3 Tips to better help you help us help you.

While sitting in the prepress department all day, 5 days a week, we see lots of types of files come in: PDFs, Illustrator, InDesign, Quark, EPS. Now if we counted up how many of those files are somehow done "incorrectly", the number would be close to half.

We can understand trying to make a deadline, rushing through multiple titles, and just plain forgetting a step. But there are a few things that are basic that would really help us out in the end to get your product to you faster.



1. ADD BLEED.

• This saves us from the painstaking task of going all around your document and extending all your color boxes and photos.
• And also will prevent accidental movement of images, boxes, etc.
• It's quick and easy on your part too.

2. CONVERT ALL BLACK TYPE, LINE-WORK, ETC. TO 100% BLACK.

• Unless your document requires a rich black (we recommend C-40 M-30 Y-30 K-100)
• This makes it easier during the actual printing of the piece too

3.  MAKE SURE ALL DOCUMENT COLORS ARE CONVERTED TO CMYK

• Unless of course you're wanting a spot color to be used in the art work, in which case leave it and make sure Customer Service knows you're wanting a 5th or 6th color for your job.
• Delete all unused spot colors in the color palette.

So there you have it. Quick little tips I know most artists know how to do, just forget to do from time to time. There's probably a plethora of stuff we could add, just these are the most commonly found mistakes.

Be well.

Augmented Reality is pretty neat-o.

I must say, I've only recently got on the A.R. (as the hipsters are calling it) bandwagon. Recently seeing a commercial for Hallmark utilizing this unique and fresh approach to print media, it got me to wanting to find out what this is all about.

I did a few sample tests, or augmented adventures as I like to refer to them, and I was immediately taken with it! My mind jumped to the possibilities with this kind of technology: more movie studios getting on board, bands doing a mini performance on your desk, previewing the newest styles. The options are quite vast and intriguing to me.

Now I'm trying to think of how to make it useful and relevant in the print packaging world...

Just thought I'd share.

Be well.

Curious little CS5

So InDesign CS5 decides to make boxes more difficult than they already are. When trying to make just a blank box with a 1pt stroke a certain dimension, it was not lining up to the specified crop marks in the art.

Frustrating.

After moving and re-doing the box a number of times, my boss informs me of this little glitch, and give an alternative way to fix it. Apparently, InDy measures the box from the outside of the stroke instead of the middle, so when you increase the point size stroke of the box, you also change the dimensions of the box.

The fix? Draw a box with no stroke, just fill and specify the dimensions you'd like. Then set fill to none and stroke to your desired color. Et viola! You now have a box in the correct size you wanted 5 minutes ago.

What a headache that was.

Be well.

Click these buttons; or else.

In doing a really quick survey of a couple websites and different blog entries, I've stumbled upon something that I find to be rather interesting. It's the whole adding the Twitter and Facebook buttons at the bottom of an entry feature. While that's wonderful and great (making it easier for the reader to pass along whatever unique and profound words you have to say), there's another feature that I find to be more discrediting at times, which would be the showing the live number of actual tweets and likes.

Here are some examples...

Obviously, the top two are from the same website, and the others are from other sites. The first two are fairly recent; about 2 days ago. The middle one is from about a week ago, and the last two are from  roughly a month ago. 

One issue I delved into is popularity of certain social networking sites. Clearly Twitter is the winner from these examples, which makes sense, seeing as how Twitter is a phenomenally fast growing site. In looking at several sites I frequent, I've yet to find more "likes" than "tweets" on any particular entry. So for someone who isn't up to speed yet on the social networking bandwagon, I'd highly suggest hopping on the Twitter wagon first. Facebook has it's advantages, but Twitter is quick and painless to start up and simple to maintain. I won't even mention Digg.

An interesting bit of information I discovered is the actual numbers. You could deduce from just simply looking at the pictures above, that the top two come from a rather popular website, the middle from a semi-popular site, and the bottom two from a rarely seen blog. But is that really the case? Are some posts just more interesting than others? Are they written in a more cleaver fashion? Or are the readers of one blog more or less lazy than the readers of another? Who's to say really? You can't really judge content based of the outside numbers. Or can you?

I came upon the thought of putting these numbers up on your blog. If you know you have a lot of readers, having this up may encourage more people to read: "Oh look at how many people tweeted and liked this! This must be a great article!". But having low numbers consistently across several posts could deter potential readers:  "Hmm, only 5 tweets and 3 likes? I'll pass...". This is why the blog you are reading right now only has the buttons and not the numbers because I know I don't get a lot of traffic. 

Now these could be just erroneous judgements and hastened observations and I could be wrong. But it's just what I've found, and if you don't like it, don't click those buttons down there.

Be well,

Do you unleash your inner career-nerd too?

Do you think people who make a living as salesmen are as susceptible to other salesmen's Jedi mind tricks?  Do cooks silently judge other cooks when they go out to eat? Would a barista rather pull her own teeth than have a first date at a coffee shop?

My prepress manager planted this idea in my head earlier this morning, and I ran with it. It boiled down to one main idea: given the job you currently have, do you "see" that job out in the real world and analyze it like you are at the office? Do you take it in a negative connotation or positive? The examples above are short and sweet, but I'm sure they could stretch on for a while.

Me personally, ever since getting into the packaging side of printing, I look at every single box I come across. Groceries. Video games. Postal parcels. Soap. I look that box up and down and every which way just to study it. How did they die-cut it? Are there any spot colors used? Who printed it? Why is that image low-res?

I guess it really begs the question of do you take your work home with you? And in a sense, I believe everybody does to a certain extent depending on your field (I doubt trash collectors think about trash collection services when they get home and see their own garbage). And I'm not knocking it by any means, after all don't we spend more than half of our lives working? I think a little overspill is to be expected.

Be well.

"Is that you, Fonts? We meet again..."

Yesterday I had to absolute BEST time trying to figure out what was going on between my system fonts and my Adobe CS5 software (previous statement dripping with sarcasm)!

Like all computer software, there are bound to be some bugs. This one by far has been the most frustrating for me. For some magical reasoning, when I opened an AI file, with the fonts turned OFF (Suitcase Fusion), the file still managed to pull the necessary fonts, and throw the kerning off on only three words of the same font in the document. Sounds complicated? Yes. I know.

Here's the example:

(Illustrator already open, turn on fonts or leave them off, then open file)

(Illustrator quit, turn on fonts, then open file)

Obviously the file was pulling the fonts from somewhere. The curious this is though, with the fonts OFF, I could look in InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator not see the font listed. But as soon as I open that file, the font magically jumped into the fonts list in Illustrator, but not the other programs. My frustrations toiled. 

After many tireless minutes of trial and error, we figured out to quit Illustrator, turn ON the fonts, then open up the file. Being a relatively easy solve, it was still difficult along the way to find out WHY this was happening. 

Conclusion? Read my first blog entry about Fonts to learn where I stand, and I won't rip my hair out.

Be well.

MailChimp: The Revisitation

Well, It's been 4 full days (2 business days) since the inaugural launch of Printed Specialties' Email Newsletter. We did so using the ever-so-easy-to-use free website, MailChimp. I was going to wait until the 1 week anniversary to give out stats, seeing as how some folks were out of the office, don't check their mail every 15 seconds (like me), etc. But I must say the results we're seeing are right on par with what we were expecting.

Nothing too extravagant, here. We don't have an insane amount of website traffic. However, our average views per page, and unique visitors are up from the past several weeks, which is nice to see.

Both of our blogs (this one you're currently reading, and PSI's President's blog) have seen a steady jump in views, with the latter seeing the most "clicks" from the email. These are very welcome numbers.

Our open rate is higher than our industry average, as is our click rate, which is also a good sign.

The bounce rate on the other hand was a little higher (bad) than normal standards, but that was to be expected. The list essentially needed to be cleaned, and luckily MailChimp's software did that for us.

It could be too early to call it, but I think this first launch was a success. I just couldn't wait to post our results, and we are hoping for bigger and better ones next time. We're obviously shooting for overall improvement with each newsletter (it's a monthly email), so we have our goals in mind, and our actions poised and ready.

If you or anyone you know is interested in join this mailing list, click here to sign up.

Be well.

Let me tell ya 'bout MailChimp

I was first exposed to MailChimp in college a few years back. It was for my Digital Output course, and we were studying the dynamics and functionality of email marketing campaigns and software. From what I can recall, MailChimp came out as the "winner" among several comparable free programs for a number of reasons; easy integration of lists, easy to use workflow, and easy step-by-step tutorials, etc. After doing a short 1-2 week project of building a short campaign, reading lists, and compiling data, I never thought I'd see let alone use MailChimp again.

I made an A in that class, by the way.

Flash-forward 3 years. I am currently faced with taking on a new marketing challenge here at Printed Specialties. We need to communicate better with our customers, stay in contact more often, and need more traffic to our website (shameless plug: www.printedspecialties.com). Alas! This simple to use email marketing program quickly came to my mind's forefront.

Going back to the website I've looked at in the past, I notice that grand upgrades and swell updates have been made. When I mocked up a test campaign, MailChimp was easier to use than I could remember. And with it's current integration with various social sites such as Facebook and Twitter, it was easy to see this was the way to go for PSI. Also, forums and easily accessible help FAQ's made this project run a whole lot smoother. Not to mention the iPhone App is pretty sweet to have as well.

Everything is so wonderfully easy to use. I simply cannot stop singing it's praises! Now, Printed Specialties is gearing up to release it's FIRST email marketing campaign this Friday, October 1st.

I would most definitely recommend MailChimp to any business, big or small, who is looking to get into email marketing. This is more designed for the light-hearted and sensibly-humored, what with having a silly chimp for a mascot who tells jokes on every page, and who's simple directions and guidelines are sprinkled with witty puns and goodies.

I give it 4.5 out of 5 bananas.

Be well.

More shameless plugs:
MailChimp's Website
Our Twitter Page
Our Facebook Page
Subscribe to our newsletter

New iMac: The Glory, The Story, and The Truth

About a month ago, I upgraded to a new iMac system. Got the whole nine yards - 21" screen (no 27" unfortunately), 3.2 GHz Intel i3 processor, 4 GB of RAM and 1 TB hard drive. The thing runs as smooth as silk, and along with my 24" Dell G2410 secondary monitor, I have quite a lot of screen real estate, which is perfect for what I do.

Now, when I unboxed the new computer, I was excited to try the new Magic Mouse. This thing rocks. End of story.

My only, however slight gripe, is this wireless keyboard. My hands feel cramped typing on it; like I'm typing on a laptop (which is probably what Apple was going for)! No number pad on the far right, so when typing in numerics from time to time, I forget and my right hand subconsciously drifts to the right, only to find nothing but emptiness. Everything just feels sort of squished.

Now, don't get me wrong, I still really do dig this keyboard for several reasons. The wireless aspect is great. I like being able to adjust and move and showoff with it as much you could imagine. Plus, being somewhat compulsive, I like a clean workspace. I also like the silent typing. As I sit here and type this lovely little blog, the soft 'tap tap click click' of the keys is rather comforting to hear. And the design is really slick. It's nice to feel and look like a professional.

So in all, I'd give this keyboard about a B+. Considering that I don't do many numerical-type typing, it doesn't bother me so much, and it just comes off as a small inconvenience. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who's thinking of buying a new iMac system. Just hope you don't mind feeling emasculated a little, if you're male that is.

Be well.

Fonts, fonts, fonts

Why must these little fanciful glyphs ruin my perfectly easy-going day at work?

Instead of searching for ridiculous fonts (Family Dog???) and trying to substitute TrueType for OpenType and vise versa, wouldn't it be easier to just convert everything to paths?

It sure would on my side.

Be well.

Welcome...

Greetings fellow tech-heads!

Welcome to the first Printed Specialties Tech Tip & Talk blog post.

Stay tuned for more juicy bits of technology, prepress, design and other various fodder saturated in oodles of specialized and unnecessary jargon as possible for the technologically inclined.

Be well.