I started reading computer arts magazine and i noticed they had an article that they interview Ed Templeton from Red Design, I immediately thought that i should share this interview from the magazine as I thought it could benefit others and get some quick tips about print design.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- Crops and Bleeds - Setting up print bleeds in Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign
- Colour Code Chart - Colour Codes Matching Chart HTML (Convert CMYK, RGB Hex)
- Megapixels - Pixel resolution and print sizes
- CYMK - Every thing about CMYK
- Print Designers - An intresting look in to print design
- 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.
17 Comments
Great article! I’ve been contacted by a t-shirt printer here in town who’s asked me to design a few shirts for him. I’ve never done print work before and have been scouring the web looking for resources. This article along with the links at the end was so helpful. I also can’t wait to read some of the guest posts on the subject.
@ Angie - Yea i hope there will be plenty of fresh informative posts gives people a chance to write about something there interested in…cool you should definatly show us some of your tshirt designs once youve done them.
@ Angie - Shirts are even different still, since you’re dealing with silk screening instead of a CMYK ink or digital press. It presents it’s own unique challenges.
Thankfully, just about any well designed t-shirt is a potential lesson in problem solving. Dealing with overprinting colours, colour limitations. It’s fun stuff! And best of all is seeing people around wearing something you designed :)
Best of luck!
As for printing - best tips I can provide is make sure you check your ink limit in Photoshop or InDesign so that those rich dark blacks don’t get too heavy and smudge. This is especially true with newsprint. The last thing you want is dark black smears all over everything!
This is a great resource article - thanks! Just moving over to working a lot more in print, having mainly been motion and web designer before.
Thanks!
Great article. I just went through this with a job at work for the first time and it was incredibly painful. Getting a Pantone to Processed color chart is an invaluable resource. Pantone colors are expensive to reproduce, but processed colors are necessarily as reliable. In the end, we went with processed, but matched as closely as we could to the Pantone color our product was painted in. It turned out well, but required the help of a very experienced printer.
I never really considered this before, but when I read this article it struck me that I am in fact an old fart. I may only be 32 years old, but when I started out in the advertising bizz 13 years ago there was ONLY the print world when it came to layout. Yes we had TV but apart from that, there were no other stuff that went on a screen.
Now I mostly work with web-based design as well, but I still have more than 8 years of experience of working with CMYK (and PANTONE colors) as well as embossing, partial gloss, overprinting and all those other fun little tricks of the trade. Just found it funny that so many designers coming out today never made anything on paper - that never occurred to me before.
STUMBLED!
What an indepth article, thanks for posting.
@ Marc - very informative, i suppose you never instanly think how low ink can affect your print quality, nice tip.
@ PBP - yea there seemsto be alot of techical stuff involved in printing can be quite a task to get it right some times.
@ Clint - Its true alot of people are not taught / do not teach them selves about print design and preparing for print, its recently dawned on me that, i love creating illustrations but never thought about how to print them, and was never taught on my web / interactive media course. it would be a great skill just to master the basics and take it from there
Great comments every one keep them coming Got any more tips?
@max - it is funny you mention that actually. Right now I am working on some business cards for a client. Originally the task was to design a logo and develop a website (a wordpress tweak + theme) but they liked the design so much that they now want to use the look for all their printed stuff as well.
This of course is no problem for me, because I made all the graphic elements in Illustrator and then imported them into Photoshop. Meaning that I can just use the same vector elements for my print designs in InDesign and it will still look good. Again, I never thought about this when I was designing the website, but I suppose this is also something that comes from the print experience. I always make my graphic elements, logos and so on as vector wherever possible. That way I know that they can always be used for whatever purpose later on.
This made me wonder: How many of you guys that “grew up” designing for screen, make your logos and elements pixel based in 72 ppi?
Great article. I know when I first started designing, the whole print side of things was crazy and really hard to understand - why would my nice, bright designs come back from the printers all dull?! I didn’t get it, cuz it’s not talked about enough, even at uni. So thanks for this article. The more we all talk about it, the better.
Re. your dpi question - I ‘grew up’ designing for screen only (probably half the reason the print world was so daunting), but even so, I always design my logos, etc at min. 300dpi.
nice tips.great article. and i find it very useful
Ronald
Nice article, Im yet to open my CA this month, havent read last months. Need/Want to but been too busy!
Как хорошо что удалось отыскать такой замечательный блог, и тем более отлично, что есть такие авторы толковые!.
Nice article on CMYK and print design. Especially good for us web designers who maybe know less than they should about print design. This covers all the basics you need to know.
Thank you so much, I really needed this, Great Work
i am a print designer with a some web design experience. for being such a short article i think you did a pretty good job explaining overall what you need to keep in mind when designing on the print side. nicely done.
Thank you, I really need to know this before buying it.