9:14 AM (56 minutes ago)

As someone who makes an ok living doing shitty design, I can't argue with that. I've been too lazy as a freelancer to learn web stuff, and basically just hope the print stuff holds out long enough for me to get to a non-cat-food retirement.

So...banners. And frames. Something like a simpler version of the elements in this:

http://pangeaseed.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Xmas-Flyer.png

Are these custom artwork? Are they a package you have to buy?

Borders and corners and flourishes...that can be resized and pulled around.

yeah you can buy all that stuff at stock photo/illustration sites.

You cn google and maybe find free stuff. Also check creative market. Cheap and money goes to people. It's like etsy for the adobe CS set.

just1n3 told me about the wise people in this thread who may be able to help me with my printing problem... i'm using an epson r2400 printer and adobe CS6. in photoshop, when "let photoshop determine colors" is selected, the color matching options listed in the print driver are grayed out, as they should be. in indesign, they aren't. anything i print through indesign looks like shit, because the printer's embedded color management is overriding indesign, and there's no way to disable it. everything i've found online says that the printer's color matching options will be grayed out once you tell the adobe program to determine colors, and this just isn't happening. it's driving me crazy, because doing page layouts in photoshop is a huge pain in the ass compared to indesign. help!

So I'm getting involved with a comic book store, I'm going to be in charge of making store signage, working on advertising, contest posters, etc.. Very basic at first, hopefully improving quickly.

Right now I can't justify the InDesign/CC license cost - is there a good, cheap design option out there, or am I best off looking for a CS3 or CS4 package on Ebay?

Adobe stopped supporting some older versions and paradoxically made them free to download -- get them free
Re: color match can you export to PDF first and see if that gets around problem?

I was going to say similarly. Does Acrobat act more like Photoshop or like InDesign. If the latter, make a hi-res PDF and print from that. You can even go a step further (and more annoying), and rasterize the PDF back into photoshop and print the layout from photoshop. May be a workaround.

good call. i think the problem is that this is a printer that was discontinued in 2010, so CS6 probably plays funny with it. i'm upgrading to a new printer hopefully sometime next year, so this is a temporary problem. thanks!

I'm struggling the most with the simplest things because I don't know how they happened. For instance, how this extra-big space got in here!

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e66/LimitedLiabilityGirl/Line-spacing_zps4c225214.jpg

The line spacing for the whole block is set to 1. The font for the whole block was assigned in bulk, not line by line. HOW DO I HAVE A DOUBLE LINE SPACE?

Is this InDesign?

No, it's in Pages. For god's sake.

BUT the document was originally created in InDesign, then when I had to update it again and didn't have access to ID anymore, I re-did it in Word, probably, and then when I left my office I imported it onto my home computer in Pages. So it's probably a formatting fuckfest.

i know how to fix this in word but not in pages

Maybe I can adapt the solution/find a similar menu option?

in word, if you go to the 'paragraph' option, a thing comes up with a bunch of options; usually you have to fix the 'spacing' part, where you specify how much space to leave either before or after a line of text

in word i'd highlight offending parts and find out what the spacing was set at

It's all set to 1 line space already. That big break shows the same setting as all the other lines that are closer together. And no matter what spacing I adjust them to, the larger space remains relative to the others.

Just so frustrated, this kind of shit like doubles how long it takes me to do stuff.

http://i.imgur.com/xQuWvDR.png

e.g. here i have it set to do single line spacing, but to leave a whole line of 12 pt size after a carriage return

Oh! I couldn't find a window like that but I managed to Copy Paragraph Style from a para that was correct, and paste it on the bad one. It needed minor adjustments but it fixed the spacing! Thank you, d.

At least I now know that there can be an anomalous standard applied for certain lines, that I have to watch out for.

When in doubt, use the Format Painter paintbrush in Word to make text look consistent.

Damnit I wanted to come and save the day w/ all of that but y'all beat me to it. This is now my job btw (fixing problems in word/excel/ppt/outlook for ppl) so it you have any questions at all I will answer them (if some jerx don't rush in and steal them from me first gosh)

The other day I taught someone about named ranges in excel and she was very happy so name your ranges and you will live long and prosper

use rules and categories in Outlook and you will be happy
implement custom section-based page numbering in footers in Word and you will be happy
get how VLOOKUP() works in Excel and you will be happy just don't come @ me w PivotTable bullshit that shit is wack gtfo

how do i shot named ranges?

Isn't there a Microsoft Office thread somewhere?

highlight the range, then type the name in teh top left hand box that has the cell number

(iirc)

aww I love a good pivot table but I've never named a range. What a brilliant timesaver!

so it you have any questions at all I will answer them (if some jerx don't rush in and steal them from me first gosh)

― Stevie D(eux), Friday, October 25, 2013 6:51 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oooh that is a good tip thanks

Hey thanks dan selzer! I love Creative Market and I just dled some frames from there. There're TTF and OTF versions in the folder--I imported both into Font Manager but I'm not sure how to introduce them into my (Pixelmator) document. I don't see them as an option anywhere...

If they're TTF and OTF then they're just fonts. If Font Manager has them loaded, you should be able to select them as fonts and type them in. Most clip art there comes as EPS files or tiffs.

Okay, I did that and I can type them in, but I thought maybe I wuz doing it wrong because there's no way to tell which key is which element. And if I'm using the straight line borders, they have to be like 20 keystrokes all lined up perfectly, which is fine for the horiz but harder for the vert? I'll muck around with it, I just thought it would be less stupidly complicated.

might be easier w/ the character map—you should be able to go to edit>special characters...

They don't show up on that, unfortch. I guess they don't qualify as "special"?

so i'm still having my problem with not being able to disable my printer's color matching in indesign. i have the problem with multiple print drivers (epson and HP), and only in indesign and acrobat pro, not photoshop. exporting .indd to .pdf doesn't help, since acrobat has the same issue. this was never an issue when i used CS5 on windows- it started up when i switched to CS6 on mac. it's a major, major problem, since i can't print any books without the colors coming out super shitty due to the printer doing its own color matching. anyone have any advice (besides exporting to PDF)? grrrrrrrrrr... stuff like this drives me crazy.

hey, someone on this board seems to have solved it by downloading a new driver
http://www.colorforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=1218&sid=68bb530a03635e605c0d25a98ae5d718

someone on the adobe board seems to have solved it by something complicated
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/774532

So people buy ready-made spot art because otherwise hand lasso technique on an irregular object + erasing the edges perfectly + blurring the edges of whole thing is so much freaking work, right?

But! That aside! I just successfully lassoed a pumpkin + pot of flowers, then reversed selection, cleared background, erased, blurred, cleaned up, then made background transparent, and imported it into a layout! OMG!

Obviously "successfully" is a relative term here but I'm pleased.

Well done io! No relativity at all, that's a tough thing to do. IME (and I only use Photoshop, so maybe this is not possible) what I like to do to remove a background is zoom way the fuck in, use an eraser tool around the entire edge of the image I am trying to keep, and THEN lasso and remove the rest of the background. Easier for me and that way you're only going over the edge once instead of lassoing and then erasing. YMMV. Excited for you!

That's so sensible! I will do exactly that on the 2nd page.

Yay! Glad I could save you some work.

Another "sometimes" tip is that you could lasso, and then blur the edges of the selection. Sometimes called Feather. If a thing doesn't need to be 100% perfect, that will do in a pinch.

It's not always that easy. Firstly, for many many years there were issues with transparency and that kind of overlay wasn't done in photoshop, it was more convenient to do it in a layout program, but you couldn't use transparency, you had to silhouette with a clipping path, save the file as EPS, hope there weren't too many points so you wouldn't crash a RIP etc etc.

See now I don't even want to know that, I'm not at that level yet, don't give me more things to worry about.

Right now I'm laying out type in newspaper-style columns but a hard return threw the alignment off between columns--now my columns don't end evenly at the bottom of the article and this is unacceptable. Is the extra space for a hard return important, and is it MORE important than an even lower edge? What do I doooooo?

yeah I dunno why he's talking about how it was "for many many years" when you are here in 2013 with me doing this? :) Of course everything in the world has become simpler and less prone to errors than their previous states. imo. Not trying to pick a fight, just confused why my suggestions were given the ole "yeah but"

Never done any columnar work so no idea there! Can you just delete the hard return to re-align everything? I assume if it's the end of a column it would not visually confuse anyone? Over to anyone else, I am only good for Photoshop tips

That stuff is still very relevant. Most layouts are still done in InDesign and not Photoshop, as it's not cost-effective to retouch a composite image for every variation of a printed piece, and there are still issues dealing with transparencies. InDesign can handle photoshop layers and transparencies but there are still issues where the compositing doesn't work right.

Anyway, the question was also about why clip art existed, and I explained that for a good 20+ years photoshop masking and general use of transparencies were a nightmare.

As far as type in columns is concerned, some people work with a baseline grid where all type will align to the invisible grid and basically round your leading and spacing up or down to fit said grid. Otherwise, you just have to decide what your priorities are. If your hard return adds any space before or after the paragraph, you will lose the baseline alignment. That goes for every line in the columns, not just the bottom. As far as the bottom is concerned, it's a matter of taste. But you don't need extra space for a hard return. You shouldn't have any extra space, if you're indenting. If you're not indenting, then you should have a full space after that equals a hard return.

Dan I totes believe you, I just don't understand what you mean because I haven't needed to deal with those things yet. So that's going straight over my head.

Will look for a baseline grid command but otherwise just alter layout to compensate, probably. The ragged bottom edge is not for me (and the style doesn't include indents).

So long as the space between paragraphs is a full return, the bottom should align, so long as there is enough copy.

There are usually settings to vertically justify text, but then you sacrifice aligned columns of text, nobody wants that.

sorry dan, I see now how you were answering her q about clip art purchasing - thought you were simply responding to my tips for her particular situation.

I learned how to use Pages and this came out!!

https://scontent-a-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/p320x320/1488284_568328999917402_1364050918_n.jpg https://scontent-b-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/t1/p320x320/74895_568329023250733_354766352_n.jpg

It always gets finished at like 2am when I don't care about headline length anymore, but I've seen a lot of community group newsletters that look worse so I'm choosing glowing positivity.

Congrats. Looks better than things that are supposed to be a lot fancier than community group newsletters!

And as you've seen on facebook, I've officially "launched" my printing company (by finally announcing the website):

http://www.sheffieldproduct.com/

That's quite... great looking! I'm so caught up in an InDesign-or-else mindset that I ignore alternative tools.

Speaking of InDesign...I didn't initially notice the slowdown of ID CC w/ OSX Mavericks. Just got more and more frustrated and thought my computers were old (2008 Mac Pro and 2010 Macbook Pro) but recently upgraded both (SSDs in both, 8gig ram in Macbook) and it just got worse and worse until it was really frustrating me, so I started searching online and found TONS of people complaining. I went back to CS6 and it was 1000% better. It's totally buggy and a total mess. I saw people were signing up for a pre-release program so I emailed Adobe via facebook and they let me into the program to get test/beta builds. You KNOW Adobe is aware they've fucked up and have caused issues if they're just letting any random person who emails them into their beta program. This is a major problem for them and they really need to fix it.

They really have no competitors and it's definitely showing. So much bloat. I recently had to deal with this conflict between the old application updater and the CC one where I had to quit the later and rename it so I could open up the former just to get it out of my menu bar. The amount of Adobe crap on my computer is shameful.

Had some hats made up and the in-house designer tweaked the logo for my stores and sent me a PDF of the vector graphic for free. I don't want to bother the guy since he just gave it to me as a favor so I'm trying to figure out the best way to save it for future use and archiving.

The current PDF opens small, I think it's sized at 2"x2" @ 300DPI. Opening the PDF in illustrator, if I select all I can scale it infinitely without apparent degradation since it's just text and simple shapes.

What's the best way to save it to make the logo usable on Facebook/flyers (currently via MS Publisher until I have time to teach myself Indesign)/etc.?

er... I mean, saving it as a JPG would be the best way for Facebook, I mean what do graphic designers save logos as to be able to drop and resize them onto other docs?

if you can scale it infinitely without degradation it's presumably just a vector graphic in a pdf, which means you could just keep the pdf file? i guess if you saved it as a .ai or maybe an .svg in illustrator that would be more drag-and-droppable

Photoshop should be able to open the PDF directly in a size you specify during import (trying to remember what the dialog options were) and from there you can save it as a JPG or something.

If InDesign is your layout program, just drop the PDF in as a piece of artwork, no conversion needed.

if it's a vector graphic, it shouldn't have a DPI.

PDF is now pretty much the standard format for illustrator files. If you open it up in illustrator and you select it and the object is outlined and scales infinitely, it's a vector. If that's the case, just keep it as a PDF. If you want to use it/share it in raster form, drag it onto photoshop and when it asks you to rasterize it, just make it huge, 8x8 at 1200dpi or 600dpi or something.

If it's not a vector image, when you rasterize it into photoshop, photoshop will alias the artwork to the size you want. If the orig artwork is smaller than what you're trying to open it as, it will not be good.

Help me get a chance to win a sizable grant so I can grow my printing and design business! I just need 250 votes to be in the running. I probably won't win that, but it's silly not to try. I just need 18 more votes!

https://www.missionmainstreetgrants.com/business/detail/52517

Done

Thanks. 3 more to go!

Oh my GOD, picking scrolling ribbon-type banner clip art is so hard. There are so many pitfalls, stylistically speaking. There's the Slough of Sailor Jerry, the Craft Brewery Cannery Row, the Pennants of the Caribbean Sea...

Where's a nice Edward Gorey-ish line drawing when you need one with just the amount of curve??

http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/946831/127991534/stock-vector-vintage-ribbon-banners-hand-drawn-set-127991534.jpg http://vector-magz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/retro-ribbon-banner-vector2.jpg

ILXors, sauvez-moi! I've been tasked w/ creating an hour-long "Getting Started" course for lolPublisher, which is good and fine except that I've only been using Publisher for abt 2 weeks so I have no idea if I even know all of the impt features to highlight (like for example I only just learned yday that you can link text boxes and also insert text from other documents!) or if I'm presenting things in a logical order. Does this outline look okay? Is anything crucial missing, or am I devoting time to features that are basically useless or never used? We can already assume some familiarity w/ Word, hence not rly diving deep into stuff like bullets and mail merges and stuff

Introduction
What is Publisher?
○ Desktop publishing application, layout-focused, differences btwn Publisher & Word
Starting a Publication
Start Screen
○ Recent
○ Templates
○ Turn off Start Screen
Basic Structure
○ Page Navigaton pane
○ Scratch area
○ Master Pages
Saving
○ Save early and often
○ Saving to computer
○ Saving to cloud
Adding content
Pages and Views
○ Inserting and duplicating pages
○ Single and Two-Page
○ Page Setup (Margins, Orientation, Size)
○ Show options (Boundaries, Rulers, etc)
○ Schemes
Text
○ Draw a text box
○ Format font and paragraph
○ Columns and alignment
○ Brief overview of typography options
○ Inserting from a file
○ AutoFit
○ Link text boxes
Images
○ Inserting images (single vs. multiple)
○ Modify pictures (crop, resize, etc)
○ Apply to background
○ Swap pictures
Shapes
○ Inserting/Drawing
○ Fill
○ Outline
○ Effects
Building blocks
○ Page Parts
○ Calendars
○ Borders/Accents
○ Advertisements
Business Information
○ Setting up in File | Info
○ Inserting through Insert | Business Information
Header/Footer/Page Number
Arranging content
Ruler Guides
○ Built-in
○ Adding from ruler
Snapping
○ Guides
○ Objects
Wrapping
○ Text box wrapping options
○ Editing wrap points
Arrangement
○ Grouping
○ Send backward/bring forward
○ Aligning/distributing multiple objects.
Master Pages
○ Creating
○ Applying
Export, Send/Share, Print
Design Checker
Exporting
○ PDF
○ HTML
○ Changing File Type
○ Save for Photo Printing
○ Save for Commercial Printer
○ Save for Another Computer
Share
○ Email page (Current, Attachment, PDF Attachment)
○ Mail Merge
Printing

also yes Publisher is stupid but it's a series of courses on the Office suite so no we cannot focus on another superior program

On an unrelated actual metal type font subject - anyone know how I can get hold of a type high © (copyright symbol) in 10, 12 or 14 point?

I bought mine at Letterpress Things:

http://www.letterpressthings.com/

I think he gets his from Swamp Press:

http://www.swamppress.com/

You could also try M & H Type:

http://www.arionpress.com/mandh/

Contact any of those places and they can help, they know its a major issue these days. When I bought my set unfoturnately I only got a serif-style, I need to get more styles to go w/ san-serif type.

Sorry about Publisher. I didn't even know it still existed.

Thanks Dan, that's really helpful. I'm about to buy a pile of type from M&H anyway so I'll drop him a line. I wish there was something anywhere near as comprehensive as M&H here in the UK, the postage is killing me.

Nobody in the UK is running a monotype/making type?

Barely anyone, and no-one (at least no-one I've found) with anywhere near the selection of M&H.

Shame. Monotype was a british technology after all! Very few people anywhere making proper foundry type though. There's a lot of criticism of current monotype sellers like M&H though. Monotype was never meant to be used repeatedly, so by it's very nature it's not as strong as foundry type. Plus after use the molds get worn down, plus people use considerably more pressure than the type is meant for, means type not holding up the way it should.

Right - but what can you do? The little Adana 5x8 press I mostly use (one of these:
https://s.yimg.com/pw/images/spaceout.gif) produces what pressure I can generate with my right arm so the type's probably in less peril than some!

Hm.

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3348/3188089101_8c221e979c_z.jpg

I know. I'm not that careful. I use more pressure than I should, but I also don't do a ton of hand typesetting. I have a mixed of old foundry type and newer monotype. I use various presses but usually the stuff I handset is printed on my Pilot, which is bigger than that, but still a table-top. Just last weekend I did an entire invitation in handset semi-bold futura and wanted some impression so I really had to slam it. At that point I'm less worried about the type than I am about the arm on the pilot holding up. Printing less is much easier to maintain good printing even w/ a bit of impression. This last project, I broke a ton of rules.

I am currently engaged in a (possibly doomed) (certainly insane) multi-year personal project which involves many hours of my painfully-slow handsetting body text; the last bit I did more or less filled the 8inx5in chase on my press (with just a tiny margin for spacers and quoins) and it was really hard to get anything like an acceptable impression. Happily the project doesn't require crispness all the time so I wasn't too hard on myself about it.

obvious answer is to break the text up and not print it all at once. Will make a big difference. The kind of paper matters and especially important, though I've never done it, is dampening the paper. People claim to get way better results and better impression.

Those sound like interesting but risky options!

nothing risky, dampening is a totally traditional thing, works best with nicer papers.

http://www.briarpress.org/14535

I've read various methods, some people use homemade humidors and do all kinds of things. Or have a humidifier going and hold the paper against it. Or stacking your paper with every other sheet sprayed wet in a plastic bag overnight before printing.

And breaking up the text shouldn't be so hard. If you have a good lock-up you should be able to just lock up a paragraph then replace it with spacing.

Just joined a group selling letterpress stuff, based in europe:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/745025778976939/

scroll down someone is selling M&H .918 san serif @ symbols

Thanks - will take a look when I can get on to my wife's Facebook account! It's a © rather than an @ I need, mind, I have plenty of @s!

The problem with splitting blocks of text on my little press is not setting or locking-up type accurately, it's making sure the paper is in precisely the correct place. The little arm on which the paper sits (which I always want to call a lay gauge but isn't) is just not stable or consistent enough to get to the <1mm accuracy required to avoid the blocks looking joltingly mis-aligned.

Plus this project mostly involves printing on ephemera and found or hand-cut paper - virtually none of it is "nice" and generally I've found it in limited quantities so I'd be scared of dampening it.

oh I misread that you need copyright and not at sign.

I've never used an adana, do you have room to use proper registration pins, or even a homemade system with some double-stick tape and plastic? Might be able to get something more consistent. Regardless, you'd still have to be really careful.

I have had conflicting advice on the use of pins - some people I've spoken to swear by them, others say they cause unnecessary damage. I will give them a go at some point!

Thread delivers!

Damage? Because of some unique way the adana works? Because that's how all printing is done on all platen presses for a couple hundred years! I use the Kort Quad guides, as the cheaper/more common Megill pins move to easily. I also have the Double Grip pins but they're a bit too big and unwieldily for the pilot, and the new Henry Compressible pins which are also a pain to adjust because they lose tackiness, but good for when you don't have the clearance.

Truthfully, I'm not sure; I don't think the Adana is unique, though.

Registration pins is how all platen presses work. The only damage is if the pins hit the type. Unless you're printing type off the edge of the paper, that can be easily avoided. The thing that really scares people is using the pins with a base to mount polymer plates, that's why people are using the "compressible" pins (which are just a bit of plastic and a bit of double-sided tape. Then you just have to be careful, but the smaller the press and the bigger the base, the more likely you'll have problems.

I've just bashed together a site to cover the project I mentioned a little way upthread, if anyone's interested:

https://thebookofdisquiet.wordpress.com

(Going to spam ILB with this also, apols if you see it twice.)

looks awesome.

Just wanted to post here that I've spent the last year trying to learn about color management and I maybe understand about 30% of it.

I know literally nothing about colo(u)r management. I don't even know what it is. Heh. I'll have a look on Wikipedia later.

i did a course on it and i'm still lost.

I am reassured to find that colour management has no relevance to the part of my print-life that I care about. Phew.

(I've just had a paper accepted for an academic conference about letterpress in the modern world, which has made me pleased and scared in equal part since I am neither an academic nor a proper printer.)

Color theory was the required class in my art program against which the ships of many hopeful art majors were dashed. I saw people reduced to tears.

can you share the paper? Would love to see it.

Still thinking about writing a book on Pre-press for Letterpress. Wondering if it should be expanded to Pre-press for silkscreen as well (which would need more help), or go even further and include it in a book about contemporary production techniques and issues, and by contemporary, that would have to include things like letterpress.

I have wondered about color management in the context of letterpress, whether there's any worth in actually using measuring devices to measure colors you're printing, but it's really not worth it.

mad piratical, where was your course? was it part of a photography or design program?

I'm actually pretty bad with color theory and need to bone up on that. Color management is more about the technical control of matching colors from input devices to your monitor to the printer.

xp I will (at least the abstract) when I've written it! I don't suppose I'll ever write the whole thing down because it will be (at least in part) about the book project linked a few posts back. The project won a prize in Minnesota, btw, which will likely end up as one of the high points of my life!

Have you seen the OttoGraphic series of screenprinted screenprint manuals? They are useful and beautiful, here's the general screenprint one; he does one or two more specialised ones also: http://www.ottographic.co.uk/books/manuals/screen-printing-manual.html

neither – it was a special one-off course an employer (ad agency) send me on to help colour manage images before sending to print.

xposts

http://www.ottographic.co.uk/books/manuals/ewExternalFiles/PhotoshopManual_ottoGraphic_detail2_web.jpg

neato!

That's beautiful, will have to check it out.

There hasn't really been great books for letterpress. A lot of collections of work. The only contemporary things I can think of are Paul Moxan's Vandercook Maintenance book and Gerald Lange's Printing Digital Type.

There was also this Barbara Henry book, the Joy of Vandercooking which had some interesting stuff.

Not surprisingly all of those focus on Vandercooks.

For platen presses there's the reprinted General Printing. Otherwise best off getting vintage books. I have them ALL! Some of the fun is using google books and reading really ancient books, because some of the concepts are still the same.

i want to buy all of the screenprinting books now. A lot of the concepts probably relate to any kind of printing.

90% of everything I've ever designed was for the web or printed on a giant in-house inkjet so I never really had to care all that much about color management. For screen it was always at some point out of my control, and for print I could get things good enough to be fine with it and most of it was ephemera anyway.

But I remember in grad school how the photographers would spend hours or days tweaking all the color settings on the printers to get things exactly right; I get that for them there was one singular "ideal" version of a print but at some point it felt diminishing returns as there were indistinguishable differences between the 75th and 76th test prints.

in an ideal world, color management makes that unnecessary. The point is if your monitor is calibrated and your printer is profiled, you don't need test prints because your print matches your screen, more or less (usually less, but it'll get you close).

My interest in color management is born from years of not knowing what I'd get. All my work was done in either two contexts:

1) I work for a major advertising or retail company and do the layouts and the vendor pulls expensive proofs and hand-delivers them to us for mark-up and we just pay for it

2) I'm doing my freelance stuff/personal work and there's no money for proofs and the vendor doesn't give a shit about us and our jobs are probably ganged up with a bunch of other jobs and it's really hard to have any idea ahead of time what my imagery and colors will look like.

The frustration of number 2 has led me to want to learn about this.

I spent a really tough six months caught between a picture editor who wanted exactly what he saw on the endlessly calibrated LaCie monitor, and a knackered 20-year-old colour broadsheet press where the ink densities were done by the lads when they got back from the pub.

“I want more black! These monos are all grey”
“Fuck’s sake, it’s so black it’s already coming off on my hands - look at this, I’ve got a perfect image of the front on my forearms”

We've fallen foul of Tumblr's new anti-smut bots. This video was flagged by their system. It's clearly a rather over-imaginative system with an eye for (unintended) visual metaphor and subtext. https://t.co/zhT8nFhyCX pic.twitter.com/Y8XiXp84ny

— The Bodleian Libraries (@bodleianlibs) January 29, 2019

Hilarious.

My color management training and experience is increasing.

i've also recently taken a class in the exciting and trendy world of Risograph.

I may teach a class soon that's a sort of overview on printing/prepress for designers, production artists, printers etc.

I think there's a lot of people with deep expertise on certain aspects of the industry/art, but if I have anything to offer, it's the wide range of interest which can be helpful.

So let me know if anybody here has any questions!

In case anyone here's interested, here's the book-length thing I've been working on for a couple of years (and printing for 18 months or so): https://thehalfpintpress.wordpress.com/imaginary-letters-by-mary-butts/

I see upthread that I was having trouble with getting blocks of text to print properly - this time I had the experience and the courage to follow Dan's advice and print blocks of text in separate sections. (Also I was mostly working with bought stock so could afford a higher-than-usual level of spoil.

Now I have to work out how to get the thing out into the world.

Beautiful!

this looks incredible

Working on a document for work and thought I'd share something I came up with that's definitely a FAQ in this world:

View distance

It’s important to note that without knowing the context, vendors will often ask for images to be 300 dpi at 100% scale. This is rarely necessary. We’ve established a rough guideline for recommended image resolution based on how far away the viewer will be:

Viewing Distance Minimum Resolution
arm’s length 300 DPI (as low as 240)
2 – 4 ft (.6 – 1.2 m) 200 DPI
4 – 6 ft (1.2 – 1.8 m) 170 DPI
6 – 8 ft (1.8 – 2.4 M) 130 DPI
8 – 10 ft (2.4 – 3 m) 100 DPI
10 – 14 ft (3 – 4.3 M) 75 DPI
14 – 18 ft (4.3 – 5.5 M) 40 DPI
18+ FT (5.5+ M) away 20 DPI

With the caveat that the quality of the artwork, the graininess of the photograph, the amount of texture or detail in the image all will affect quality. When in doubt, print a swatch at 100%.

sorry for the screwed up formatting. I know more about print than I do about the internet.

anybody have a few spare hours this week to help me put together a portfolio and maybe website? my idea is pretty simple, and i'm sure somebody who is competent at this thing could do it rather easily. i'm just an idiot @ photoshop and web design. if you're interested in helping out, send your rates to me via ILX mail

Just use wix / square space / Wordpress etc template.

i have some specific design needs that need to be addressed first, but yeah once that's done i think i'd be able to figure out how to just drop it into a squarespace-type platform

Just wanted to post here that I've spent the last year trying to learn about color management and I maybe understand about 30% of it.

I'd say it's up to 64% now.

the Dove's Press story (font thrown into thames at hammersmith) featured in last night's Master Crafters (which was otherwise about teaching the youth letterpress techniques)

it's repeated tonight on Sky Arts, freeview 36, at 19:00

(the two tutuors seemed to be called Hand and Bills which amused me. it was these guys, based in Bristol - https://www.theletterpresscollective.org/ )

Nick Hand did a thing a few years back where he fixed the kind of press I use to the back of a pushbike and rode around the country printing stuff. How he managed to make such a good job of it is beyond me (or at least way beyond my printing skills).

i'm finally divested from the letterpress world. Sold the last of my equipment and most of my books in the last year or two, finally unsubscribed from the mailing list. It feels weird to have invested so much time and money into something and then to move on like that. Feels the same as when I quit being a wedding DJ. It's like "I have some knowledge about this, shame it's gone to waste". Some of it builds towards other things I still do in life/career at least.

Of course I'm debating doing the same with the digital printing I've been doing for the last few years as it's been increasingly hard to find the time to do it and learn it right. I feel like I'm missing something, where I learn all the basic stuff and things work reasonably well, but then I try to learn the next level and suddenly it's advanced math. But mostly my day job has me in the office 3 days a week so I don't have time to really test and explore and focus on that, so my attention is going elsewhere.

I'm still printing occasionally and happy to collaborate with people who understand the turnarounds I can handle, but even that seems hard. Printing is one of those things where people generally need it SOON.