There are a couple of things to be done in the next week.
1. Send it to Press! It is crunch time and this should be done in the next couple of days. But make sure you dot every i and cross every t before you send it out. If you haven’t done so already, your group should print out every page with text on it (even if it is not formatted to match) and proofread.
Plan on sending your finished product out before the weekend is over. (Blurb’s estimated delivery with standard shipping is December 14 for files submitted today!)
And BRING YOUR FINAL PDF TO CLASS NEXT FRIDAY! This is the first half of your final grade.
2. After sending your project, write the equivalent of one typed page describing the aspects of your project that you are least confident about. Think about this question from both the design perspective and from a technical perspective.
Did you need to compromise design ideas to create something that would work for your group? Or to fit into the available sizes? Did you have any ambitious plans that you realized you would not be able to finish in the available time?
Where do you anticipate your printed product to differ from your digital files? Are there any bright colors that might shift? Any images that sit close to the bleed? Text that might appear to large? Have you seen examples of materials produced by the printer you’re using? What sort of quality do you expect? Will there be any degradation in your final images? Did any flags come up when you ran your preflight check?
Post your response to the site as per usual.
Fall2012 PRINT PRODUCTION 
our group make a magazine of Children- International with the size 8 by 11in. the idea of us was try to collect money to help children from our foundation. Colors can display differently from screen to paper. I think that the thing I’m least confident with in this project is the topic. I feel as though this project isn’t as original as the other projects.im happy because the chose my idea.
Overall I believe the goal of creating a children’s activity book was achieved, the content of the booklet has a consistent flow in terms of typography illustration, and photographs. The booklet is traditional print size. The layout and design of the project was established in the beginning and the content i.e. puzzles, short stories, and etc. were edited to fit the established layout. In the beginning my theme for a project was to create a communication design guide book for recent graduates living in New York; however we didn’t use this idea as a group. The next step was to contribute a role within the group; I had an ambitious plan of creating lengthy short stories, adding hand drawn illustrations (a book in with a book); due to timing and technical issues the short story was minimized. The specifications and aesthetics fit the target audience although I would’ve created tear sheets for the information geared toward parents. I’m interested in seeing the bond final product. Differing mediums like substrate and digital might change the look of the booklet in relation to brightness and vibrancy of the colors in the photographs and illustrations. From my observation of the digital file the margins and bleeds were carefully thought out when the layout was created. The final product should display quality substrate (books cover and interior sheets); also the colors should be comparable to the digital perceived color scheme.
Latimel Rodriguez
December 7, 2012
Print Production
One of the things I couldn’t get off my mind was a project that didn’t work that would have my name on it. I’m a person that takes every detail of a project and really picks at it till its just right whether its from the image to the text to the color, till it’s perfect. The design was what i was hesitant about because as a designer you have your own vision about what you want the project to look like, so it’s nerve wrecking to stick to the role you were assigned and the final visual presentations to the layout designer and typographer. And the end product was literally breathtaking, it was completely different from the other projects and something I would have never came up with if not with the help of Demitrii, Arturo and Janelle
Ideas were thrown around and they were all good but they were at the first stages of an idea. Every designer knows the first idea is never the best, but our job is to take that idea and give it back bone and muscle, some life in a sense. The ideas changed a lot because I would ask “why” and we’d talk about it and we came to the conclusion that it works but the message isn’t clear. The pictures didn’t need any adjustment to fit into the sizes. The layout designer even cropped out some of the images so in a sense when it came to the images anything was game.
My plan was to hand illustrate all the images by hand, a rather ambitious task. I realized it wouldn’t be efficient because it took me about 5 hrs to illustrate one image. We sat in class and we came up with the idea to illustrate the photos using photoshop. The group ended up liking the idea. I told the group id have all 9 illustrations by Monday and by Monday they were delivered.
Demitrii S. printed a proof from his printer and it looked exactly if not better then the digital file. I don’t think any colors will shift, the preflight test was successful a pdf was made and i’m confident in Blurbs quality of print to have a very good finished product
The project we made is I SEE NEW YORK. In my group, even each one design our own idea of New York, thought we may has some similar elements, such as choosing similar city view, building icon or element of this city. I think this is interesting, even we pick similar element, but we show different way from different artists. For the variation of the project, I have to change some design element or design direction.
We come out the size which is 5.5 x 8.5 inches; and we all discussion that make the design vertical, full size and the layout in the first and second meeting, so I think this is help us a lot, and save more time. As we finish our own pieces, just put into the structure and change, or add some details. At addition, the manager of page is a challenge, each of us has our own theme, and the styles are very different, but we still need to think about the connection and consistency to create a book. Such as which design goes first, which goes next, or using separate color to separate our own theme.
Before we print, we bring a lot of sample to discussion during our meeting. Such as the design layout of books, binding and paper materials, we already know what kind of material we use for our project in the second or third meeting. Therefore, during the team project, communication takes a very important part. Each people may have their own idea to create, but the decision is decided by the votes. At the beginning, I try to decide a logo of I See New York which combines some New York element, but most members prefer a clean type as a logo. Over all, I expect the color of print out can match the digital file. For the time and money concerned, we don’t have more time to work on the color proof and try different paper texture. I think our project is successful.
I think that the thing I’m least confident with in this project is the topic. I feel as though this project isn’t as original as the other projects. But, my initial ideas weren’t much help because they were based on things I’d like to work on, by myself or with someone who shares the same vision as me. From a design aspect, I expect the artwork to range, and for that reason I’d be willing to make all of the illustrations so that the project is cohesive and not conflicting.
As far as printing, the only difference I expect is that the color will be richer on print than on screen.
Some design aspects which was affected the in creating this book was, for me, the size and the layout. I was happy with how it looked in the PDF, but I would have preferred in book to be in landscape view and slightly bigger (8″ x 10″). For my photos, the bigger size would be a better way to view them, especially since I was focusing on the detailing of the architecture design of the buildings. The landscape view seems to provide more space for the photos. But we came up with the final size and view by “most votes wins.”
I expect that my photos will have some color shifts. I feel like it will be darker. After looking at the images in class last week, they all looked darker. I brightened them a little and did a thumbnail print of all the images at home, but the final PDF we showed in class today still looked dark. I hope it’s just my nerves of wanting to have some great pieces that I feel this way. I don’t expect that I will have the best printed product because I just feel that quality printing takes time and not a few days.
December 7 Homework
There are many concerns with the final project that come to mind. First, the technical. The technical difficulties include: paper type. When creating a hard proof using my Epson printer, I noticed that I am very unhappy with the project being printed on matte paper. The problem with the matte paper for this project is that the black gets absorbed too much and the visuals seem to be desaturated. So the hard proof allowed me to realize that it would be best to use a glossy paper for the printed book. Besides the blacks, other technical difficulties are with every team member sending random PDF files, which show crop marks. This is not very good, because to print the project properly, everyone should have sent their working InDesign files, along with all the linked content; Being eps and fonts and images. Since there was not a standardized structure, the compiling of the final project was very cumbersome and quite annoying. Looking at the hard proof, I also noticed that my monitor is not calibrated properly, so the prints came out very different, despite the fact that I did proof colors in every application that was used to create this project. Last, but not least technical difficulty is that the book might actually not be received in time before the end of the class semester. This is because the files were sent to the printer very late, despite having stressed that this needs to go out sooner. Lots of communication problems , which created a chaotic environment for this project.
Design-wise, the project had to be changed many times, in order to motivate the team to actually put in work, which did not turn out well. The design is very interesting, and I am very happy with it, but I wish the team put more effort into this project, so that everyone participated equally, which did not happen. On the other hand, the book was not proofed by our chosen printer, but I have seen and felt books and printed materials, which were printed using the same printer we chose. Although I could not see Blurb’s proof of our book, I have seen other work, which looked good to me and made me want to print using Blurb, to achieve similar results. As for preflighting, there were no errors at first, but then another spread got added on to the project and the image used was a 150 dpi resolution image, which then gave me an error, which stated that there is a slight problem with one image and it is lower than 300 dpi. Other than that, there were no other issues. Also I noticed that despite sending the cover file with bleed, there is a 1mm hairline of white going down vertically on the right edge of the front cover, which I am not too happy about. The way I noticed it was when I zoomed into the PDF after the book was purchased, so there is nothing I can do to fix that. Overall, I expect the images to look right since I switched the substrate from matte to lustre. I did a hard proof, using a lustre substrate and the results came out to be what I wanted, as opposed to the initial hard-proof on matte paper. I expect my images to look contrasty and vivid, which was the main intent of the book.
My group project is “I See New York” and it has been a fun project to work on. This has not been an easy project, because besides creating a book itself each member had to make their own work which of course takes time and it was a daring move. However, the result is good. Book design is set up well and just the way I have planted to be. Nice clean text on one page and an image on the other. Overall it’s a clean design and looks good too. This is a portfolio piece and I cannot wait until the end product. It has been tough but our group did great. There is a bigger lesson for me than making a book during this course. I have learned what it is to work with group; this is something I am lacking in experience, to depend on one another and communication. It all may not be exactly the same in real world but it is a good taste of how it may be. Now, little about small things; my biggest concern is, how will my paintings look on the final product? It all depends on the paper and I hope it will do well, after all my paintings are not a digital work and the color is very important to me. After doing my own print tests it look actually good with the right settings so I hope for the best from professional print shop. As my first book ever I am happy with results, it is close to what I have planned for my own project. The design layout and idea resembles that of mine “War and Peace” that I have proposed in class. Now I can take this experience and do my own book even better then originally planned.
I thought this project will be much easier for me to create a nice portfolio piece at beginning. Unfortunately, it turns out to be an uneasy task for me. As a student, I have gained some experiences from reality, I worked with printer for more than two years and currently I am freelancing for a magazine called Resident. In fact, I struggle a lot, with the layout the page, design of the cover, even the choice of typography.
As a team we have discussed all the aspect and idea at the class, we created the thumbnail for the pages, and the layout of the typographic. Actually, we figured out the proper size of the artwork before we start working on the project. Therefore, none of us need to compromise the size of the artwork. I just wish we can find the contributor or advertiser to actually help us publish the book we made. As a perfectionist, I think there is always something I can revise to make my pieces better.
We chose the print shop that can finish the job fast, and also have multiple choices of paper we can use. He showed the sample pieces once we finalized the paper, which look pretty decent. And we had the file printed last week, all the text look pretty appealing on the page. As we discussed at the class, we give enough margin to avoid any possibility that might ruin the book.
Our group made a book on joke’s a humor book. It’s not your typical 1.99 paper back 100 page news print book. Our book of humor is for the sophisticated fancy classy individual. Our group worked well together and thus no compromise was required Since we all seem and work on the same page. This was good since it kept a constant fluided work flow, which I liked since I hate working slow and having to run into halts due to lack of communication or disagreements. Although i am happy with the excution and how it ended up looking. One of the things i am not confident about is the book cover, in it’s self the cover is not bad but i feel that perhaps it could be better, i love the type treatment and simple layout but had we worked on it from the start it would have been a much stronger design. What do i expect on the actual printed copy, well i think it will be a very attractive book to the eye due to is high contrast color scheme thats elegant and minimal. Also I do think that some of the images made come out darker mabye to dark considering the rest of the images. One last thing, if we had more time I would have loved to turn it into100 page book instead of the 26 now that i think about it seems very short considering it’s content. 100 page humor bool in our style would make it feel more done and fulling to the reader and sure why not even me as the designer.
Did you need to compromise design ideas to create something that would work for your group? Or to fit into the available sizes?
I originally wanted to work on a magazine but as a group we agreed to do a humor book. As to the overall design we decided to keep it very simple. Each page was design as spread with text on the left side and one image on the right. Some of the images was sized differently. As to the amount of text, each page varied. There were short jokes and long jokes. This was done in order to keep the reader interest. We decided the size of the book would be 7×7, which actually works well with the over design. Small enough to carry around but big enough to read.
Did you have any ambitious plans that you realized you would not be able to finish in the available time? No. Once we decided on a humor book. I used my grid design ideas for another project.
Where do you anticipate your printed product to differ from your digital files? Are there any bright colors that might shift? Any images that sit close to the bleed?
Whenever you are working from digital files everything seems perfect on the screen. All colors appears to be bright, the choice of typeface seems easy to read. I do expect to see colors shift slightly, unfortunately this current state of printing from a digital file to actual paper. Some images bleed off the page so there’s no concern regarding.
Text that might appear to large? We printed out all the pages and examine the text size. We agreed that 11 point size works very will. The typeface we used is Gill Sans Light.
Have you seen examples of materials produced by the printer you’re using? No, but we did use a printer and we’re very happy with the results.
What sort of quality do you expect? I have used Blurb before and was very happy with the final product. I expect excellent quality.
Will there be any degradation in your final images? I don’t think so. We made sure to use the highest quality prints as possible.
Did any flags come up when you ran your preflight check? Since we’re using a template from Blurb no errors appear.
The group did not have to compromise; we worked it out and planned it out. In the end we added everything we wanted to. The size of our book (7X7) wasn’t a problem but exactly what we were looking for. The size gave us the clean look our team agreed on. The team worked and agreed on dissensions quick so time wasn’t a factor but an artist never thinks his or hers work in fully complete so I am sure we could have done more with the time. The work on the book was split equally throughout the group and each member contributed to the book. I anticipate our printed copy will differ from the digital files in color. Colors can display differently from screen to paper. The bright colors always have the most deficit time in transition from digital to paper but our book is over-all dark warm colors. The team used all high resolution images. The group also checked the text point size by doing a solo print of our text to see if it’s useable. As of now we did do print outs of our book but we haven’t seen examples from blurb, where we are doing our final print but we trust blurbs professionalism so we expect perfection. In our example prints we did not see degradation in our images so we are not expecting it in our final print. In our preflight check the group had to decide on page numbers. After that step is was only a matter of fixing text layout to keep the book consistent. I can’t speak for the whole group but I am satisfied with the end product of the book. The topic of comedy isn’t my strong suit but after seeing the group working together sharing laughs and enjoying themselves I absolutely loved the idea of a comedy book.
Our team made a humor book. It is not like a cheap joke books on newsstands, but Our concept more sophisticated one. Each image comes with a correspond joke, which doesn’t exactly how it image looks, but it is twisted. I think we are able to create a book as our concept.
We didn’t have a title of the book until last week’s class, so we could have spent some more time to work on cover if we had decided the title earlier. However, our cover looks well represent the book. It is a very simple typographic based black and white cover, while the contents of the book is a humor book, but we keep its layout and typeface simple and clean.
We worked on 3 spreads each on our own. Each of us has a different taste of design; a sense of humor, and photo-retouch skills, so putting all the work into one book to look the book well balanced was tougher than I had thought. Even though we had decided the order in the class last week, I kept thinking about the order after the last class.
I insisted to put my Jason Friday the 13th page on page 13. It seems insignificant but I think this kind of small thing makes a different. If we had had more time, I would have liked to embed some more gimmicks in the book.
We use the Blurb, but I have never used it before. According to my friends and web reviews, the quality isn’t the best but seems good enough. I am not sure what kind of difference will be from the digital file. However, generally, it may come out darker.