::week 5::
[identity packages & going to print]

Seems this week I spent more time snooping in online resources on printing, desktop publishing, creating images that are print ready and so forth than fiddling with images. I really need to get better at this kind of thing. I can fiddle with designs that look good on the web all day long, but the translation to print is another ballgame all together. I've been feeling that I really need to bite the bullet lately and go back to either the local community college or the art school and take some real world courses. Of course, that also means I need to go grab some of the industry standard software needed to compete properly in the *real world* of graphic design. Or even to take the classes for that matter. PS7, Illustrator, QuarkXPress, etc. etc. All hefty price tickets and no student discount via online schools. Now being enrolled in an accredited college level course should get me that discount, but all the way around we are talking about a big chunk of change.

We forge onward with the tools at hand and shake our heads at the belief that you have to have the industry standard tools to succeed in life. We are setting out to prove them wrong. Unless you want to go back into corporate America again [I do not] I believe you can work with the tools that best showcase your skills and fit your current budget. Just need a bit of creative thinking and lots of practice. There! I feel better already. *grin*

On that cheerful note, before we proceed farther into week 5, I have to say I was going a bit more deeply through some of the links from week 4 earlier this week [late as usual] and wandered upon this link within the links. It fits my idea of a business model well. I don't do official and corporate style thinking well, I just don't like it and don't much care to participate. This was much more up my alley. Glad I'm not the only silly person out there who thinks people like to do business with friendly people/businesses who seem to care about them on a personal level:

Self Promotion With Emotion:
[http://www.1099.com/c/co/gw/lf/linda030.html]

Enough off topic rambles. Back to the subject at hand.

As I said earlier, I spent more time poking around online than designing that letterhead and such. I went back to my goblin in the Jumping Jax add as the logo to use. I fiddled and putzed around with several ideas, all of which seemed to fussy, so I ended up going back to the simplest one. Have to remember that these are going to have writing added [letterhead & envelope, anyway. I tried to check for margins by overlaying a translucent layer and dotted outline You can't really see what I was seeing full size at this reduction but I believe I have enough border on these pieces. [White space outside the blue is margin, and there really is some at the top of this tiny biz card copy, I promise.]

[Blue is central part of the paper that requires ink. The white edge is margin.]

The top margins appear to be significantly less than the other three. They are in a sense as the feather in the goblin's headdress reaches above the body of the image and page in a little wisp. His right side fluffies also reach beyond the true rectangular body of the design, so the margins of the area that will be printed are not totally even on each side. If they were, I believe the overall visual impact would be out of whack. If you get out a magnifying glass, you can see that the rulers are set to inches and there appears to be enough white space...I think. lol

I also poked around and looked at some of the things I need to be better at addressing and need to be aware of if I am going to a commercial printer and not to someone who can copy straight from my digital files or doing it myself off of an inkjet printer.

Here's a peek at an example of the way the CMYK split negatives might look.

Various sites from the lesson and the web talked about Pantone colors, print processes and the importance of knowing what to expect on the printed page. RGB splits and webview are not reliable sources if you are going to a printer who uses CMYK and Pantone colors.

Here are a couple from the web which I found interesting:

Notes from a printer to clients. One thing I found really interesting was the note on embedded fonts in a graphic vs. converting text to curves:
[http://www.steeleyprint.com/GRAPHICS.htm]

And a goldmine of articles on color can be found at the Pantone site:

[http://www.pantone.com/products/products.asp?idArticle=115&idArea=16]

I have been looking through some of the Pantone color swatches that are available with my version of Freehand, but first knowing that the monitor display may not be accurate and second assuming that different printers will have different processes and preferences, I think it would be best to work with the printer of your choice [or your client's choice] and proceed from the physical, non-online color swatch books. There are waaaaayyy too many choices & variables for me to make a decision on color for print here.

However, there is also another school of thinking for projects that may be done on a higher quality inkjet printer. Those seem to be coming more into popularity lately as the quality of the printers improves. [Hey, kids are now printing *funny money* on home printer systems and getting away with it since the quality is so good...haha] It can be an extremely cost effective way to create smaller orders or on demand printed material.

Here's an article on printing formats and PS7 in .pdf format. [Note: Instructions and ideas also work well with many other graphic programs. ] It may take a minute to dl, but worth the wait if you are interested in trying some of your own printing or have a shop that will work with you this way:

[http://www.shanzcan.com/photoshop/prt_ffmts.pdf]

And, back to cmyk printing, a series of articles from Webmonkey that is a bit out of date and software specific, but still has many valuable tips and ideas:

[http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/99/07/index1a.html?tw=design]

I could go on listing places I have been visiting for hours, but I think that would make this assignment page a bit too long. I will eventually get the stack of resources I have been compiling onto a page and attach it to that dead link down below and my main resource listing. I am crossing my fingers and hoping I will have time next week.

Until then, my identity package ideas can be found at the link below. TaTa for now.....

_^..^_
Farron