That Designer is a P-I-G Pig!

Hello graphic arts enthusiasts!

Just a quick note on work habits today... this is something you’d think could go without mentioning, but it’s a constant problem and I see it just as often in files from professional designers as I do in the submissions of total amateurs. It’s something you probably should’ve learned in day care or kindergarten, if not from your parents:

Be creative, have fun, try new things, feel free to play with ALL of your toys at once, but when you're done, CLEAN UP YOUR AREA!!!

It was a good rule then, and it’s a better rule now.

In the case of grown-ups submitting files for print, the toys would be your software of choice, and your “area” would be the pasteboard, that region of your document that’s not really “on the page”.

Most of you are probably working in InDesign or Quark, and I don’t know where you grew up or how they did things there, but you’re leaving your documents in a state. I’m finding unlinked graphics and photos off to the side, and empty text boxes with strange fonts and styles assigned to them. Sometimes you shove them WAAAYYY over to the left or right, but they’re still there, and they still cause problems. All these unlinked, unused things cause error messages to pop up during pre-press, which means your pre-press time and charges are greater, just because you couldn’t be bothered to clean up your document. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

I know, I know, those elements won’t affect the printing, because they’re not on the page, but the pre-press guy doesn’t know that. All he or she knows is that an error is present, and the offending item has to be tracked down and repaired (if on the page) or deleted (if it’s off-page), and that takes time, and that time can cost you money.

And we haven’t even mentioned layers yet.

Layers are rarely used by the amateurs, but designers LOVE THEM. They are indeed a handy thing, when one is building a document that must be used over and over, with most elements remaining the same, and small details like a logo or two being switched out as needed. You can build all the permanent parts on layers that can be locked in for all time, and place all your variable data on it’s own layer(s). Not a problem. The problem occurs when you leave layers in your document that contain nothing, or are filled with things that don’t print but you just forgot to delete. Once again, errors pop up, and the hunt is on, and your “press ready” job is suddenly bogged down in pre-press while the offending layers are found and deleted.

This isn’t just a problem in traditional printing. If your job is running on a digital color copier, all of these things can cause weird ghostly shapes to show up in your solids. Mysterious blurbs of text suddenly appear in the corners of your photos. I can’t stress enough how annoying this is for your printer. We hate nothing so much as stopped production and the need to repeat work that should have already been done.

Did I mention PhotoShop? PhotoShop can be the worst in this regard; it’s a fantastic program that allows for the construction of beautiful images, but here's the thing: all those layers you used to fade images together and add text, and try out effects that you toggled on and off while you giggled with creative manic glee? We are your printers, and we don’t need those layers. Flatten the damn image before you send it to us, and for god’s sake, convert it to CMYK.

I’m not asking for a lot here. Just stop and breathe for a moment when you’ve finished creating that document. Step back. Grab a smoke. Have a beer. THEN ask yourself: is there anything left in this doc that doesn’t need to be there? Are there things there that are nothing more than a trail of digital bread crumbs leading back to an idea you decided to abandon? If there are, then please just take the extra minute to clean up your area, just like you did when you were 5 years old, and you’ll save me (and my ilk) a lot of hassle, and save yourself a few bucks in the long run.

PEACE. Be good to each other, and for god's sake, pick up after yourselves.

Birth of a Notion

Sometimes I struggle and strain to come up with a topic for this blog, striving to find a clever way to vent my graphic frustrations while passing along some useful tidbits of information in the most humorous way possible. Sometimes I toss and turn in my humble bed, waking the wife and annoying the cats as I mutter curses to the gods for giving me more talent than inspiration, or the other way ‘round, or neither. And then sometimes, all this shit just comes together in such an accidental but somehow perfect way that I have no choice but to get it out, write it down and blog it up.

This is one of those times.

In my last entry I did quite a bit of bitching about some design school grads and their utter lack of knowledge about the fine art of lithography. In retrospect, it may have been a bit harsh, and I was thinking maybe my next entry should be an attempt to balance the scales a bit. In spite of the prevailing paradigm of printers and designers regarding each other as cat and dog enemies, I do have quite a few designer friends, most of whom hold degrees from one respectable institution or another.

Around the time that I was writing the last entry (A Tale of Woe), I took a break to hang out with one of those designers at a local bar where she had just entered a Chili cook-off. Her name is Barb, and she’s one hell of a designer. Her stuff looks great, and I recommend her to people all the time. Babs and I have a healthy exchange of ideas; she knows way more about design than I do, and I know way more about printing, and we trade a lot of useful information. I was telling her the story that turned into my last blog, and she was rolling her eyes sympathetically at all the appropriate places, and the discussion turned toward the question “why don’t more design school people know what they need to know about printing?”

She confessed to me that she’d always thought it would be a great idea to get a pre-press job for a year or two, just to learn the ins and outs of the industry, and to get a first hand feel for what a printshops needs from a designer’s artwork. The trouble is, she’s just never been able to find a job opening like that, and when one does come up, there’s a whole bunch of people like me waiting in line to apply ahead of her. It is pretty rough out there, I agree. A lot of big companies are outsourcing their layout work, laying off design people right left and sideways. Twenty-nine other people applied for my job at the same time I did, and that was before the current recession had even begun. Babs and I agree that design students should all spend a year working pre-press in a real working print shop, the same way med students are required to do rounds in a real hospital. Unfortunately, neither of us has any idea how to make this happen. We just know that it should.

So I slink back to my apartment, full of Barb’s chili ( it was called ‘Meatsplosion’, and it was fantastic), beer, and a need to vent my frustrations. I post my grumblings to my blog, and am sort of pleasantly surprised to find that I’ve gotten a few comments from other pre-press people who seem just as frustrated as me (shout-outs to TheSlapster and geo... thanks for feeling my pain). I have a renewed sense of urgency and camaraderie, and vow to update this thing at least once a week from now on.

Then I get the e-mail. It was from one Matthew Weller who works in a print shop in Great Britain. The contents of his e-mail made me almost giddy with the possibility of a brighter future:

Hi Bob,

Just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your blog. I’m a young designer working in a printers and I can relate to everything you write about. Particularly the ‘kid going to design school’. I’ve worked 2 years at a printers but I’m due to go to university for a design degree, I feel as a designer this will benefit my skill-range but I’m glad I’ve got 2 years experience in a printers so when I graduate I’ll already know the woes that designers can leave printers faced with! I even just recently had a young graduate designer complain to me about the poor colour on a print job (which was due to the poor conversion of HIS RGB supplied files on the apogee pre-press!).

Anyway I just wanted to let you know, again, how much I enjoy your posts and maybe convince you that there are some (if only a few) young designers out there with an interest and basic knowledge in the world of pre-press.

Best,

Mat Weller

Apple Print Limited

2Q Faraday Road

Newbury, Berkshire

RG14 2AD United Kingdom

www.appleprint.co.uk

Mat, you are indeed one of the good ones. Your future clients will benefit enormously from your knowledge of the printing process, and I pray they reward you accordingly. I mean, come on, this is exactly what Barb and I were talking about! For once, the thing that I truly believed should happen apparently was happening. Fantastic. Stellar. Cheers to everyone involved, let’s have another round.

So here’s the thing: I really think this is a great idea, and I wonder how many others out there agree with me and Mat and Barb. There must be more than just the three of us. I also wonder if there are any far-sighted design schools out there who see the importance of this. Maybe some of them even require students to spend some time in the pre-press dungeons of the world, or maybe they’ve even opened working print shops on campus where future designers can experience the educational joys of cranking out plates for a room full of grumpy pressmen. Maybe not, but I’d like to know.

I’ve always thought that talented designers were a lot like master chefs, and us pre-press grunts were a lot like line cooks, doing the real physical cooking to ensure the perfect execution of the chef/designer’s inspired vision. If that’s the case, then it’s no stretch to assume that we can all only get better at our jobs if there’s a higher level of respect and communication between designers and printers. At the end of the day we all want the same things; to make a great product that we can be proud of, and to work smarter instead of harder, so we’ll have more time to spend enjoying the other parts of our lives.

Alright people, I really want some feedback on this one... Is there a way out of this wilderness of ignorance and miscommunication? Can we make things better? You tell me!

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Next time around, I’m thinking maybe I’ll relate a bit of my history and share some of the sordid details that landed me in the role of “pre-press guy”. Until then, take care of yourselves, and for god’s sake, talk to each other once in a while. ;-)

PEACE!