Roller Derby - Basics of printing



	The basics of desktop publishing

We have a bout in 4 weeks time and I’ve been tasked with putting the programme together. How the hell do I do it? - Basics of desktop publishing Unless you are lucky enough to have in your team a designer or have a friend/partner that is, putting together a programme can seem like a daunting task. Having helped out teams with their programmes I thought I’d put down some basics to help those who may have this unenviable task. After all, you’re not going to become a designer/print buyer overnight, no matter how many subliminal tapes you listen to. Here’s some basics to help you get started. Software Firstly you need some sort of desktop publishing software and image manipulation software. The industry standards are InDesign/QuarkXpress and Photoshop respectively. However while these products will make your life easier with a bit of practice Microsoft Publisher and an innumerable graphics packages (that are cheap or even free to download) available can do the same job. I can’t advise on all products without seeing them but functionality is pretty uniform. Even getting creative with Word can do the same job. Search on the web and you should find plenty. When sending artwork to printers you can either send the original document with all image files and fonts or a hi-res PDF. If your software is non-standard I would always send a PDF. Check that that your software will allow you to do so before starting to save on any last minute panic. Setting up your document When setting up your programme, how many pages will you need? You will always have to go up in multiples of 4. Left, right, front and back. If you are producing an A5 document (149mm x 210mm) you will also need to leave what is known as bleed. This is so that the artwork when trimmed, goes right to the edge. So for an A5 document it will need to be 159mm x 220mm (5mm bleed all the way round). I would advise not putting any text closer than 5mm to the edge of the page (not including bleed) to make sure that it is not snipped off in the trim. Printers will paginate the document for you so don’t worry about what is front/back for each page. Just leave them in their running order, 1-8, 1-12 etc… When saving your artwork you will need to include the bleed and the more registration marks and colours bars you can add will help them. Check your output dialogue boxes when exporting to see what they will let you do. Images Some of these programmes will allow you to set up your artwork and images to the correct formats. I will deal with these first. Commercial printers need image files (the picture) in certain formats. These are usually TIFF, EPS, PSD or PDF. Not all programs will allow you save them out in all formats but the common ones are TIFF and PDF. Secondly they need to be in the right colour space. Printers use four inks, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK) to print. Images on screen use the RGB system (Red, Green, Blue). Most digital cameras etc… save images as RGB. Usually graphics packages will allow you to simply change the colour space. On Photoshop this is done by going to the IMAGE menu, select MODE and then selecting the colour space you need. Thirdly they need to be the right resolution. This is usually 300dpi (dots per inch). Images set for screen are usually 72dpi. To convert them over it is usually a matter of going in to a graphics programme, clicking on IMAGE, selecting SIZE and adjusting the numbers. Note how the print size is reduced as you up the resolution. One of the biggest mistakes is to take images from the web and think they will print. They will print, but will be blurry. Upping the resolution wont help. The images have already been compressed and the data lost. Once it’s gone it’s gone. You’ll need to get hold of the original photos and re-size them Photos should be: CMYK not RGB colour space 300dpi not 72dpi TIFF, EPS, PSD or PDFs not Jpegs (If you are using a DTP [desk top publishing] programme that does not support any of these formats you will have to use Jpegs and turn the final artwork in to a print ready PDF). If you are using software that will not allow you to import images in these formats don’t worry. If it will allow you to save it out as a Hi-res PDF for print it should convert the final artwork to the right colour space. The only real difference between the two modes is how light is displayed. RGB is an additive system, CMYK is a subtractive system. RGB images will generally look brighter. CMYK may look dull compared to RGB and areas of block colours can change radically to a darker shade. Purples, reds and greens are notoriously bad if used as blocks. But for most images you should see little difference. I won’t bore you with colour gamuts. Suffice to say the human eyes can see the most colours, then devices such as cameras, monitor screens then finally printers. Fonts There are thousands of fonts out there. Many free to download. The first question is should it be serif or sans serif? Serif (the one with the pointy bits) is easier to read as blocks of text as you will find in paperback books. Sans serif works better in smaller chunks. When sending artwork to the printers you will need to send copies of the fonts used if you are not sending artwork ready PDFs. If you use standard fonts found on most computers there wont be a problem. But free to download fonts can cause problems. Also, designers do not always supply all characters/punctuation when designing fonts. However with a bit of creativity a comma can become an apostrophe and vice versa, so be creative if they don’t exist in the font pack. The jury’s out on Comic Sans. I think they’ve gone out to hang it. It is the one font I would avoid. Just for asthetic reasons and if you have any designers in the audience it could cause fits of rage and they may need escorting from the building and given a pint to calm them down. Also, don’t use too many fonts in a document as it makes it look confusing. I would stick to two or three. One for headers, one for sub heads, perhaps, and one for the main body text. Font size The RNIB recommend using 12 point as standard. I find this a little large and usually opt for 10pt in most body text. So unless you are designing for the visually impaired I would opt for a smaller size. Large text can appear childish in large blocks. I would also advise on using a maximum of three font sizes within a document to maintain consistency across the document. Again one for headers, one for sub head and one for the main body. Paper There’s a myriad of papers out there. The most common ones are matt, silk and gloss art. They do as they say on the tin. Matt, is well matt, but does have the advantage that you can write on it without ink smudging. Silk is in the middle, a good general purpose paper, and gloss is the shiny one of the family. They also come in many weights (thickness) measured in gsm (grams a square metre) The heaver the paper e.g 300gsm the thicker it will be. A good standard paper for programmes is 170gsm to 200gsm. A 200gsm gloss paper will feel thinner than a matt 200gsm paper due to the production methods in creating each type of paper. Much paper available is from recycled or part-recycled sources. Ask your printer if there are any logos (FSC/PFEC etc..) they can add to show that you are doing your bit for the environment. They will have to add them to your document to ensure the correct logo is used with the correct paper, but leave a gap and they will drop them in. If you use a lot of ink on a document i.e a black background, where it is creased, cracking will occur. This will be more evident on thicker papers. A laminate will help resolve this but will add to cost. Thinking about the design can help eliminate this problem as you can steer clear of using heavy solids where it will be folded. A printer will probably ask if your document will be stitched, this just means stapled. If you are asking for a quote here’s the criteria you will usually need to supply: Size: A4, A5 etc.. or in mm (A sizes work out the cheapest as they are the standard size) Quantity: How many you’ll need. Number of pages (remember you always need a multiple of 4) Colour: Mono or colour. Full colour documents are printed in C (Cyan,) M (Magenta,) Y (yellow ), K (Black). A printer will usually refer to this as 4/4 (four back four – full colour both sides) or 4/0 (four back nought – full colour print to only one side) Weight of paper: 170gsm/200gsm are good all purpose weights, neither too thick or thin. Printers. A good relationship with your printers make things easier and good printers will usually help you out with amends and changes for free. They will also try and fit your work in if you are on a tight deadline. They may even be able to turn your programme around overnight if you ask them nicely. Get more than one quote in to compare prices. An unscrupulous printer, if they think you’re a novice may over charge. Printers are used to people getting more than one quote in, so don’t feel guilty about getting a quote in and not using a them. I would always spend a bit more on a good printer to guarantee service but I know this isn’t always practicle. Most printers will offer two solutions to your print needs. Digital and Litho printing. Digital printing is for low runs of up to usually 500 documents. Above this Litho (offset) is more commercially viable. Litho offers better print quality but the initial set up costs are more. Your printer will usually choose the most economical method. I would also go for slightly more than you think you’ll need as if you have to go back to them for a re-print they will charge for set up costs again. Check out that delivery is included in the price. Most printers build it in to their quote but some don’t. I have 10 years of experience in the print industry so if you need any advice just drop me an email and I’ll try and answer your questions.