1. On the Importance of Print

2.  While you’re spending time on your phone  Don’t worry I’m not judging you  The world standard for communication is still very heavily in the world of print  You honestly don’t think about it, but really look at the crap your parents get in the mail sometime.  Major companies have streamlined printing to the point that small Mom&Pop stores are being driven out of business.

3.  But you’ll bet when you get your own place you will see things like this weekly:

4.  When you’re at the doctor you’ll see:

5.  And when someone has an answer to your problem they might toss you one of these:

6.  The money isn’t being in a small print company, the money is in designing things that look good for print.  While Photoshop certainly plays its part, Adobe Illustrator (and InDesign) are the programs that make it happen.  These programs tend to unify your efforts across a couple of programs into one complete project.

7.  Adobe Illustrator will be our focus, and we’ll be tagging in InDesign later to finish out our Custom Deck of Playing Cards.  Adobe Illustrator is a vector-based design program, which deals primarily in paths, objects and CYMK color.

8. CC  Cyan MM  Magenta YY  Yellow KK  Black

9.  Here’s where old terminology comes back to haunt you.  CMYK is an additive color system, meaning the colors mix together to ultimately, in equal parts, create pure black.  vs. RGB, which involves mixing light, so it mixes together in equal parts to eventually create white.

10.  As opposed to RGB, CMYK colors are a little duller.  It’s very hard to make a neon color in CMYK  The vibrance of CMYK colors is dependent on the gamut of the paper it’s being printed on.  Gamut: Range of colors a medium can display  Colors will look awesome on white paper  Less so on newspaper gray.

11.  When designing for print, the most important question will always be “What’s this being used for?”  This means all the difference. If the customer asks for a flier, ask where it’s going to be given out. If they say “A hospital” they’re not taping fliers to the walls, they really mean brochures. It really couldn’t hurt to clarify at this point, before anyone wastes time.  Brochures are a different animal, require different amounts of time invested in the design, and typically cost more in man-hours to make.

13.  Before we even get started designing, we need to run through common print terms that have to be understood thoroughly.  Starting with the driest of subject matter, the paper details.  Paper comes in a variety of sizes, thickness, and textures. It’s going to be increasingly important for you to know what the right type of paper is for the job.

14.  Sizes according to ‘Murica  “Standard” means Letter sized. ▪ Letter is 8.5in wide x 11in tall.  “Legal” is used by law offices and gym membership contracts for the extra space ▪ Legal is 8.5in x 14in.  “Tabloid” is 11in x 17in. ▪ If you do the math, that’s two standard pages side by side (8.5 times 2)  “Tabloid Extra” is 12in x 18in. ▪ This is used typically to print an 11x17 that bleeds to the edge of the sheet.

15.  Printer paper comes in a weight class called “offset” paper. This is the paper you are most used to. They are measured in “weights” or 20, 24, and 28 pounds typically.  “Cover” stock is thick paper that is usually used as a cover for a booklet. Their typical weights are 80 pound and 100 pound weights.  “Cardstocks” are special papers and only used occasionally because they’re so thick.

16.  Smooth  This paper is what you’re used to, and the paper is smooth to the touch.  Linen  This is a fancy paper that mimics the look and feel of linen cloth. It has an interweaved pattern to it. It makes for a more expensive product, and looks nicer.  Laid  Stop laughing.  A striated pattern of horizontal lines giving it an older, rustic, authoritative appeal.  Vellum Bristol  A paper stock typically used for things inbetween offset and paper. If you have your Adobe certificate, these are printed on vellum bristol. It’s firm yet flimsy (stop laughing) and has a distinct texture.

17.  Printers are not perfect, and when a piece of paper rolls through a complex set of rollers to become your document, paper can shift along the way.  The only way to overcome this would be to print.  Very.  Slowly.  Nobody makes money printing 6 pages a minute.

18.  Margin is the boundary you set for yourself in case the paper shifts during printing.  In a traditional print shop such as the one I worked at, you might get into an argument about how much margin to use.  For the class, designing with.25in of margin all the way around is preferred. Use guides to set margins in Illustrator.

21.  Most printers, especially high-speed ones designed for high-yield printing, do not print to the edge of a sheet.  The color “bleeds” to the edge of a sheet.  Bleeds are the extra color information left outside the boundary of the artboard in case the printer shifts, and without bleed the color would simply end with a white line.

24.  This is one of the reasons that 11x17 and 12x18 paper exists – to be able to design a document larger than 8.5x11 to accommodate color bleeding off the edge of the paper.  The final print is cut down, eliminating the excess bleed and giving you an 8.5x11 (or whatever the size was) with color right to the edge.