help for designers

[tuff_gong]

Several years ago I prepared a one-page file checklist for customers to fill out and turn in with their disc. Even put a handy keyboard chart on it (with option/option-shift specialty characters) Had it padded.

Had a meeting at a large agency. The head designer looked at it, ripped off the chipboard, and turned it over. He said, "We'll just use these as scratchpads."

[Joe]

I once considered becoming a designer....but I figured it wasn't worth going through having half of my brain removed. 8O

[Lammy]

Originally Posted by Kolor_Blind

Our shop has supplied a Digital File Specification Sheet to all of our clients and it rarely does any good, it's usually ignored.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by Kolor_Blind

When I went through college I was taught to FEAR THE PRINTER!!

I wish they would just mention the printer these days. It seems all design courses are teaching is how to put things together. No mention of printing at all, or even of what's a good practice.

I have a friend that recently finished her design degree. She said she's learned more in listening to me complain about designers in the past 3 months than she did in the 4 years of collage!!

[tuff_gong]

A lot of the problem is those who would understand it already know the basics of file prep.
The most common question I get from a client is "How do you want it saved?" - in others words, file already created, too late to change it.

[Platypibri]

Fate intervened and I got a taste of what you are talking about today.

This guy brings in a flattened tiff file today, it's in RGB space, some awful blue and red with a big gradient in the background. Black strokes on the outside of the red letters and inside of the blue letters. It's kind of almost reflex blue and P 185, but only almost, and the gradient in the background is leaning towards purple.

Why this is so horrible, is my boss had asked me to check out this guy's 2 color job and see if we can out it on the AB Dick 9810. I was stunned silent. TGIF, I guess.

Oh, and I forgot. It had no bleed. In the purple gradient. In the background. Of my 2 color red and blue (and black) job.

[DCurry]

"But it's red and blue onscreen! That's 2 colors, isn't it?" :wink:

[nlynx76]

Make a DCS out of the job: convert job to Grayscale, change mode to Multichannel, duplicate, adjust two color elements, recombine into new DCS2 file. Photoshop also has a nice feature where you can replace color in the Reds, Nuetrals, etc. under the Image Adjustment menus... I started cheating with bleeds.. Just duplicate the image, flip horizonally/vertically and butt against original so the same values are next to each other. The trims aren't usually *that* far off unless it's a saddle stich with significant creep.

Screw the Designer's pride. Our business is Production. At least providing a spec sheet gives us a fallback so we can say "You didn't do A, B, or C, so we are going to bill you for X amount of additional work to your file." They want results, they have to either educate themselves or pay us for our knowledge and knowhow.

FYI: in my Commercial Art program I learned 1% of what I needed to know about sending files to press. Sadly, it's not always the college graduate's fault that they don't know these things. It's a major fault of the educational system we have and the fact that instructors are not given the time or resources to keep up with technological advances in printing.

[DCurry]

Originally Posted by nlynx76

Sadly, it's not always the college graduate's fault that they don't know these things. It's a major fault of the educational system we have and the fact that instructors are not given the time or resources to keep up with technological advances in printing.

It is the designer's responsibility to educate him/herself beyond what is taught at college. Imagine if accountants could just conduct their business based on only what they were taught during college? Or if lawyers didn't really need to keep learning about new laws every year? Continuing education is a requirement in many fields, so why should design and prepress be any different? Granted, there is (arguably) more at stake in these other fields, but print jobs can get pretty darned expensive!

[Kolor_Blind]

I think it's the fault of the administration of the schools and colleges. If they don't know what to look for in a teacher or instructor, they should find out! I have heard of colleges where they hire last year's best student!

Teachers in college should at least get their students outputting separated lasers. Within my first two months of being a Professional Prep Dude I couldn't believe that my teacher didn't have us output sepped lasers.

[Snoopygolf]

The whole situation can get out of hand and if we don't do SOMETHING, we will all pay. I work for a small newspaper that does a couple dozen outside jobs (high school papers and such). We get ads that people at home have made for their Basket/Country Crafts shops. You know, the kind of people who think that they are computer savvy AND creative. Wow, I must be a designer! Because of them and their double-byte fonts, my laser printer is now obsolete. "Why isn't the PDF I sent you good enough?" I decided I was tired of jumping through hoops. If it doesn't work, it gets rasterized! Tired of trying for these morons. The crazy part is that they think it looks great! Sometimes I curse dot gain! We will be replaced someday. When they make giant inkjet printers that connect directly to Dells. When MS Publisher can rip out 3,000 copies of 4 color for less than $.10 a copy, we're all toast. I actually had a woman say, "If my $60 inkjet can print it, how come your expensive RIP can't?" It was an RGB newspaper. The whole damned file (type and all) was rasterized RGB! I don't mind the Designers with college education. From my experience, they tend to work with you, because that is their job and career. It's these damned DIYers that are killing me.