Listen Up!.indd - Write Type Publishing
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1. or thereabouts Generally speaking you use the file at a significantly smaller width height so when you or the printer dock size it down it becomes useful You will note that a file with properties like this is definitely over one megabyte in size If your raster image is smaller than that don t use it for offset This does NOT apply to vector images This is really an aside but heard a tattoo artist complaining about the 72dpi images his customers bring to him so it ain t just us How in the world do you expect anyone to utilize an image that is often 72dpi and less than an inch wide Come on folks There s no information there Look at the size of the file in Ks It s about 4 That ain t gonna cut it folks The printer also needs your fonts This is HUGE There are over 100 000 fonts in use today prob ably more Don t count on any printer or any other human for that matter having the same ones you do USE ONLY TYPE ONE FONTS FOR OFFSET DIGITAL PRINTING Open Type Fonts otf are great also but only if you AND your printer are working in Mac OSX if you re mac based Don t try sending open type fonts to a printer unless you know he can handle them You also need to keep all the real images not metafiles used in your documents WITH the docu ments and present them to the printer with all the rest of the stuff he needs Layout programs will package or collect for output for you because you can t remember where you put all the pieces Yo2. ll know it will be sort of close if the final output device is properly calibrated Always use standard Pantone brand chip charts You have no recourse if it s not supposed to be exactly what the REAL Pantone chart says not the one your device printed The printer isn t looking at YOUR chart he s looking at the one he got from Pan tone If you re gonna bitch about the color you damned well better have created it properly or won t you look stank NEVER depend on your own personal color output device to produce an image that will exactly look like the final printed piece or your customer s own device either when he prints the pdf you sent him to proof You will never be able to tell a customer Your job will look just like this prior to show ing him a contract proof from the final output device If you do you re asking for trouble The only thing you can tell them is This is sort of what it will look like This is where the red is going to be this is where the blue is it sort of looks like this Shut up and deal with it didn t make the damned rules and don t like them any more than you do Think like telling my customer that On a job with a huge run Yeah right just sent a job in to be printed to a book publisher in Michigan 40 000 run first printing of a brand new book Printed the cover file several places prior to sending in for press run 2 different Canon color lasers 2 different Epson inkjets amp a Lexmark inkjet We
3. minute this doesn t happen It does Check out the first printing of Shakespeare s Hamlet It says Hamlet Princ of Denmark Right on the cover If you can t see the typo even here you need to get a proofreader All printing jobs are learning experiences If you don t like it find something else to do Back up your files and then do it again And again somewhere else TWICE If you can t uncompress a zip or sit file buy the software for god s sake It s not expensive And get a real ISP Sending and receiving attachments to or from aol or hotmail can often be impos sible especially aohell thought you wanted to be a professional Look and act like it Pay for your stuff like the rest of us and don t look like some damned cheapskate with your ISP Anyway aohell costs as much as DSL so why bother with aohell How are you going to do work if attachments don t work most of the time huh Don t you look stank Above all if you do call the printer and ask for help don t argue with him After all you re the one that asked for help Just because you don t like what you hear doesn t mean it s wrong or you don t have to do it to make your job work Learn to live with this and you will feel much better Your customers will be happy too because they get their job faster And remember You Heard It Here First You Can Like It Lump It OR Deal with it get the job out and above all GET PAID for a job well done This piece was inspired
4. or someone equally as powerful Forget it otherwise If they let you do it expect to pay dearly for the privilege wouldn t let anyone watch my pressman for less than triple the price of the job maybe four or five times as much especially if they re snotty Go away and don t bother the help Build your file correctly instead and you won t HAVE to watch the press You want a press proof Ask for it and pay for it if they ll agree to do it but don t expect this as a matter of course It ain t gonna happen especially if the printer gave you an extraordinarily good price and your job is tiny Especially if it s tiny And especially if you ve never worked with him before Don t bitch about standards Especially if you re on the pc platform Standards yeah right On a pc Spare me Learn what the printing words mean Don t go in and use your corporate jargon on other people they don t know what it means and they re NOT stupid because of it Learn printing jargon if you re really serious For example there are more than 40 different definitions of resolution and you need to use them correctly in any given setting Make sure you know what you re talking about and doing If you don t know or aren t sure ask don t care if your granddaughter did make your logo It s the wrong file format and it doesn t print correctly Go back and have a professional do it Same with your website thank you Besides it s ugly so don t ask me if like it or th
5. unexpected results that require significant rework and it doesn t translate well into other applications platforms either So if you re too lazy to package the files amp fonts up properly for print too bad so sad You get Cou rier Don t expect the printer to fix it all because he may not have your fonts and when he called you you yelled at him or told him you don t know how to get them off your drive If you can t get fonts off your drive you shouldn t be doing this work You will get Courier and you will like it So there And if you send RGB all your plates will be identical And if it actually makes it onto the press that way and don t think it can t happen every plate is the same so it mixes all the colors together and makes Ta Da Black A very expensive mistake Don t use Illustrator or FreeHand to set type Don t be so cheap Go buy the right stuff And don t ask the salesclerk if PhotoShop is on sale Applications for this work don t go on sale And don t steal it If find out have an 800 I can call and report you And don t think won t I pay alot for upgrades every year because of thieves PII turn you in in a flash And don t ask ME for MY software either If you don t want to spend the money then don t do this work They WILL come after you even if don t tell them They have ways Ask anyone who got caught in the last round Anyway how unprofessional of ANYONE to steal the means of their profession EEEEee
6. wanted the cover to look like what was on my screen None of the prints we did looked even close We sent the job in figuring if we had to make changes we would find out when we got the contract proof It came We looked at it It was darker and redder than we wanted but it looked OK and we were up against a deadline The contract print got approved as is and the job was printed amp shipped When we got the final printed product magically it looked nothing like the contract print What it DID look like was the image on my monitor which is SWOP go look that up calibrated not the client s monitor though looked different there The printed piece looks great however it does NOT look like the contract print We aren t com plaining because it really does look like what we wanted but it sure doesn t look like the contract print and that is my point You never really know how it s going to print My client HAS rejected entire 40 000 pc shipments and not paid for the first run but only was able to do that because there was nothing wrong with the files just the printing and we could prove it When there s lots o bucks involved your files better be right or you re in deep doo doo When you are creating documents for customer proof you will notice that there are several differ ent kinds of pallettes to pick from Pantone solid coated Pantone solid uncoated Pantone process coat ed uncoated metallic coated Pantone matte Toyo Hexachrome etc These
7. ALLETTE These are all process colors except the black white and registration If you don t want process printing don t use process colors Illustrator does not make life easy trying to find where to get at the swatch libraries You think it s bad now it was worse 10 years ago Way worse Go find your swatch libraries go to windows in menu bar and pick a spot solid color swatch library In FreeHand the swatch libraries are accessible right at the color pallette The only default colors in the FreeHand color pallette are white black and registration so it s way harder to make that mistake If you need colors you access the appropriate library Illustrator can fool you big time Watch out for it Those cute little graphic hoses too Watch out for them Watch out for custom postcript fills in FreeHand Ac tually don t watch out for them just don t use them They don t print to a RIP And god help the person who sets a halftone screen on a graphic in FreeHand cuz no one else can No one but you is responsible for your files A file built by an idiot is still a file built by an idiot no matter what platform or software application was used Or how long you ve used it Or if you re still us ing it and no one but you can RIP it anymore That happens too Let me say that again No one but you is responsible for your files And again NO ONE BUT YOU IS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR FILES And also THE PRINTER IS NEVER RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR FILES NEVER EVE
8. Listen Up A Basic Aid for preparing digital files for offset or digital printing Chris Burleigh NCD JaG saa Write Type Publishing 447 Grand Ave Rochester NY 14609 This is for all of you who profess to be digital designers We in the printing industry are now at our wits end with you All of you You who have gone to school for it and should know better because you paid to learn it and you who by virtue of possessing a computer have become a graphic artist designer We thought that after at least 15 years of being in the digital printing world you guys might know what s going on by now But Noooooo Get with the program folks This is the printing world NOT the internet You can print just about anything to an ink jet printer It s absolutely astounding in many respects what you can print to an ink jet printer These devices have brought amazing things to the general populace of computer users and to artists and designers And they also forgive a multitude of sins Postscript sins Bad ones Ones you have no idea you comitted because it printed out The problem with them is they aren t postscript devices And therein lies the rub They aren t postscript devices therefore anything you successfully print to them that is intended for offset or digital printing on real offset or digital presses will never look the same It may not even print at all And that goes for color laser printers too It goes espe
9. R EVER EVER EVER Remember if you expect the printer to fix your files he will charge you for that Probably what you consider an outrageous amount too And then he will make you proof it again and again if necessary Takes time you know After all his time is valuable also and he probably didn t count on hours of re work when he quoted the job Everyone has to eat you know and if he uses up his profit fixing your work all the time he eventually goes out of business and then where will you be Don t EXPECT the printer to fix your digital mistakes Many times he can t even find them because the file is built so poorly Go away and figure out how to do it correctly And don t forget the printer didn t make the digital rules Adobe did that when they invented PostScript so don t yell at him be cause you don t know what the rules are Ask instead Better yet read the manual Always contact the printer first to insure you will be sending him what he wants needs not what you think he should have This will significantly reduce printing delays Never assume you know what the printer wants or needs Every printer uses different software Some use very very old software and can t handle your files if they re mac OSX files or even pc files Some use very new that you ve never heard of Never assume the printer has CURRENT software or YOUR software Always assume that if your files are pc based there will probably be trouble unless you ve s
10. are different color ink sys tems It is advisable to use the swatch library which will correctly represent the printed product If your job is going on uncoated stock you should use the uncoated libraries If it will be on coated stock you should use the coated libraries You will note that the coated versions of any and mean ANY color will be brighter than the uncoated version Don t pick your colors by what looks pretty on the screen Your software is trying to let you know what that color will look like on the designated stock If you proof coated colors to your customer that will actually be printed on uncoated stock get ready for problems when your customer says it didn t look like that in the pdf proof OR in the color print you they made Remember your equipment is attempting to give you a representation of what your final product will look like to the best of its limited abilities You will be fooled your customer will be fooled and you might end up losing a lot of money when the customer won t pay for it Oops forgot go buy some Pantone chip charts so you can see what the colors really look like Get the solid to process chart with the cmyk recipes on them and also the standard one your printer always has the Pantone formula guide coated uncoated These are wonderful visual tools that are literally priceless for your work If you are using Adobe Illustrator and your job will be spot solid DO NOT USETHE COLORS IN THE DEFAULT P
11. by three amazing women the Digital Chicks in Rochester New York They didn t believe us then and probably won t now but I ve gotta try anyway
12. cially when you re working in an application that is not postscript conversant and allows you to utilize image files in the wrong color space It s physics people and in the wrong formats for offset digital These are generally but not always Windows applications It doesn t help when Mr Gates outright lies to his customers on the packaging for his apps Reference Publisher Please Whether anyone likes it or not it s not our fault anymore In the days when you brought your composite artwork for the separation house or printer to shoot separate plates you could blame them like it was going out of style Now you bring your digital files to us and there s no way on god s green earth you can blame us for your digital mistakes Got it Now read the rest of this to find out some very very basic things about getting your files from computer to final output Read it NOW BEFORE you start your project And remember something really really important We ll help you but we won t train you That s on your dime Sorry it s a business issue We shouldn t need to train you after you bring your job in We don t have the time because there s a deadline We shouldn t have to train you before either There are educational resources all over hell s half acre for that and you shouldn t be waiting until you ve already missed a deadline to utilize them Most of all you need to remember We didn t make the digital rules Adobe did when they invented PostS
13. cript If you have a problem with that please call Adobe and let them know know we in the printing industry would absolutely love to have your stuff fly through the RIP without a hitch no matter how it was created Good Luck And Remember You Heard It Here First Things we all need to know to send jobs in for offset printing includes editorial comments The first rule is Use an application that speaks PostScript This includes The entire Adobe Design Suite which includes Illustrator Photoshop and Indesign Macromedia FreeHand in it s printing mode not it s web mode PageMaker or Quark Express Illustrator and FreeHand are vector based image edi tors creators and Photoshop is a raster image editing creation program These three applications are NOT layout programs and should NOT be used as such Indesign PageMaker and Quark Express are page layout programs Don t send the printer MSWord files and expect to get the same results you re looking at on your own printer If you ve been using this application for a while you should know this Don t insult the printer or his help by arguing about Word files Give him a paper print to shoot from or use another ap plication Don t do your business card in Excel and expect it to print Anywhere When you set up your business card or whatever keep the type and any images away from the edge unless you re doing a bleed You want it cut off or what Don t know what a bleed is A bleed is a
14. design tool wherein the ink goes to the edge of the paper It is a cool thing to do and looks awesome however this technique requires a larger sheet of paper to print on If you try to get the ink up to the edges on the finished size paper the ink gets gobbed up on the back of the sheet and poops ink gobbers all over the sheet underneath Eeewww it s nasty This is why your job costs more when it bleeds off the edge The paper needs to be bigger than the finished size so the ink doesn t do that This also means that YOU need to make sure your artwork bleeds off the edge of the finished size It also means you pay more because of the wasted paper so unless you re prepared to pay more don t do bleeds The printer needs the image links Windows Metafiles and any other screen representations don t print to a PostScript device There s a reason they re called metafiles and that s because they re not really files they re only meta files and they re not really there Only philosophers use meta stuff Don t put your image file in a word document and then send the Word file to the printer as the logo That ain t a logo it s a metafile and we already talked about that The resolution of your raster image file is also very important A 72dpi image is not appropriate for offset printing unless it s really really wide and will be shrunk down for use Digital cameras will often give you a 72dpi image It will also be 30 inches across and 12 high
15. eewwwwwww Family Values Family Values oops Always build your files from the very beginning for the final method of output If your logo will be used as spot color black amp white and process make sure you have a valid version of each type tagged and labeled correctly and use them appropriately Back them up in more than one place Twice Don t know what spot color and process color mean Go back to square one please Do not mix spot and process colors unless you re looking for more than 4 plates on purpose i e an extra metallic or varn coat perhaps If you don t know what this means catch up on your manual reading Also if you don t know what bleed trap choke spread knockout overprint and gripper mean go back to your local design school and tell them you want your 80 000 back cuz they didn t teach you any thing If you didn t go to school for this read the software manuals Oops Stole your software and don t have a manual Too bad Can t even call tech support you thief Watch out for user manual pdf files There s often no pagination and certainly no index Good luck The Acrobat 7 user manual is 783 pages with no page numbers You pay tons of money for the software then half a ton to print the manual and there s no index and no page numbers you have to punch the holes yourself and the binder costs 20 00 cuz it s so fat Go figure If your job needs to trap and you haven t set the traps overprints yourself you had bet
16. ent a properly formatted uncompressed hi resolution pdf made from a properly created origi nal And don t use MSPublisher Please Again stop being cheap and use the right tools On top of that pc turnaround time generally ends up being longer whether anyone likes it or not Deal with it and stop bitching Your pc fonts are terrible not your fault and they make the RIP throw up cuz generally you pc guys don t use them correctly for this kind of output RIPs DO NOT like keyboard algorithms Oops You get Courier Also you don t know what he has to do for his process to your files once he receives them The more they fit his specifications the better off you will be Besides that you really don t want other people going into your files and screwing around with them Maybe this time it s them that doesn t know what s going on and don t think it doesn t happen either especially at printers that don t pay well Where do you think print shop employees come from anyway They come from schools where the students don t know what knockout and overprint mean Honest It s a fact Jack If they come from some schools youre in luck but YOU don t know that going in Give the printer exactly what he asks for and his staff should be able to handle it because he s trained heh heh them Don t ever expect a printer to let you come in and watch the press with your job on it It ain t gonna happen unless of course you are the big yellow box the big X
17. ere and say you don t have time to fix it say to you you don t have time not to know said that already but it can t be said enough Design this buddy Just cuz it looks great doesn t mean jack If it doesn t print out and it needs to it sucks don t care how long you worked on it and neither does the printer or your customer Figure it out it s science We re all on a deadline Your printer will be happy to help you if you ask him what to do prior to presenting your digital files It s way easier if you do it right from the beginning instead of trying to fix it later Don t ask for the sales man ask for the technician He she does art and science all day long and if you re nice to them instead of having an attitude you can learn a whole ton of stuff that will make your digital life easier You might even make a friend instead of an enemy who puts your job on the bottom of the pile When in doubt YOU are the dummy not the printer ASK FOR HELP DON T MAKE ASSUMP TIONS The printer doesn t know your name phone number contact information or anything else about the gory details of your work Don t expect him to find content errors And know in your heart that when they re putting the shrink wrap on the pallet and the person doing that notices a typo on the piece they taped to the outside of the box don t expect them to tell you They won t Even if you ARE Sun Micro Systems ESPECIALLY if you re Sun MicroSystems Don t think for one
18. he things I ve told you to do my comment to you is You don t have time NOT to So there By the way DON T USE ALL UPPER CASE FOR EVERYTHING IT GETS REALLY REALLY HARD TO READ AND BESIDES YOU DON T NEED TO SHOUT ALL THE TIME There is no such thing as a separation house a service bureau or a typesetting house anymore THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A MATCH PRINT ANYMORE You can ask for a contract proof This means whatever proofing device the printer has chosen to use whether you like it or not It can range anywhere from a 40 inkjet to a nice Canon color laser an Iris or some other 100 000 piece of equipment If your job is done in spot color and the contract print comes back with rosettes you know those little dots that make up the color picture in the newspaper on it your printer is an idiot Deal with it quickly and firmly This happens Don t laugh it s not funny No one output device will ever match any other output device s output Also no output device will match its own output from one day to the next without regular proper calibration This holds especially for inkjets which will change from day to day print to print cartridge to cartridge Color lasers too You can either like this or lump it as the case may be In the grand scheme of things there s nothing you can do about it so you need to deal with it If your color is that critical ask for contract proofs and pay for them without complaint At least then you
19. ink it s appropriate because might just tell you Don t assume you know how to do a set up Do YOU know how to set up for a temporary tattoo Betcha you don t Bet you don t know how to set up for flexo either What about silk screening Call the printer dammit Assume nothing Don t send him something you think he SHOULD use and then scream at him when it doesn t look right or work properly Just because you can do something with an application doesn t mean you should Especially if you ve looked it up in the manual and its says right there on the page May cause printing problems If it says that they mean it dammit Don t think it ll work for you when it doesn t even work for them and they said so And don t ask me why they put features into an application that don t work because haven t got a clue Don t cop an attitude with the printer Not for nuthin but he s heard it all before and guess what It still doesn t print Go back and fix it If you re from an ad agency let me talk to your boss Now Your printer is going to assume you re a bigger idiot than he is because that s what usually happens Learn to live with that because he s probably right and if he s not prove it to him by having all your ducks in a row your i s dotted your t s crossed He will love you and put your jobs first Unless you re snotty If you start to have problems with your equipment or an application starts acting weird FIX IT NOW You can sit th
20. t know it s there unless you go to keyline mode or try to place it in a layout program Don t argue about this because I m right and you re not and know this Learn how to use tabs They re important and the RIP understands them not 5 000 spaces to line up the columns Ever heard of a hanging indent or a soft return Learn how to type None of this key boarding crap either Learn to TYPE And don t import some damned spreadsheet unless you know how to use it properly Tab delineated forever Don t know what that means Don t bring your files in unless you expect to pay for the fixes The very last thing you should do before you bring ANY file in to be offset printed is flip through the pages from first to last in page layout type view with no guidelines turned on no hidden characters on no nuthin so you re looking at the page the way it should print If you ve made a pdf of the file this is a perfect way to view the finished product It is amazing how many problems will pop right off the page at you when you do this This is especially valuable when using MSWord as IT will allow you to set type beyond a page margin and you ll never know unless you look at it in page layout view Even FreeHand doesn t let you do that and it s not a word processor What is up with that anyway MSWord is a word processing program How could it let type set outside the margins for god s sake Give me a break If you say you don t have time to do any of t
21. ter let the printer know that ahead of time so he can make up for it when it RIPs And if you did you better let him know that too Do not send any jpg files in to be offset printed no matter what Use eps for vectors or tiff for rasters If you don t know what THAT means go back and read the manual Offset printers DO NOT have RIPs that can spit out a file separation with a jpg image in it There is no output device on the face of the earth that will color separate a jpg file because by its very nature it is RGB which is the wrong color space It s physics dammit Remember you re doing science too not just art Other file formats to watch out for bmp gif or any other web type format Bmps are just crap that s too big for its own good Save it as a tiff and it s way smaller and the RIP likes it And don t keep all that extra white space around the actual image in a raster image It just makes your file larger and harder to resize in the layout application If your vector image is coming in with white behind it get rid of the damned white box you or someone else put in back It shouldn t be there If there isn t a white box there select all copy and paste into a new document cuz there s some thing wrong with the file No vector image shows up with white behind it unless there s something wrong or you put a white box there This can also happen when you paste a file from another applica tion into a vector app so pay attention You won
22. u might not even remember what they re all called but the computer does Use the application to collect it for you That s what computers are for PageMaker and InDesign will package the fonts for you also however Quark will not It does however make a report which will tell you what fonts are used so you can gather them yourself Do it InDesign will even preflight for you letting you know right up front if you forgot to change an image from RGB to CMYK or Greyscale or if the fonts are missing and lots of other cool stuff If you have this application please take advantage of that feature It rocks Your files need to be vectors Illustrator or FreeHand eps encapsulated postscript rasters PhotoShop or anything like it tif tagged image file format and can be in the following modes bit map mode NOT bmp file extension greyscale mode or CMYK DO NOT USE RGB MODE FOR OFFSET PRINTING This is a physics issue and fighting it is like fighting gravity Don t try it Do not use PhotoShop eps files unless you have a really good reason Not all applications will accept a PhotoShop psd file Not all applications will accept an Illustrator ai file You are always safe with tif for rasters and eps for vectors Do not compress your files and expect them to RIP This is part of the problem with jpg files they re compressed Do not use CorelDraw for anything going to offset It does not RIP well font conversions produce excruciatingly horrific
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