Hi all,

I've been lurking on these boards for about a year now and I could use a little advice. I would have introduced myself sooner, but I'm kind of shy.

Short history of my problem: I work as a marketing coordinator for a small division of a large corp. Until recently my digital art hobby has been only for my own enjoyment and relaxation (in addition to Photoshop, I dabble in Illustrator, Poser, Bryce, Rhino and I'm trying to learn Softimage).

A while back one of the ads we run in an industry trade mag needed to have our new logo inserted. Doing this through the regular channels would have involved either going through our global art dept (countless forms and many months involved) or using an outside graphics firm (way beyond my dept's budget). So, being fairly comfortable in PS I did the job myself.

Well, one thing has led to another and now I find myself creating entire ads from scratch. I'm comfortable with the artwork, but the problem is I'm totally lost when it comes to dealing with the mechanical requirements from the printers: color separations, embedding fonts, bleeds, slugs (I don't want no slugs in my ad, snails might be ok, they're kinda cute, lol).

Anyway, I would be deeply indebted to anyone who can recommend some good resources that explain the basics: books, tutorials, online courses, etc. Everything I've been able to find seems to speak to those who already have more knowledge than myself. I'm sorry if this isn't the right forum to post this request. If someone can point me to a more appropriate venue, I'd be greatly appreciative of that, as well.

Best regards,
Leilani

Hi, Leilani, The best place to start is with the print bureau -- ask them as many questions as they have the time to answer. More often than not, they'll appreciate your asking because it means an effort on your part to give them the cleanest, most technically sound files that you can. Next, there is a Computer Arts Projects issue out that focuses on Print Design -- October 2004 issue. I haven't read it yet, but I imagine there's loads of stuff in there for the newbie to learn. And finally, here's a primer from me. The trim is where the actual printed piece will be cut -- the actual edges of the final piece. The bleed is the area around the trim -- usually about a quarter-inch out; it's there so that if the trim is a little off, the image/design/color is still there along the edges. The margin is the area just inside the trim -- usually about a quarter-inch in; printers recommend you keep all text within the margin because, again, if the trim is a little off, then nothing important will be cut off. Color separations are done in CMYK -- Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. Those are the four colors used to print, so it's a good idea to convert your images to CMYK when prepping for print. Embedding fonts usually has to do with PDF files. PDFs are created by Adobe Distiller, which comes with Adobe Acrobat, and there are settings within it that allow you to embed the fonts. What a graphic designer typically does is work within QuarkXPress, InDesign, or PageMaker, print their layout to PostScript, and then drop the PostScript file in Distiller, where it gets made into a PDF. The best thing to do when using this process is to ask your printer for their preferred settings within Distiller. They can usually send you some kind of preferences file to put somewhere. If you are not working in Quark, InDesign, or PageMaker and instead are making layouts in Illustrator, then the thing to do with fonts is to Create Outlines (should be under the Text drop-down menu) out of all the text within your file so you don't have to worry about sending them any fonts -- this is because all fonts within your document will have been turned into shapes/paths. If you are sending layouts that you did in Photoshop, the best thing to do is send them a flattened TIF or EPS file -- then the fonts are rasterized and you don't need to send them anything. I'm not sure about slug -- I think it's any piece of scrap, photo, or text within a layout. In Quark, InDesign, or PageMaker, elements are in boxes. If you want to slug in some text, you create a text box and put the text in there. If you want to slug in an image, you create an image box and import an image into it. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask. I've been working as a web and print graphic designer full time for at least five years now, doing catalogs, brochures, books, business cards, etc., so I might know some answers. In the meantime, I hope this helps. :)

And then there are spot colors (Ooooh... shudder) Dont' try those in Photoshop. :) That's when instead of full color (CMYK separations) the client may want a 2 color job (or 3, or...) with like only black and red, for example. Illustrator should handle this well, (I've used Corel for years, not Ill.) but they should be the same there. Just thought I would throw my 2 cents in to let you know you have a lot of support in here with a lot of knowledge to draw from. It never hurts to ask, I'm sure you'll have an answer to the question within hours of asking. :) Rich

Attached Link: http://desktoppub.about.com/library/glossary/bl_glossary.htm

Okay, this is weird. I've posted two replies and neither appeared. Is there some kind of a time out feature? Well - that one worked. scratches head

Message edited on: 11/08/2004 21:22

Aprilgem thanks so much for taking the time to go through all that info. I found it very helpful. Ill definitely have to check out that magazine. You mentioned using either Quark or InDesign. I have both but I havent taken the time to learn them yet. Which one do you prefer? Pstekky all offers of help are greatly appreciated. Believe me, I will be taking you up on it. J Satanimus that is a great link! I spent a couple of hours just clicking around to see what all was there, and I signed up for some of the newsletters. Wow! I wasnt expecting to get this much help. You guys are great. Thanks so much. Leil

RE: Quark vs. InDesign I honestly couldn't tell you. I've been working with Quark forever, but I've played around with InDesign, like it, and have heard good things about it. If I were starting out, I'd probably choose InDesign simply because of the feature set and its ability to work seamlessly with Photoshop and Illustrator. I use Quark at work, version 4, so that means I'm using the Classic OS9 on Mac. I think the newest version is designed to work on OSX, but I don't know. The art department plans to convert everything to InDesign because many companies are going that way, but I don't really see it happening any time soon. I use InDesign at home. I've used it for only a couple of projects, and I've practiced converting Quark pages over. I've set it so that the Quark shortcuts are active because I'm comfortable with them. If I didn't have the Quark shortcuts on, I probably couldn't do a project completely in InDesign without referring to a book somehow. So really, the only thing holding me back on InDesign is a slight learning curve. All in all, my advice is go with InDesign. It's the way of the future. :)

Quark is one of the old steadfast layout programs out there and has quite a following, but as April mentioned InDesign is the direction the future holds as it is more tightly integrated with other apps like Photoshop, Illustrator ...(and all the other Adobe apps ;)...)

More and more developers are making "suite" styled programs to work together and thus some of the older apps will fall into disuse. If you're starting out it's probably a better "time" investment to learn InDesign.

p.s. we also have a pretty inclusive "On-Line Graphics Dictionary" here if you look up on the righthand sidebar under the FEATURES heading, you'll find a link there.

don't be afraid to ask anything, that's why we hang around ;)

:)
retrocity

...oh and welcome to the forum ;)

Cool, glad to have been of assistance< :):) ya'all come back now, y'hear!