Here was a quote from a well know figure in our graphic arts sector which I thought was awesome. It also happens to say what preflighting in the creative process is all about, although this can apply to any level of quality assurance within the design workflow:

“If you don’t have time to do it right,
when will you have time to do it over?”

Terry White
http://terrywhite.com/tw/Welcome.html

Apart from being a columnist for Layers Magazine and X-OLOGY Magazine Terry is also Worldwide Adobe Creative Suite Design Evangelist.

Here was a great one we picked up on over at Posterous and their fine assortment of designer orientated blogs. This inspiring video is titled, “The making of a book cover [time-lapse video]” and was posted by AllTop a Guy Kawasaki venture, among ventures. Too bad many graphic designers push preflighting their Illustrations and InDesign layouts to the next party, as in the print-shop. I wouldn’t trust anyone to mess with this after that design was exported… Amazing work here:

There is a great discussion going on in the Group of Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals over on Linkedin, started by Cindy (Bailey) Wingo, where in short she asked:

“What are the industry standards for producing clean, RIPpable files?” … “What is the industry standard for excellence in pre-flighting files?“

Source: Group of Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals

Great replies, but it is the last post, which I will start with; which is the summary as far as quality-minded design and publishing users are concerned with, in the overall workflow process to printed output:

“Preflighting should happen even before the PDF is even created. Bad files make bad PDFs. That’s why programs such as FlightCheck are so invaluable.“

Source: David Creamer via the Group of Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals

This was in response to the usual postflighting options mentioned for later stage PDF’s and the likes. This is fine and true, as a step right before the RIP, but not the entire truth; actually far from it. You need to Preflight FIRST before even making a PDF print-file. What was encouraging was the facts brought forth by industry expert (I.D.E.A.S Training) and certified Adobe and Quark trainer, David Creamer and our own Mary Gay (Pettit) Marchese, for this is the way to make a publishing and print workflow truly flow.  Read more... (501 words, 2 images, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

Urban designers are a niche within graphic design that I personally find quite interesting. If you read some of what they do on a job description, you’ll see that many not only get to layout and design with InDesign, Quark, Illustrator and CAD programs (point 7), but also often have a hands-on duty with planners, community leaders and local governments. Basically each position varies, but in a nut-shell they help plan our towns, cities and landscapes!

Urban Designers, the rest of this post is just for you! Recently we helped an urban designer with a bad or corrupt Adobe InDesign file. Through that contact, we decided to look deeper into what we as a provider of software productivity tools could mean for you, the user of graphical representation software…

URBAN DESIGNERS GRAPHIC DESIGN SURVEY
A few Quick Questions…

We have a few simple questions to ask of you in this easy to complete online survey. Your feedback would be much appreciated to help us better understand how we can serve urban designers and architect firms:

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/231245/urban-designers-survey

A bit below on this entry is what I just posted in our Group within the Linkedin.com professional networking site. If you are a free participant of Linkedin, please become a member of our open graphic arts group today. First though, it may be good for those not 100% familiar with this site, to see why it is so important.

Here is a practical article about “why” Linkedin, which also highlights Moo.com a print media company and the CEO, Richard Moross:

“Moo.com is a printing and graphics company. Its CEO has a LinkedIn professional profile that lists his professional affiliations, which demonstrate his expertise in printing and graphics. There’s also an “I Love Moo.com” profile at LinkedIn (accessible to LinkedIn account holders) for customers of Moo.com.”
Source & full Article: Use LinkedIn To Promote Your Online Store

If you do not have a profile on Linkedin.com yet, I highly recommend you join Linkedin today (check this out too). Righty-o, onto how you can join up with Markzware there and connect with us personally as well:

LinkedIn Groups

Markzware User Group for Graphic Design, Publishing and Print

Subject: Announcement from Markzware User Group for Graphic Design, Publishing and Print  Read more... (421 words, 2 images, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

In a recent post, we looked at how outsourcing is effecting North America and Europe’s print businesses. Today we look briefly at how many are able to outsource the designing and prepress preparation of print-ads, to India in this case.

Graphic Designing | Graphic Design Outsourcing | Pre Press Outsourcing

Print-ads have surely seen a decline, yet print is far from dead. Graphic design is more than just layout and that is why I am assuming “western” designers will not be out of jobs anytime soon, especially with the cultural and language barriers associated with true brand and content management. Layout design is not Pre-press. Couple that with an explosion of new media channels, with of course Internet leading the charge, but mobile and eReaders or tablet computers coming on strong as well and this is perhaps a brand of outsourcing that is not only based on price, yet perhaps also demand. Comments? Please give your feedback below! Would love to hear it.

Now, I am quite sure there is more to this than meets the eyes.. or is this a sign of the Internet times we live and work in?

“…Please use either WordPress or InDesign. Don’t know of any other students using Blogger…“

said @scost1 on Twitter, apparently to a student- is this the ‘new world order of Graphic Design‘?

Source: http://twitter.com/barbaranixon/statuses/4788759496

Just a little WordPress or Adobe InDesign chatter on Twitter! Don’t even get me started on Google Wave. Sounds like this school and it’s students could use content conversion and text extraction provided by PageZephyr.com…

Don’t forget that you can also follow Markzware’s Tweets on Twitter here:
http://twitter.com/Markzware

The PRINT 09 show in Chicago a couple weeks ago is proof that many printers need to become more than just appliers of ink onto rolls of paper. The latest Fuji inkjet press or Xerox digital printing machine is of course important, yet we read in this article titled, “The Digital Future for the Printing Industry” that print-shops need to change or die. What is that change generally about?

“The printing industry is currently and will continue to experience many transitions in the form of `Digital Printing and Communications`. This also impacts on all businesses globally.

The printing industry will continue to evolve into new and exciting `electronic imaging driven by digital technology`. Digital technology, economic restructuring, global competition, market changes, emerging new media and other market forces are combining to `dramatically` change the operating environment of the Printing Industry.”
Source: http://www.graphicstart.com/viewarticle.php?articleid=429

Here is a little video of T.J. Tedesco giving a 40,000 foot view of social media for printers at PRINT 09, which is for sure part of this transformation (Starting to sound like a Mayan 2012 prophecy!):
 Read more... (560 words, 1 image, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)

Ms. Klier, a valued customer of ours from  tür3))) Design in Austria and a layout designer, said this to me in an email: “I bought ID2Q and also Q2ID and still love to use it nearly every day – it is absolutely helpful!” Curious about how they use both QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign and need to convert jobs to and from both, I asked for more details, which I include below in both English and German:

We are a graphic design firm, specializing in catalogue production for electrical installations and we receive layouts from different customers, some in Xpress some InDesign. We need to bring them together, mostly to an ID-product but also sometimes to Xpress- depending on the program, in which the greater part of pages were created.

Q2ID (XPress to InDesign) and ID2Q (InDesign to XPress) have become necessary parts in the daily design workflow. It would be impossible, to cope with a job like this, with a big amount of tables and charts within the layout – in just a minute!

Both software programs are a good value!!

Karin Klier
tür3))) design
Vienna

German Version — — —  Read more... (291 words, estimated 1:10 mins reading time)

DTP tips & tricks – the basics. Desktop Publishing explained and more importantly “how to avoid BAD desktop publishing!” Two part video, all embedded below:

Avoiding Bad Desktop Publishing Part One:

Good elementary elements, according to the presenter, of a graphics layout include:
* Design Continuity
* Contrast
* Symmetry
Naturally, he wisely stresses a limited selection of fonts and using templates whenever possible to keep graphic design continuity in place.

Avoiding Bad Desktop Publishing Part Two:

Using style sheets and proper font  and image formatting.