Print Production

Jeannette-Marie Smith, an illustrator from New York, created these business cards that reflect her topical sense of humor.

For many designers and desktop publishers, sending a job to the printer is a mysterious (and expensive) process of trial and error. Guesswork doesn't cut it. That is why we offer this distance learning course in Print Production so that you can achieve your desired results when printing all of your graphic design projects.

To manage a print job effectively, you must understand how printers work, how to communicate with them, and how to identify the best design solution for your budget.

Tired of learning the hard way? In this 6-lesson course, you can learn the technical fundamentals of producing professional-looking print publications. Through detailed lessons and hands-on exercises, you'll learn what you need to know at every step of the printing process. You'll learn to choose file formats and fonts, specify or separate colors, and manage the different phases of the final production workflow.

Thom McKenna is the owner/creative director of a New York-based graphic/multimedia design firm ... get bio

Develop a basic understanding of the print/publishing process and how to estimate a print project's quality, schedule, and budget.

Critique a print job, demonstrating a basic understanding actual vs. perceived size, imposition, paper stock, and number of pieces.

Develop an understanding of different kinds of print vendors and printing technologies and how to communicate specifications to printers.

Critique two contrasting print publications, demonstrating an understanding of paper color, different colored inks, item size, number of pieces of paper, and perceived quality.

Develop an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of various software programs for print publishing.

Develop an understanding of the important role of font management in sending jobs to printers.

Create a corporate brochure using text and graphical elements, demonstrating an understanding of using the design grid, negative space, color matching, and legibility.

Identify the difference between print and monitor resolution and learn tips for working with different image sources: scanners, digital photos, and stock photos.

Explore and analyze the effects of reproducing multiple copies of a continuous tone image and resizing bitmap and vector graphics.

Develop a basic understanding of how different color modes work and appear on screen and in print.

Identify the purposes and benefits of one-, two-, three-, four- and six-color printing and common applications and benefits of process colors.

Develop a promotional piece (business card or postcard) for printing, using a four-color design and advanced techniques.

Develop an understanding of the various precautions taken in a preflight check and in handing off a job to a service provider.

Develop a promotional piece (business card or postcard) for printing, working within a limited budget for design features.

Outline:

LESSON 1 Mapping Out the Job Any time you work with a printer, you've just landed two jobs: designer and production manager. What's required? Lesson One provides a thorough overview of the print production process. You'll look at the different ways in which print jobs are communicated from a client/employer to a designer to a printer. And since project guidelines and quality objectives need to be defined in any print job, you'll explore how factors such as folding, binding, volume, colors, graphics, paper stock and weight impact cost and quality.

LESSON 2 The Bermuda Triangle After you send it out, your print job enters a Bermuda Triangle: a kind of no-man's land between you, the service bureau, and the printer. Lesson Two gives you a behind-the-scenes tour of the print shop. You'll get an overview of the core functions of each vendor in the printing process, learning what they do and how to identify a good one. You'll learn about the different processes in offsetting printing (and other printing options) covering essential printer's terms as you go, so that you too can speak the lingo.

LESSON 3 The Desktop Publisher's Toolkit Desktop publishing opened a Pandora's box for designers (so many options on your computer, so many pitfalls). Lesson Three covers what you need to know to set up files your printer will accept. You'll learn which software programs to use -- digital imaging, vector-based, or page layout -- and which to avoid. You'll look at the range of digital file formats available, identifying the best export options to send to a printer. Finally, you'll explore font management issues, with a focus on differentiating postscript from styling fonts.

LESSON 4 Inside the Image In print, every little pixel counts towards the impact of your publication. Lesson Four gives you a grounding in setting up graphics for a print job. You'll look at the differences between print and monitor resolution and learn how to calculate the right image resolution or linescreen for your print job. You'll learn how to scale raster- and vector-based images without sacrificing quality. Finally, you'll address the challenges of working with different image sources: from scanning, digital photos, and stock CDs.

LESSON 5 Color Specification Color specification plays a key role in any print job, both in terms of product quality and the cost of the enterprise. Lesson Five guides you through intricacies of printing in color. You'll begin with bit depth, comparing the differences between monitor and print representation of color. RGB and CMYK color systems are explained, and the pros and cons of different color printing options (from 1- to 6- colors) explored. You'll learn about color separations, spot colors, spot varnishes, and more.

LESSON 6 Final Production and Hand-Off All done? Not until you prepare your print job for final production. Lesson Six covers the detail-intensive world of the pre-flight check. You'll learn what items to prepare for hand-off to your service provider, looking at the typical forms and markup conventions used in the industry. A range of specification foundations is covered, from crop marks, to file information, proofs, registration marks, printer's marks, and more. The course will wrap up with sage advice on managing your printer hand-off and going on-press.

Tuition: $803 US