ThePrintManual

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The most common paper sizes are based on a sheet called A0 which measures at 851 x 1189mm. This sheet can be cut in half or folded to produce a sheet called A1 which is half the size, you can keep cutting it in half and produce A2, A3, A4… ect. This is a standardized system with measurements widely used within the UK.

Paper weight is another consideration for print as depending on the thickness of your paper will influ-ence how much ink is needed from the printer to produce your print. Thicker paper needs more ink then thin paper, if the printer isnʼt set to the correct settings you will end up with a cracked or bleeding print. Paper is weighed in gsm (grams per square metre) your standard A4 sheet will weight about 90gsm.

PaperSystems

PaperWeights

2.Stock comes in various types being Coated, uncoated, laid and wove. Each of these types of stocks have different characteristics. The two most common are coated and uncoated careful consideration should be taken which each as depending on what colours you are using in your artwork they can come out as entirely different shades of the color depending on what stock they are printed on.

Types of Stock

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Coated papers are avail-able in a gloss, silk (sometimes called satin) or matt finish and are used for projects requiring a fine finish, which is why coated paper is sometimes referred to as 'art' paper. Coated paper generally produces sharper, brighter images and has better reflectivity than uncoated paper. Coated paper is used to print brochures, leaflets & posters and a wide range of design for print formats, especially high volume print runs.

Through not having a coat-ing this stock is not as smooth as a coated page.Uncoated paper is avail-able in many different finishes, colours, and weights and is generally more absorbent than coated paper. Commonly used in laser printers.

Coated

Uncoated

3.Pantone is a universal colour system; these are colours which printers can mix using the formula writ-ten under each sample in the swatch book. The formula is designed to give the same result every time. Pantone can be mixed from a range of several standard colours which come straight out of the

PantoneMatchingSystem

can, these include CMYK but can also include colours like Pantone green, pantone purple, pantone, orange, rubine red, reflex blue and others. There-fore, the range of colours it is possible to mix goes way beyond a range limited to combinations of just CMYK.

PantoneMatchingSystem

Pantone is very helpful especially when working on screen if you select a specific pantone you know it will print out like it should, this is helpful when sending your work to a printers as you know you will get back the colour you want. You can also pantone match colours with the pantone books and then apply them onscreen.

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CMYKRGBMonitors emit light and produce colours in the RGB range (red, green, blue). Paper absorbs ink and are produced by ink colours Cyan, Magenta, yellow and Key (black). CMYK works in a subtrac-tive manor, where to more colours you add the Darker the colour will eventually become, RGB works in a additive manor where the more colours you add the lighter colour you will eventually end up with RGB is a far greater range of colours available on screen, but the problem is a lot of these colours aren't able to be printed in CMYK as it lacks a large part of the colour spec-trum.

When producing art work on Photoshop you should always check what mode its set in, if you are produc-ing something for print then it should always be in CMYK because the RGB range can not in a lot of cases be printed out, if you do not select the RGB colours before print, your artwork will come out much different then what it looks like on screen. If you manually check your artwork with the gamut reader on Photoshop you can replace the RGB colours with the closest corresponding CMYK colour, this will allow you to control your print out a bit better then just letting the software replace colours.

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Through not having a coat-ing this stock is not as smooth as a coated page.Uncoated paper is avail-able in many different finishes, colours, and weights and is generally more absorbent than coated paper. Commonly used in laser printers.

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Embossing

Foil blocking

PrintFinishing

Embossing will push your work up from the page giving it a different charac-teristic then normal ink prints. It can be used to raise subtle artwork or text to make it stand out more. The material you want to emboss is pushed into the die using a male counter-force. Embossing can be used to raise a printed or foiled image. It is also used to “Blind Emboss” images, this raises the image on plain paper.

Ultra-violet cured coatings can be applied over ink printed on paper and dried by UV exposure. UV coatings can come in a variety of gloss ranges. UV varnish can be applied as a spot varnish making spe-cific areas of your design show up more with a glossy shine and finish.

The block is heated on a press and a metallic or coloured foil is branded on the material. Foil blocking is a very simple process and can be used a variety of ways one is that you can print a black foil on black stock which will give your logo a shine to it and make it stick off the page. Foil blocking on your design will stand out with a shine, you can use it to empha-size text or image.

5There are various types of print finishes each giving your work a different characteristic. Print finishes are what make your work stand out or apart from all the other design work. The most common are embossing, foil blocking and UV varnish.

4.Rotary

Rotogravure

Flexography

PRODUCTIONMETHODS

In this process the Image printing plates are wrapped around a cylin-der. This is an automated print process and material to be printed can be sheet fed or on a roll.

Copper plates (with mirror image) transfer ink directly to print surface, usually on rolls. Advantage, plates are more durable and so are good for long print runs.

A postive, mirror image rubber polymer plate, on a cylinder, transfers "sticky" ink directly to print surface. Usually roll feed. This print-ing process is mainly used for low quality printing for products, which will be thrown away like crisp packets or sweet wrap-pers. Itʼs cheap and can be run in long print runs.

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4.Lithography

PRODUCTIONMETHODS

Etched aluminum plates wrapped around a cylin-der transfer ink to an "offset" rubber blanket roller then to a print surface. Sheet fed or Web fed. This process is mainly used for high-speed prints, it gives a good finish.6

Spot Colour

Duotone

Tints

Spot ColourDuotoneTints

Spot colours are usually much brighter and will stand out more on your page then a result of mixing a CMYK colour. A spot colour can be used to emphases specific things on your design or to make text stand out.

When a continuous tone image is printed in 2 spot colours. You can produce a duotone by using two silk screens or on Photoshop edit an image to a duotone image.

In colour theory, a tint is the mixture of a colour with white, which increases lightness. Using a range of tints from a specific colour will help you bring down the amount of colours used within your work which will bring down printing costs. 7

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Ultra-violet cured coatings can be applied over ink printed on paper and dried by UV exposure. UV coatings can come in a variety of gloss ranges. UV varnish can be applied as a spot varnish making spe-cific areas of your design show up more with a glossy shine and finish.

8The main cost for digital print is the Toner inks which cost a lot more then the conventional inks used in litho-printing. There is no labor costs involved in digital print, its ideal for short print runs. Litho printing's cost goes down as the quantity of prints go up, this is mainly because the most expensive part of this process is setting up the machine with the aluminum plates and after the machine has been set up it can keep running.

9Perfect Binding

Saddle Stitch

Best suited for use with books and thick maga-zines. For a minimum thick-ness of 3mm, it works well with a wide range of thick-ness and trim sizes. To pro-duce a perfect bound book, the folded signa-tures are gathered together in page sequence, clamped and then about 3mm is sliced off the edges. The edges then get glued and held together.

Ideal for small booklets, magazines and cata-logues. Wire staples hold the pages together, itʼs an easy quick way to bind a booklet. A saddle stitched document must be at least eight pages long, docu-ments with more than 80 pages may demand a different bind.

Book Binding9 Another consideration before print is

binding, there are various different ways you can bind each type of bind-ing had different characteristics and can enhance your books appearance and functionality. Some binding meth-ods to consider are: case binding, perfect binding, self binding, Cana-dian binding.

In colour theory, a tint is the mixture of a colour with white, which increases lightness. Using a range of tints from a specific colour will help you bring down the amount of colours used within your work which will bring down printing costs. 7

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When the final design has been approved by the client and all the pro-duction work hs been completed, it is time to send the job out to the printer. The last thing you want is for an error to get through which means that every-one can point to you.

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All images must be CMYK-TIFF or CMYK-EPS format

NO RGB, GIF, JPEG, BMP or PSD

no redundant alpha chan-nels

No clipping paths except where they are really needed

Bleed of 3mm

If the images are linked rather than embedded, make sure you send the images to the printer as separate file

Check for no surprise fonts you did not intend to use which can confuse and hold up print production. In illustrator you have the option to create outlines on your type used, this is a quick way to make sure that the fonts wont go miss-ing when transferring your files to your printer.

Check that any graphic elements you created are not outlined or filled with RGB.

Check that any swatches you have added are speci-fied as process rather then spot colour, otherwise they will want to output as a separate sheet.

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