How to Create a Metallic Look without Metallic Ink OR: Adding some bling bling without the cha-ching ching! Oh, those lovely metallic inks, adding their shiny, attention-getting glitz, glamour and class to printed pieces all around the world. Sigh… Too bad it’s just not in the budget. Too bad the metallics are spot color inks. Too bad there’s [...]
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly OR: What difference does it make what goes over the fold? Time now for a quick review. A gutter jump is any kind of element that continues from one page, across the gutter (or fold) to the opposite page. This can be text, line art, or a photo. Gutter jumps [...]
March 12 was the deadline for entering the annual 2015 Graphics Excellence Awards (GEA), sponsored by the Great Lakes Graphics Association (GLGA). Entries for these awards are submitted by Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin printing companies, where a vast amount of America’s commercial printing is produced. Prior to submitting our CPC entries, we enlist our own [...]
The Anatomy of Gray OR: Why doesn’t my four color gray look…gray? Here’s how the dictionary defines it: gray n 1: a color between white and black; having a neutral hue. The current Pantone color library available in InDesign offers 11 different cool grays and 11 different warm grays. And that doesn’t include all the other versions [...]
What’s Up With the Alphabet Soup? OR: Why can’t I just save everything as a jpg? We are living in an acronym world and I am an acronym…okay, skip that. Let’s just say if you’re working with digital images, you better know your acronyms and your alphabet. TIF, EPS, JPG, GIF, PSD, PDF; the list [...]
No Passport Necessary OR: what’s so important about margins and image area anyway? Hmmm…the magazine you’re designing has gotten a little copy heavy and you’ve already made the text as small as you think you can without affecting readability. But you need to squeeze in a little more text. Here’s an idea: make the margins [...]
Learn these simple marketing tactics to really impact your target market and your bottom line.
Monday morning, 8:00 am Salesperson: “We’re going to put an ad in the local tourism magazine. I want you to build one.” You: “Sounds great! What are the specs for the ad?” Salesperson: “We’re going to go with a half-page advertisement.” You: “Super. Horizontal or vertical and what are the dimensions for that?” Salesperson: “Well…half a page. Probably [...]
The Magic and the Mystery OR: Did you mean crop circles? I thought this was about printing. The truth is that crop circles are crop marks. Okay, not really. Got your attention, though, didn’t it? Now that you’re on the edge of your seat, let’s take an in-depth look at crop marks and their placement. You’re [...]
Fixing that Pesky 4-Color Black Text in Photoshop OR: I hope this is still about printing because I don’t have a tv at work Relax, this has nothing to do with TVs or channel surfing. We’re still talking about printing. Specifically, black text that’s made up of two or more process colors instead of just [...]
