Spring always evokes feelings of renewal and growth. Naturally, Georgia Printer would take advantage of the season to communicate print’s ability to stay fresh on its Spring 2010 cover – but how to do it in a way that most readers hadn’t seen before?
Through the addition of simulated animation we were able to show that after centuries of innovation, print is still on the move.
Engaging The Senses
In previous issues, Georgia Printer explored sensory experiences created by print through texture (touch) and scent (smell). We wanted to take this approach a step further by experimenting with the illusions created through sight.
This led to our earliest decision to use fluorescent ink for a bright and eye-catching effect. With a neon hue, The Spring 2010 cover would be visually shocking enough to stand out in readers’ mailboxes. But how could we create cover art to push the idea even further? Read more »
Last year, I had two annual reports on press at the same time. One book had heavy black coverage, but dried just fine. The other had heavy blue coverage and took two extra days to dry!
On another project, the blue ink appeared to be dry, so the printer proceeded to die cut and trim the sheets. The result? The ink offset or rubbed off from one page to another on the finished product. All of the pieces had to be reprinted – at the printer’s expense.
When I worked at Nordstrom, the primary brand color was a very dark blue. Over those two years, I spent a lot of time waiting for ink to dry!
The culprit in every case? Blue. Reflex blue.
It’s in the Ink Formula
So why do some blue inks dry so slowly? The answer lies in the ink formula. Every spot color is mixed from some of the 14 mixing colors: yellow, yellow 012, orange 021, warm red, red 032, rubine red, rhodamine red, purple, violet, blue 072, reflex blue, process blue, green and black. Read more »
The Direct Mail Dynamics Webinar PaperSpecs presented in May garnered unprecedented registration and attendance numbers, so it should come as no surprise that our speaker Trish Witkowski of foldfactory.com, simply could not get to all the excellent questions posted during the session. She was gracious enough to answer them for us here.
Trish told us she had a blast doing the Webinar and also wanted to extend special thanks to Don Stuhler, her favorite mailpiece design analyst (MDA) from Rochester, New York, for helping out with the tough queries. If you missed Direct Mail Dynamics, a recording of the session is available at the Past Webinars page. This Webinar was free to the public thanks to the generous support of Neenah Paper.
Are clear/translucent envelopes machinable?
Translucent envelopes (often referred to as vellum) and clear envelopes that are plastic or poly based are considered non-machinable when used for letters (translation: you will receive the non-machinable letter surcharge). Translucent envelopes that are paper based may be automation compatible if the address/barcode does not smear. I spoke with Don on this one, and he said that overall this is a difficult issue and that they have to test them sometimes to be sure. Read more »
“Breathtakingly beautiful.” “It marks the birth of a new era.” The June 2008 “Wheat Sheet” edition of Canadian Geographic magazine was all the rage.
“We envision commercial production of wheat straw pulp in North America within the next two to four years,” Markets Initiative (now Canopy) stated at the time.
Here was a tangible solution, a perfect example of how to satisfy the increasing appetite our paper market has for environmental solutions. But to this day, you will be hard pressed to find any agri-waste papers readily stocked in North America. What happened? Was it just a fairy tale?
The Fairy Tale Characters
No fairy tale can unfold without a hero, or in our case, several heroes who were first brought together on the Canadian Geographic magazine project by Canopy: Read more »
Discussions of typographic widows and orphans normally start with an argument about definitions and what these terms precisely mean. But for the sake of this discussion – and because I’m writing it – let’s use my definitions for the time being. At the end, you can use whatever terms you like for these conditions, as long as we all agree on solutions to the problems they raise.
Most everyone agrees that a widow is a short last line of a paragraph. According to what I learned as a lad, a widow becomes a problem when it’s so short that it creates the visual impression of a blank line between paragraphs. The wider the line length (also called measure), the more impact a very short widow can have. A hyphenated widow, in which the last line of a paragraph is a morsel of a hyphenated word, is a particularly egregious subspecies.
In the following text (set in 11/14 Georgia over 25 picas), a rash of widows appears. The first paragraph has a hyphenated widow; bad in itself, it is also so short that it barely covers the 2-em paragraph indent below it. A second widow appears at the end of the third paragraph. These need to be fixed. The short line at the end of the fourth paragraph might be considered a problem if all the other last lines on the page nearly filled the measure. In this context, though, it’s marginally acceptable. Read more »
We all take printing for granted. Perhaps it’s because print has been the world’s number one communications medium for so long we tend to overlook its impact and power.
That oversight could be fatal to a marketing campaign, a product launch, or a branding initiative that is trying to connect with people. People trust print. They feel comfortable using it. And they can’t fast forward past it.
The Print Council’s newest guide to the persuasive power of print provides the top ten reasons why you should consider using print in your next campaign. It doesn’t have to be the only medium you use. But, you most definitely should consider print whenever you want to persuade, inform or entertain. Here are your reasons why.
Print is for keeps.
Who’s minding your messages when the screens fade to black? Electronic content comes and goes, and when it’s gone, your marketing initiative disappears with it. Print, on the other hand, is there for the long run. Think about magazine pass-along rates. They range as high as two to three persons per issue, giving advertisers double and triple bonuses on their marketing investments. Read more »
It was an ongoing battle. Neither side would budge. Neither side would take one iota of responsibility. It was always the other person’s fault. If the food was cold, it was the chef’s fault for setting it out too early. No, it was the waiter’s fault for not serving it more quickly.
In a former life, I earned a degree in hotel management and spent several enlightening months in a hotel’s restaurant for hands-on (otherwise known as blame-on) training. Anyone who has worked in a restaurant knows exactly what I’m talking about.
“Let’s blame it on [insert opposing position or person here]” seems to be a common mantra in many industries. And, I’m sad to have to say that graphic designers and printers are no exception. Read more »
If you’re still confused about the difference between the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM and the PANTONE Goe System, then this tip should shed some light.
Daniel Dejan, North American ETC Print and Creative Manager for Sappi Fine Paper, recently presented the PaperSpecs Webinar Mind Your Color and in a follow-up interview with Sabine Lenz, founder of PaperSpecs, explained in more detail how the two systems relate to each other and why this is important to you.
Sabine Lenz: How much does Goe Pantone expand the CMYK hexagon?
Daniel Dejan: Released in September 2008, the PANTONE Goe system has been a very interesting project for Pantone. Essentially, Pantone wanted to rebuild its system. When that occurred, several things happened. First, it made the Pantone book chromatic. Read more »
What happens when we bring our print providers into the creative process early on? Can they help us take a good idea even further? Here is how Georgia Printer worked in concert with the printer and finisher for an unforgettable Winter 2009 cover.
Concept and Design
When we started planning our cover, we had already chosen golden eggs from a feature article for our image. We knew that when treated correctly they could be really beautiful, but we were having a hard time pairing them with the perfect effect or finish on our own.
The eggs had to have depth to show their roundness, as well as highlights and shadows; and we really wanted them to “glow.” Simple foil stamping would visually flatten them while metallic ink wasn’t as dramatic as we were shooting for, and so on …
It turned out to be as simple as looking back to a memorable insert produced by Superior Graphic Finishing in Doraville, Georgia. Its advertisement was an image of Rome’s famous Colosseum, which appeared to be lit from the inside. The structure was “lit” by the process of overprinting onto silver foil, using a semi-transparent ink to create a luminescent effect. We’d heard many industry people comment that this was the best example they had seen of the technique, so we reached out to owner Guy Dupree to see if he would team up with us for the cover. Read more »
If you feel intimidated or unsure when you review color image proofs, you’re not alone. Many designers fear that they will have to give the color operator or print rep technical correction instructions like, “Take the magenta down three points overall.”
Even if you are confident that your technical instructions would be correct, there’s a good reason not to give them: If you tell a color specialist exactly what to do, he or she may do only that. There’s also more than one way to get to the intended result, and your instructions may cause unintended shifts to other areas of the image that an alternate approach would not.
So be articulate, but not a know-it-all. Your real job here is to describe – in garden-variety English – what you are seeing on the proof and what you want to be seeing. This helps the color specialist focus on the results you want. Leave it to him or her to determine the best way to achieve those results.
Do Say This
Note this pattern in the examples below: “I see this. I want to see that.” Be sure to specify whether the comment refers to one section of the image or the image overall. Read more »
Through the addition of simulated animation we were able to show that after centuries of innovation, print is still on the move.
