Chapter one starts out going through the designing and production processes back in the day before the world of digital. The work was so much more strenuous back then, and a much longer process. The different parts of the process such as design, photography, color, printing and finishing were done separately. Then the chapter goes on to talk about the modern flow we use in the design process today. One of the new elements we have today is Raster Image Process(RIP). RIP is a specialized computer that translates PostScripts or PDFs to a high resolution bitmap image that output device follows. It also talked about the Finishing Process which is everything that happens to the product after it is taken off the printer. Finishing can include folding, binding, trimming, die cutting, embossing and foil stamping. Most of the measuring used today is in picas or points. Picas and Points are both units of measurement. There are six picas in an inch, and one pica equals twelve points. There are seventy two points in an inch.Text size, leading, baseline grids, and the thickness of rules and strokes are almost always specified in points.
Chapter two is about ink on paper. It starts off with a "2 color" job which is black and white printing. There is only black ink being used and the white is the paper, but it is still called a "2 color" job. Next, it talks of halftone dots on printed works and how many lpi(lines per inch) are normally used. Lpi describes the frequency of the halftone dots measure in a row. Dpi(dots per inch) describes the resolution of imaging devices such as a desktop printer, or imagesetter. Ppi(pixels per inch) is image resolution and the most common convention is to save images at 300 ppi.
Then the chapter goes on to talk about colors. It starts off with CMYK(cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) which are the four basic colors that make up most the different colors you see in printed work. They mix these four colors to create shades of varying color. However, CMYK can not print all colors. There are some that are out of the CMYK range. In this instance, they use spot colors. Spot colors are an individual ink color that is mixed for a certain job.
Next it turns to press issues. one of those issues is registration. Registration is important because it is the alignment of the different colors of ink. If the inks overlap they will mix and not look right. Even with the software we have today sometimes the machines go wrong and we have misregistration on the product. Which could be colors overlapping, different parts of the design being push one direction or another, etc.
The chapter also talked about Variable Data Publishing(VDP) and Imagesetters. VDP is part of digital printing. Simply put it is putting customized information or images to gear toward every single recipient of the printed work. It is more expensive but has great feedback. Now an Imagesetter is also a digital device for putting images on film. A RIP creates a high-resolution bitmap that the imagesetter uses to expose the film in the right areas.
Chapter three is about binding and finishing. First it talks about preparing your comments so they will print correctly, and making sure they can be printed. It has four rules to follow. Rule one: Build to correct trim size. That way you don't have something randomly in the middle of an eight and half by eleven piece of paper. Rule two: Provide bleed. We do this so nothing of importance will be cut off when printing our design. Rule three: Stay away from edge. Again if we put stuff near the edge you will be able to tell if the cutter made a mistake and see where something got cut off. But that also goes for margins as well so nothing will be creased in you work. Rule four: Follow the print specifications. Which helps the printers out so they do not have to go back in and change anything.
Then the chapter takes a turn towards folding and binding. It takes about getting a "printing dummy". A printing dummy is a folded and numbered blank representation of how your pages will look when printed, and folded. The binding methods it talks about are saddle stitching, perfect binding, case binding, comb binding and coil binding. It talks about is die cutting. Die cutting is creating special dies to score and cut specially shaped edges or complicated folding into a custom shape or design. all these processes are apart of the finishing process. other processes it talks about are embossing and foil stamping.
All of this made me realize just how much goes into this whole process and how much time it all takes. I am excited to learn some of these things for myself this coming semester. All of the information I got was out of our text book called Print Production by Claudia McCue.
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