williams | silverpeakarts.ca

A very common but very costly mistake in a project’s lifeline occurs the moment the project leaves your hands and ends up in another’s… namely a service provider like a printer or film house. More »

January 7th, 2009 | Tags: collect, disc, Disk, FTP, instructions, PDF, printouts, ship | Category: graphic artist's resource, print production, tutorials | Leave a comment

Who’d have thought?

Something as simple as the definition of a printing term would cause so much discussion. Once, a heated discussion was had at the office over the use of the word LIVE AREA. More »

May 23rd, 2008 | Tags: definition, glossary, live area, printing terms, safe area | Category: graphic artist's resource, industry notes, print production | Comments (4)

How to stop all the swearing when someone is away.

One of the biggest frustrations I’ve seen over the years crops up when an artist calls in sick and someone has to log onto their computer to continue their jobs… and cannot find files or linked images or the PSDs because of a folder structure (or lack of) which only the original artist can understand. More »

May 9th, 2008 | Tags: artist, client, creative, folder structure, graphic, illustrator, photoshop, production tips, psd | Category: graphic artist's resource, print production | Leave a comment

Most production artists do not worry about trapping. Trapping is something best left to pre-press professionals, but there is an exception that I have found can be problematic if it is not addressed.

When setting up a die-cut piece, one of the most common errors that can occur is having the dieline knock out of all the pieces of film. More »

April 22nd, 2008 | Tags: attributes, dielines, film, illustrator, indesign, overprint, pre press, production, production tips, quark, trap information, trapping, xpress | Category: graphic artist's resource, print production, tutorials | Leave a comment

As a quality control manager at a large Advertising Agency, I learned that mistakes can be made by the best and most careful artists.

It boils down to the old adage.

YOU CAN HAVE YOUR JOB DONE:
QUICKLY
CHEAPLY
ACCURATELY…

PICK 2.

More »

April 15th, 2008 | Tags: accordian fold, binding, bleed, CMYK, glue flap, illustrator, indesign, mockup, pantone, Printer, quotation marks, resolution, RGB, rich blacks, safety, spell check, spelling, top ten, tri-fold, trim, Typographer | Category: graphic artist's resource, print production | Leave a comment

One of the most common problems with composite photoshop images are backgrounds that do not match.

What you may find is that two images were pasted together in a collage that both had “black” backgrounds but that they were made up of different formulas…ie one background would be 100K and another may be 30c30m30y100K… on screen they might match but when ink hits paper this can turn into a disastrous print job with the 100K black seeming like a grey next to the richer black. More »

April 10th, 2008 | Category: graphic artist's resource, photoshop, print production | Leave a comment

What is a preflight quality check?

It is a final look through all your production files in order to do a last quality check before they leave your building. This not only saves time as it hopefully eliminates many common project-delaying errors, but it also saves money as a final quality and content check ensures all the client’s colours are correct and all the project specifications are adhered to.

I have always felt it is best to have someone other than the production artist look over the files as a fresh set of eyes is more likely to catch potential problems. Create a paper checklist to keep your work methodical and which you can hand back to the artist flagging problems for correction. More »

March 25th, 2008 | Category: graphic artist's resource, print production | Comments (1)

Doing colour correction on skintones can be problematic. Sure, you can adjust them until they look good on your monitor but they don’t print well. The problem is that your monitor may not be calibrated properly, you may be dealing with colour casts on the original photos, or you may simply lack target colours to adjust to. More »

January 2nd, 2008 | Tags: adjust, adobe, calibrate, CMYK, color, colour correction, curves, fleshtone, mid-tone, midtone, photoshop, RGB, skin, skintones, tone | Category: graphic artist's resource, photoshop, print production | Leave a comment

MATH

We all became Graphic Artists to avoid just this kind of thing right? I mean who can forget that feeling of elation and relief upon finding out that such a profession even exists?

THEY PAY US TO DRAW, DOODLE, AND DESIGN THINGS?
Yep, good times… good times…

And then some numbskull asks us to design something to 1/4 scale and the bottom falls out from our world. More »

December 27th, 2007 | Tags: 10% scale, design to scale, graphic artist, large format, math, PPI, resolution, wall murals | Category: graphic artist's resource, print production | Leave a comment