In addition to brokering commercial printing and writing about printing, I also do a little graphic design on the side. I used to be an art director, and I like keeping my hand in computer aided publishing because it keeps me aware of what full-time designers go through in designing their projects and preparing them for print.
The Design Project
At the moment, I’m designing a rack card for a Reiki practitioner (a bartering job, actually). Over the course of the past few weeks we have been going back and forth with various proofs, changing fonts, photos, and overall design treatments.
A few days ago my client approved the art. “Can we send it to press today?” she said. They’re having a sale. (She had chosen an online web-to-print service to keep costs down by ganging up her rack card with numerous other rack cards, presumably on a large offset press.)
“Whoa,” I said. “We have to slow down.” “Design is not production. We have things to do.”
Now this is just how I work. And I’ll assume that many other graphic designers will also do what are essentially upscale mock-ups on the computer to communicate with the client. Once the designer and client have agreed on the “look” of the piece, there are numerous technical issues that designers address, check, and fix before the job can go to press. These take time and careful attention.
In my client’s case, here are the issues we will need to address:
The Paper
My client’s Reiki practice is a form of healing work. It appeals to earthy and artistic people, so I suggested either an uncoated printing stock or a matte coated stock. It would have a softer, “crunchy granola” feel, unlike a gloss coated rack card that would have more of a corporate feel. My client agreed. She said the online commercial printing vendor she had chosen offered a matte coated press sheet.
The Press Run
I asked for the press run for two reasons. The more immediate was that I needed to know how many copies she wanted the printer to produce. But more than that, I wanted to get a sense of what technology the printer would use. My assumption was that for an ultra-short press run (say 100+ rack cards), the job would be digital. For 500+ rack cards, I assumed the technology would be offset lithography.
The Custom Printing Technology
If the length of the press run would require offset lithography, I knew an uncoated paper would be more likely than a coated paper to absorb the ink. In addition, for a press run probably ganged up with numerous other jobs, I did not expect the web-to-print vendor to adjust the ink flow for my client alone (as would be the case if only her job were on press). Therefore, I encouraged my client to choose the matte coated press sheet instead of the uncoated sheet, because the ink would sit up on the surface of the paper better and would be less likely to seep into the paper fibers. This would keep the images crisp and bright, and avoid a muddy appearance.
I also told her that, in my experience, if the job will be short and therefore digital, the toner particles will also be more likely than the offset ink to sit up on the surface of the paper. However, to be safe, I still thought a matte coated stock would be best.
The Images
My client chose to take the photos herself. She had a good camera and a good eye, so I decided to teach her the technical issues she needed to address in order to provide print-ready images.
For instance, she had been giving me 72 dpi images for the mock-up, which I had then changed to 300 dpi and enlarged (a bad habit called interpolation, which creates image information out of nothing—fine for a mock-up but not for press-ready images). Therefore, my client is now reshooting the two photos (with minor changes) at much higher resolution. As per my request, she will provide RGB JPEGs, which I will adjust and then save for the printer as CMYK TIFF images.
The Silhouettes
Two of the photos are silhouettes. They are also screened back or ghosted (not 100 percent in intensity). Therefore, I did some research, and then practiced with the pen tools, paths, clipping paths, edge refinement, feathering, and other Photoshop tools to make sure the transition from the contours of my client’s silhouetted wooden bridge photo to the background green color will be subtle and smooth. I also chose to produce the green background in Photoshop rather than InDesign. (I could have done either.)
The Color Space
I will need to make sure the job is specified for CMYK and not RGB, and that all images are also 8-bit or 16-bit CMYK TIFFs. I will change them from RGB JPEGs to TIFFs at the very end of the process, once I am satisfied with the color, since I’ll see any potential color shifts right on my monitor.
The Printer’s PDF Requirements
I asked my client to send me the specs from the commercial printing vendor for creating press-ready PDF files. This includes information such as the trim size, bleed size, font-embedding, and a host of other specifics I have discussed in previous PIE Blog articles. This document will tell me exactly how this particular printer prefers to receive his art files (based on the needs of his prepress system).
For instance, when I started the job, I measured the prior version of my client’s rack card with a ruler. The online listing of rack card sizes is much more precise, so I will need to change the document size slightly in my art file and add the appropriate bleeds of the background colors and images that will extend off the page. (All of this has to be exact, whereas for the design mock-up I just had to make the screen version look good.)
Preflighting the Job Prior to Submission
Even before I distill the PDF files, I’ll check the InDesign color separations on-screen (you can look this up online). I find this useful, to make sure nothing will show up on a different printing plate than I intend or expect. I’ll also make sure I have removed any extra unused colors from the colors palette in InDesign.
I’ll look for any typefaces that have been altered (made “bold” or “italic” in InDesign rather than by using the proper bold or italic font). I’ll probably also print a laser copy of the job to look for errors, and I’ll run any preflight diagnostics available in InDesign (the little red or green light that shows up at the bottom left of the screen to let you know whether the file has problems or is ok to print).
Finally, I’ll review the printer’s PDF sheet once again to be doubly sure. I’ll distill the PDF file as requested, and then I’ll “compress” the file before sending it to the online printer’s website (compression makes files safer in transit over the Internet and avoids PDF file corruption).
Just to be safe, I’ll probably look at the images one final time to confirm their resolution and color space, and particularly to check the edges between the silhouettes and their backgrounds. After all, I will only see an online proof (unlike most brick-and-mortar printers, the online printers usually keep prices down by sending only virtual proofs to their clients).
When I explained this to my client, she understood completely that there was more work to do, and she set off to reshoot the photos at a higher resolution.
What You Can Learn from This Case Study
The best thing you can learn is that design is not the same as art production (preparing final, press-ready art files for the commercial printing supplier). For me, trying to do both at the beginning of a design job is like editing my work while I am writing. It completely shuts down my creative process.
In contrast, the production step of the process is more logical and precise. It’s all about measurements, color spaces, and all of the other technical specifications that will ensure an accurate printed representation of your beautifully designed art file. It’s equally important.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, June 14th, 2017 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Rack Cards.
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