Hello web designers, developers, and graphic artists of all sorts!

Greetings from the semi-arcane world of print design! Your concern over things like white space, usability, and sweet signature icon sets is strange to us, as our ways must be to you…

Okay, maybe it’s not that bad, but print is a different world. From my perspective working at a printing house, I see more and more web-based companies beginning to invest in print collateral.

The challenge for those with a background in web business is to figure out how to create compelling, effective print design to advertise their online presence.

Print Design Philosophy

One of the great things about designing for print is that you can create the most bold, colorful designs you can imagine. The crucial bit is to recognize the difference between creating a busy design, and a complex design.

A print design can have a lot of color and depth and interesting stuff for the eye to absorb, but it has to focus on one central message.

Print designs can’t be laid out like a web page, with a bunch of different elements to look at, because viewers simply aren’t going to browse around your printed piece. The goal in print is to suck the viewer in for five seconds, get your point across, then release.

Choosing Your Weapons

Print design often begins with choosing what type of print collateral you’re going to develop. Obviously, some forms of print advertising are going to work better for web companies than others. Lucky for those with small budgets, web business can generate a lot of traffic using inexpensive forms of printing like business cards, flyers, and postcards.

These smaller items work because you want people to actually have something they can carry with them, get your URL from, and check it out, without having to write it down themselves off a poster or billboard.

A perfect example of this is direct mail. Call it ‘junk,’ but mail that advertises a website can turn over an unbelievably strong ROI because it asks almost nothing from a recipient but that they sit at their computer, like they always do, and check out a new site.

How The Environment Affects A Print Job

One of the major differences between web design and print design is that your finished print job is going to be out there working and competing for attention in the great outdoors. Before you begin designing, think about:

1. Where you printing is going to be displayed, and,
2. How it’s going to be perceived by your target audience.

Location Factor #1 – Weather

By now, you’ve heard about choosing paper and coating that best fits your design. Maybe you’re thinking of choosing a matte finish because it traps ink differently than a high gloss. But wait! A high gloss also stands up to adverse weather conditions better than a matte.

Will your print design be in direct sunlight? Will it be exposed to rain? Choosing UV and water-resistant materials will help to weatherproof your printing, but it will also change the way your design looks. Be aware of the variables that comes when working with diverse materials.

Location Factor #2 – Lighting and Landscapes

Also think about how your print designs will look under different types of lighting, and in different landscapes. Don’t choose colors that will fade into a concrete urban background, even if they do look great online or in Photoshop. Also remember that most reds look brilliant during the day, but they fade into shades of grey at night or in low lighting situations. This is called The Purkinje Effect.

Perception Factor #1 – Limited Access To The Viewer

Print is almost the web’s opposite when it comes to how is viewed. Online, viewers seek you out, and you offer an interactive viewing and listening experience that will hopefully engage people for an extended period of time.

In print, your goal is to grab attention away from whatever else someone is focusing on, and control their experience so that they almost helplessly absorb your message before moving on.

When it comes to large pieces displayed in public areas, you have approximately 2-4 seconds to grab attention and deliver your message. And in general – take a poster, for example – they will be standing about 3 feet away from your work.

If they have to move in closer to read, they’ll walk away. If design elements are too big and overwhelming, they’ll also walk away, because the eye simply won’t register what’s right in front of it as significant.

Perception Factor #2 – Functionality

Although the impulse with print can be to really let that think-outside-the-box-i-ness run wild, the trick is to always combine visual and tactile appeal with functionality. Most printing is a particular size and shape for a reason.

For example, designing a crazy business card that stands out from the pack is great, but if it’s too large, fat, or heavily textured to fit in a wallet, it probably won’t get included in to that special place people go for important names and numbers.

The same applies to club cards, brochures, and other printing that can be displayed in shops and restaurants and the like. If printing doesn’t fit into display fixtures, it will frustrate the middle-person who’s supposed to be putting it into the appropriate slot.

Much as is the case with a graphic artist handing off web designs to a programmer – frustrate that middle-person, and waste your investment.

Common Ground

In print design, as in web design, the functionality of a printed piece, or an entire campaign, rules the day. If it disintegrates in the rain, disappears in low light, baffles with its complexity, or annoys your waitress, it’s dead in the water.

Create print designs with an awareness of the environmental and human factors that come into play, and you’ll be amazed at the power of print to drive web traffic.

Skulls

T-Shirts with skull designs are arguably the most popular theme on the internet and in retail. Something about death just gets designers and t-shirt lovers united.

Trees

Trees are one of the most symbolic pieces of design and probably the reason for their popularity. They can equate to life, growth, green living, reunion, and much more.

Birds

Birds definitely win the versatility award for having the ability to range from cute to scary and from large to small. They can be the focal point and make the whole design or just be an accessory and play a small part in the big picture.

Splatter

Splatter is a pretty simple effect that can be useful for the majority of t-shirt design concepts. There are many resources on the internet for photoshop brushes and vectored image packs with splatter to add to a t-shirt designer’s toolbox.

Floral

Floral artwork is another wildy popular component of t-shirt design because of its all-purpose usability. It usually sits in the background and can act as polish for the featured portion of the artwork.

As with anything else, what is hot today can be cold tomorrow but these 5 design elements and concepts have been in high demand for some time now. Our guess is that with the increasing amount of platforms for t-shirt design, these design elements will reach saturation at a faster rate than ever before.

Hopefully these designs are inspiring, because custom t-shirts can be a great and fun form of promotion, whether it’s for a business, band, freelancer, etc. Aside from that, they’re awesome to come up with just for the sake of creativity and design.

Gamut (GAM-ut):

Gamut is the range of available color on an output device. Each device has its own gamut capabilities. If the gamut fall out of that particular devices range, it is shown inaccurately on the display or cannot be printed. We then say a color is “out of gamut”.

Hue:

The basis of a color and usually refers to the name of the color (red, purple, yellow, etc.)

Saturation:

Saturation is the color intensity of an image. A color with high saturation will appear brighter and more vibrant than the same color with low saturation. Colors in gray scale images have no saturation.

Value:

The lightness or darkness of a gray or a color. The darkest level or value of gray is black and the lightest level of gray is white.

Tint:

A variation of a color obtained by adding white

Shade:

A variation of a color obtained by adding black.

Know More?

I know there are many more terms when it comes to color, but I like to keep these short. If you have more please add them in your comments.

To kick things off on this inaugural list: Typography Terms!

Kern:

to squeeze together characters, for a better fit of strokes and white space. In display type, characters almost need to be kerned because the white space between characters at large sizes is more noticeable.

Pica (PIE-ka):

A measurement used in typography for column widths and other space specifications in a page layout. There are 12 points in a pica, and approximately 6 picas to an inch.

Point:

A measurement used in typography for type size, leading, and other space specifications in a page layout. There are 12 points in a pica, and approximately 70 points to an inch.

Leading (LED-ing):

The space between lines of type, traditionally measured

baseline-to-baseline, in points. Text type is generally set with one or two points of leading; for example, 10-point type with 2 points of leading. This is described as 10/12, read “Ten on Twelve” or “Ten over Twelve”.

x-height:

The height of the lowercase “x.” More generally, the height of the lowercase letters.

If you dug this, please hit me with some comment love, I will make more :D

He’s compiled some tips that should be taken in to consideration before presenting your files to the printer for printing. Expect to see more posts from him in the coming weeks as well as other authors.

Define Page Size and/or Bleeds correctly

Page elements that bleed should extend 1/8″ past the page boundary. The page dimensions should be exactly the same as your final trim size of the piece. DO NOT build your page elements in the middle of a bigger page and manually add crop or registration marks. They will probably get printed and your piece will suck.

Provide bitmap images at adequate minimum resolution

NEVER, EVER, EVER use image you copied from a website in your print job. Not only will this violate some copyright laws, it will also render a very ugly result. Web images are almost always 72dpi. You want to use images that are at least 300dpi.

Provide import source files

If you are using an image editing program like Photoshop, you may want to include the layered PSD file so that if any minor adjustments could be made by the printer. THIS IS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR THINGS TO BE INCORRECT TO BEGIN WITH.

Supply image files in CMYK mode

Things are printed in CMYK. Things on screen are viewed in RGB. It is much easier to work on files in an RGB profile as it allows for the most flexibility in image editing. However, make sure you flatten and convert these files to CMYK before they are used in the final work. If sent to press while still in RGB mode, chances are good that the printing software will kick up all sorts of errors.

Define spot and/or process colors correctly

Speaking of colors, it is a good idea to define all spot and process colors so the printer has either a PMS number or a CMYK formula to use. You should really be doing this any way to keep everything consistent.

Provide proofs

You should always provide a proof to the printer so they know what the job should look like when it’s finished. I like to use a PDF because they are pretty much universally utilized.

Include all imports…ALL imports

This is one of the most critical steps that some, ahem, “designers” forget about. Anytime you use an image, logo or graphic in a file to be printed it isn’t actually copying that image. It is linking it to the original files location.

So if you don’t include these with your packaged file set when it goes to the printer guess what, you aren’t gonna have any of those linked images in the final work. Lucky for you most current page layout software like Adobe InDesign, Quark and Pagemaker (do people still use Pagemaker?) can do this for you by running a “Preflight” or “Package” command.

Include all fonts…ALL fonts

Sending all the fonts used in a job is VERY important. If you use a font that your printer doesn’t have then one of two things will happen.

1. Your job will be printed with the closest match the software can find
   (if you are using a reputable printer this should really never be the case)
2. The printer will contact you to get the appropriate font from you.

Communicate with your printer

Talk to the people who will be handling your job. Let them know exactly what you want to accomplish with your printed work and they will be able to guide you in making sure everything is correct.

Some definitions:

CMYK: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Black), the four process color inks. These are the inks used to print full color images.

Bleed: When an image or printed color extends beyond the trimmed edge of a page. Bleeding ensures that the print extends to the edges of the paper. The paper is usually trimmed to the desired size after printing.

Spot Color: An ink formula resulting in a specific color. Each spot color will need its own film/plate. Referred to as PMS (Pantone) colors sometimes.

Process Color: One of the 4 colors in CMYK – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black

Proof: A rendering of what the final printed result will look like.

Print design isn’t talked about enough in the web design community and id like to learn more about it as I’m from an intense web based background and hopefully others do too, this should be a nice start to a series of posts about print design in the coming weeks if you’d like to contribute a post feel free to contact me.

The Interview from Computer Arts magazine

Make a plan

At an early stage, decide what paper stock you’re printing on and what finish will be applied: matt, gloss, varnish, laminate and so on. Are there any benefits or limitations to your choice of paper and finish that you should bear in mind while designing.

Talk to your printer

Describe your project to your printer to get their grids or agree delivery requirements early on. A good printer will advise you of any potential problems with your design or stock choices – and may offer alternatives.

The Right Tools

Use the right software for the job. Just because you know Photoshop doesn’t mean you should design a magazine in it! Create and amend images in pixel-based programs such as Photoshop; make illustrations and so on in vector based programs; and compile and lay out for print in programs such as InDesign.

Understand CMYK

The coloured inks Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (or Black) are laid down in that order, Black being last and acting as ‘Key’ that locks the image together. Once you understand the process you can use it in creative ways such as overprinting blocks of C, M or Y or creating a ‘rich black’ of K plus some C, M and Y.

Get colour reference

Using colours swatches at the design stage such as ‘Pantone Solid to Process’ or ‘4-Colour Process Guide’ is invaluable. Most monitors aren’t perfectly print-calibrated, so colours on screen wont look the same in print – check the coated and uncoated swatches to get a better idea.

Working in RGB

When using images its much easier to manipulate an retouch them in RGB mode in Photoshop, When you’re done, flatten the image and convert to CMYK before placing it in your layout software.

Don’t fake fonts

Use only the actual fonts for bold, italic, and other styles when having a document printed commercially. If you’ve used the software fake italic, it’s possible that the text won’t show up as italic when printed. Besides the real font has been designed for the purpose better.

Bleed and Slug

The bleed and slug areas are trimmed away at the documents final size. The former is the area beyond the trim line for images or other elements that you want to ‘bleed’ off the edge of he page. The latter is an area where you can put non-printing information, such as project details.

Do a pre-flight

This is a final quality check that you can perform to make sure the printer is getting all the files, fonts and images in the right formats. It used to be a manual process, but these days most layout programs will do it automatically, so there’s no excuse.

Proof for perfection

Ideally, your printer will provide a proof you sign off before the job goes ahead. If that’s not possible you can run some checks on your print-ready PDF. Using Acrobat to preview separations, ink coverage, transparency and overprinting.

Interview Summary

• know what paper your going to use or want and notify your printer.
• Get advise from your printer, for recommendations on your project that you want printing
• Try to use the right tools for creating print documents such as Adobe InDesign
• Use the actual font that is supplied so if its not italic don’t make it italic in the program such as Photoshop
• Make sure your content is inside the bleed and slug
• Do a pre flight to see if there are any problems with your work.
• Test your document that you have had printed for quality.

More Information

here are a few more things to consider when deciding on your paper choice for print and what effect it will have.

1. Opacity of the paper: in reference to how much you can see through the paper e.g. A magazines pages will want less opacity otherwise the reader maybe put off by the text showing through the paper.
2. Thickness of the paper: The right thickness of paper should be used as thick paper costs more and can make documents look thicker than they actually are such as books, and e.g. Business cards use thick paper / card.
3. Brightness: If the paper is coated in varnish a lot of light will be reflected from the paper, if the paper is too bright this can prevent who ever is reading the page from seeing certain parts. e.g. magazine covers.
4. Strength of the paper: paper bags, or shoe boxes have a particular need to be durable and strong due to the amount of weight that will be put on them, where as other things such as magazine pages don’t need to be.

Useful Links about Print

1. Crops and Bleeds – Setting up print bleeds in Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign
2. Colour Code Chart – Colour Codes Matching Chart HTML (Convert CMYK, RGB Hex)
3. Megapixels – Pixel resolution and print sizes
4. CYMK – Every thing about CMYK
5. Print Designers – An intresting look in to print design
6. Colour Theory 101 – Increasing and decreasing the amount of colour CMYK and RGB

This is just an introduction

Hopefully this post can get you thinking more about printing work to quality standards and preperation, this is just an introduction to a series of posts dedicated to print design and how to go about doing it the right way.