Notepad and QR Code Assignment:

   Our next project for our Digital File Preparation class was our first actual assignment outside the safe zone. The specifics of the project consisted of a black and white 5"x7" self-promoting notepad.The specifics were to use only black ink, 50 sheets per pad, and have a chipboard back. The first step I took towards this job was to create thumbnails of ideas that represented me, and artwork that I could design with the many skills I already have. Below are just some of the thumbnails I had sketched out to begin the process.

   After deciding a thumbnail to design, I went into InDesign to set up a .25" margin with a .125" bleed. The Design calls for a bleed on the bottom and the right size of the page.

Document set up for Adobe Illustrator

   Next, I created a greyscale vector of the arrow design in Adobe Illustrator using the rectangle tool, polygon tool and pathfinder tool to create the arrows. I exported the design to a .tiff file and placed it into the Indesign file.



creating my greyscale vector in Illustrator

The project also required a call to action, which in this case is a QR code. QR codes are pixilated squares that can be read by a mobile device (with a software or app reader) that can directly take my audience to an indended destination, in this case I'm going to send my audience to my personal blog, because the purpose of the project was to market myself. I created this QR code using qrcode.kaywa.com and downloaded the larger size to get a better chance at a higher dpi to put on my notepad. I saved the file as a JPEG and placed it into my Indesign file.

QR code to my blog site

I tweeked some of the elements on my page while adding font in Indesign. I used Cantoria MT for a sophisticated yet lively look to display my information.  Afterwards, I packaged my file and saved it as a pdf to take to Printing Services and get proofs printed before I got a final copy of the project.

placed my Illustrator file and QR code into InDesign



Business Card Remake

The other day our Digital File Prep class was asked to recreate a business card based on the dummy given to us. The business card consisted of a two-sided card with an offset fold. The print job also consisted of two colors (pantone color and black). The other requirements for this job were to set up a .125'' bleed and .125'' margin.

Before even opening any designing software, I created a new folder with a certain name to identify the job. This way, everything that I would need to design for this one file would be all in one folder, decreasing the chances of a failed output on the design. Next, before even thinking of my design for this project I measured the model card given to find the specifics. I had found that the card was a 2" x 6.4" and had an offset score set at 2.9425" from the top. After gathering this info, I quickly set up a two page, one spread layout of the diameters in Adobe InDesign to give me the correct layout of the remake.

Second, I created a more personable logo to replace the one on the front in Adobe Illustrator. I exported that into a TIFF file in my special folder for this project, then placed it into my InDesign layout.

(rotated in native file)

Later, I decided the fonts that would apply in my design for the information on the inside of the card. I used the software Suitcase to activate the fonts so they would be displayed properly in InDesign as I worked on the job.
The tricky part was to keep all my elements (such as fonts and graphics (my TIFFS)) in one specific folder for this particular job so there would be no missing links and eliminate problems from appearing if they were to print.

The project was very helpful and taught me the importance of time constraints while practicing correct building of a design to avoid problems down the line.

Chapter 2: Ink on Paper

•Halftone Dots: Are very small ranging sized dots of ink on a page to manipulate different tones or shades of a single colored ink.

McCure, 28

Units of Measure :

•DPI (Dots Per Inch): Refers to the amount of dots in a squares inch of a design. Typically the more dots on a page the better the quality and sharpness of a photo printed.

•LPI (Lines Per Inch):  also affects the sharpness of print (higher the better), but measures not the dots within an inch but the frequency of halftone dots appearing in a square inch. One regulation that LPI has to follow is the thickness of the paper, the thinner the paper print is going to appear on, the lower the LPI number should be to reduce the risk of  inks absorbing into unwanted areas of the print.

McCue, 28

•PPI (Points Per Inch): is another important practice in print. This tells a designer and printer the points per inch on a specific image, or resolution. Once again the higher the number, the better the resolution, and the clearer the image. PPI can be reduced by increasing the size of an image so it is better to downsize when designing than to expand to avoid bad resolution.

Color Printing: CMYK vs. RGB

•RGB (Red, Green, Blue): These colors pertain to the tiny dots of visible light that make up a display on a monitor. These colors consist of Red, Green and Blue and practice the same rules of PPI Resolution.

•CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black): relate to the process colors that use halftone dot  system of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black but also layer these colors during print to create a wide range of colors for an illusion of an image.

McCue, 30

•Color Management: Matching RGB (design on display monitor) to CMYK (design on printed page) is too difficult to guess at how the final job is going to turn out, so a designer must use Pantone color swatches to view what a color looks like when printed. Each Pantone color has a specific formula of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black and have a specific number to identify that specific Pantone color. This number can be used for located the specific color while designing on the RGB screen, so the designer has a closer chance at getting the exact design colors when processed.

•Spot Colors: Sometimes CMYK cannot reach all the colors of a design because CMYK does not contain all the colors of the color spectrum. In order to receive the colors desired for a job, sometimes a processor will bring in spot colors which are specially formulated inks that cannot be reproduced by CMYK (example: metallic colors).

•Registration: simply is the alignment of a printers CMYK when layering. This isn’t so much as a problem when a variation of colors is present and trapping can be used, but can be especially damaging to a design that has a two colors that don’t have an ink in common or have break in color. Misregistration can make a design look messy and unprofessional so it is important for a designer to check the registration before printing a large job.

McCue, 37

•Rich Black: Large areas of solid black in a design can be difficult to produce with just regular CMYK dots, so sometimes it is necessary to use a specialized color of 60 cyan, 40 magenta, 40 yellow and 100 black to formulate rich black. This specialization will help make the large portion of black on a design seem thick and smooth, making a cleaner design when finished.

Source: McCue, Claudia. Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications. Peachpit Press: Berkeley, CA, 2009.

Chapter 1: Life Cycle of a Printing Job

Chapter 1:

Yesterday to Today:

Due to the innovations of technology, Graphic Designers today find themselves doing more diverse work than they would have 25 years ago. For instance, Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop have replaced the way designers put a project together; back then, finalizing consisted of film and multiple proofs (page, color key, matchprint, and Cromalin) before even being sent to the printer! With all the manual labor and different departments of profession that ONE job had to go through turned to be very costly on time. The Figure below shows how the job would be divided by individual handlers for each specialty of ONE project.

McCue, 3

Within the late 1980’s the Apple Desktop Units were put on the market revolutionizing the world. This tool would continue to grow and help the graphic designing process combine multiple professional departments, decreasing the amount of places and stops ONE project would go, to conclude a faster pace of the entire process from start to finish. While technology has accelerated the time in which a job is processed, it has also brought along new opportunities like different finishes to a job like stitching, folding, binding, and die cutting, which is cutting unique shapes into a printed piece with a specially designed piece of metal. The overlapping of skills and responsibilities continues to grow due to technology’s expansion and innovation, jobs like Film Stripper, Dot Etcher, and Type Setter became obsolete from Laser Printers, Scanners, Page Layout Applications, Photoshop, and the Internet.



Created in Microsoft Word



Notable Employees in a Graphic Designing Job:

Each person part of a design job is important to the movement of the projects progress to the finish. We all know that the Designer is a huge part of an assignment, but here are just some more titles essential for a graphic design to be completed.

•Sales Rep/Customer Service: This side of the job tends to be the most involved with the customer by setting up the job, giving a price and time estimate, and answer any concerns or questions the customer might have. The Customer Service Representative works hand-in-hand with the developers of the job and customer, translating any information between the two properly and effectively to ensure a successful job.

•Estimator: The estimator may not be as personal, as they tend to be on the numerical side of the job, crunching numbers to find a price and timeframe at which the customer’s job will be completed. Estimating may seem easy but the Estimators have to take into consideration the costs such as direct and indirect supplies, overhead, manufacturing costs, variable and fixed costs, labor costs, etc. And that is just to compute the price, they also have to come up with a schedule including deadlines and how long the job takes to ship.

•Preflight Technician: This job is very important in ensuring that the job is done correctly with no problems that can be costly to either the customer or the vendor. Preflight technicians can either use a software such as FlightCheck Professional from Markzware or manually check the system themselves depending on the equipment available to them. Along with spell checking and seeing if the document contains the correct bleeds, margins, page size and correct colors, these technicians usually will organize the job so the process will run more smoothly. Preflight may even be in charge of imposition, which is positioning a file’s various pages in the right place before it is sent to print, but sometimes the prepress operator is in charge of taking this task, depending on the company pursuing the job.

•Prepress Operator: The prepress operator is one of the last people to see and edit the job before it is printed. The operator is in charge of relaying the baton from digital to print in the fastest and most efficient way necessary. This includes checking not only the project on file, but the printer as well; setting up the correct Pantone or CMYK colors along with running the correct type of paper, paper size, and thickness. Prepress is also in charge of RIPing the file or Raster Image Processing. RIP simply means to analyze the digital file, (whether it be a Postscript file or a PDF), and modify the information into a bitmap that is then readable by the output device (printer, film, or plates). Trapping may also occur during the RIPing stage, meaning the overlap of like colors will help close gaps to minimize show of little mistakes and errors not caught in the preflight area. Minor adjustments on either end can be crucial to how a finished product will look.

Sources:
McCue, Claudia. Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications. Peachpit Press: Berkeley, CA, 2009.