Close to fifteen years on the same question arises, time and time again, with regards to quality control in the design to print process:

Where is the best place to preflight the art-work or print layout?

Stop a preflight problem in an element at the design stage, it may only set you back $10€; that same problem on the press will cost you potentially $thousands€. This chart answers that age-old question pretty clearly and shows how simple preflight controls can greatly improve your ROI. Preflighting is not a process just ‘done by someone else’ in the manufacturing of your designs you want to take flight in the form or a printed piece. It should be done throughout in the workflow, time and time again. Just ask Toyota and their recent huge recall of Prius automobilies due to faulty brake software.

Naturally each workflow varies, often greatly, but as a rule of thumb, you should preflight with tools like FlightCheck Professional v6.5 just before you are about to:

A) Send off to another party to work further on the layout or design
B) Before using received  artwork from other sources
C) Whenever something is unsure or elements “act-up” in the layout
D) (before) Output or Export to PDF or Print
E) Postflight the resulting/received print PDF file
 Read more... (341 words, 1 image, estimated 1:22 mins reading time)

“QUALITY IS NOT STATIC”

“Kwaliteit is niet statisch” in Vlaams by
Luc De Schrijver, GLS Belgium Distribution

Neither is the Markzware multi-award winning document preflight application for graphic designers, layout artists and prepress professionals alike – FlightCheck Professional v6.5.

FlightCheck Professional v6.5x picture preview window.
Preflight your way to quality with FlightCheck Professional v6.5

Developing for proprietary file formats is much like breaking codes or being a Cryptologist. Cryptography is a very interesting study, dating back to the Greeks usage of transposition ciphers, but surely was used long before that by Mesopotamians and Egyptians. Thus it was with interest that we read this WSJ article titled, “Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code” about this man who broke a 200 year old coded message sent in 1801 by Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, to then-president Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, who has patents and inventions which included the portable copy press, also dabbled in secret code (The Wheel Cipher):

“Jefferson even wrote about his own ingenious code, a model of which is at his home, Monticello, in Charlottesville, Va. Called the wheel cipher, the device consisted of cylindrical pieces, threaded onto an iron spindle, with letters inscribed on the edge of each wheel in a random order. Users could scramble and unscramble words simply by turning the wheels.”
SOURCE: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124648494429082661.html

What more creative way to kick off your Monday morning graphic designers, publishers and print professionals than with this little invention history from one of the founding fathers of the United States!  Read more... (253 words, 2 images, estimated 1:01 mins reading time)

Printing tips on the prepress side of things for graphic designers. How to create color graphics and InDesign layouts, which will ultimately print perfectly, or output to PDF without problems.  First, here are the 10 most common preflight problems or things you should avoid:

This graphic is from about TEN YEARS AGO! Amazing how it all basically stays the same: Missing fonts, incorrect trapping (when two different colors overlap), incorrect color usage, images in the wrong color mode, improper page set-up settings, unlinked graphics or images, inadequate bleeds, no proof (soft or print), missing images, too low (or too high) image effective image resolution.

With this in mind, here was a great, colorful blog post titled, “10 Pre-Press Tips For Perfect Print Publishing” which I wanted to highlight. The 10 items from the post, which are of course from a strictly design perspective are:

1. Use RGB Color Mode For Photoshop Images
2. Specify The Right Color Settings
3. Ditch Photoshop EPS Files And Use PSD Files Instead
4. Accurately Simulate CMYK While Working In RGB
5. Selecting the Right CMYK Output Profile For The Job
6. Use InDesign Instead Of Photoshop To Make The Final Color Conversion
7. Download All The Profiles
8. Exporting A Perfect CMYK PDF Using RGB Images
9. Avoiding Errors When Using RGB Images And Spot Colors
10. Share Your PDF Files With Acrobat.com
Source: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/  Read more... (300 words, 1 image, estimated 1:12 mins reading time)

Since ICANN, approved the use of non-Latin characters in domain names today, I thought we would stick on the Internet side with this post. Jörg Oyen, the publishing, Adobe and Quark QPS expert friend of ours over in Germany at Oyen.de, sent me a rather ominous Instant message on Skype the other day, “Do you like balls”? he asked. For some reason, I thought, “oh, must be Google Balls” for it sounds very Googlish (sp?) No, he meant Tagul balls or Tagul meta clouds. Here, you can see Jörg’s meta ball from his site here:

Here is the Markzware meta data cloud (no mystery here):

Beware! This Markzware cloud is not complete and this is limitation of Tagul only getting the first 350 keywords or something to that effect. We see FlightCheck in there, but no Q2ID or ID2Q, our popular Quark-to-InDesign and the other way around as well, conversion tools.

Want to see how we made this? Watch the video here, for good control over your meta data, keywords and general SEO is very important for graphic designers, publishers and printers alike (Yes, print-shops included!):

We at Markzware have done countless FlightCheck Professional and Q2ID (Quark to InDesign) or ID2Q (Adobe InDesign to QuarkXpress) live presentations. Generally, like most truly behind their computer software, it is best to give the audience a live taste of how the software behaves in a true workflow setting. Yes, I have had my share of bad software demonstrations, which is why this video is all the more funny for me and perhaps for you as well:

I HAVE DECIDED TO DELETE THIS VIDEO FROM WITHIN THIS POST. IT IS STILL LINKED BELOW, BUT AFTER SEEING THE ENTIRE THING (LESSON LEARNED) IT DAWNED ON ME THAT THIS MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO CHRISTIANS OR THOSE WHOM LOST LOVED ONES TO CANCER. SORRY.

GRRF – The Last Lecture from Lumalin Productions on Vimeo.

Whether you are a graphic designer, print production publisher or printer, this GRFF – The Last Lecture video may have you on the print production floor (For you have seen your share of software demo’s, that is for sure!)

Print has had it’s challenges the last year or two and the  PRINT 09 trade show was no exception in showing us that just earlier this week in Chicago, with less than packed attendance. Yet, let’s face it; nothing beats a high-quality, properly preflighted, prepped and output print advertisement in a known print publication. So, we read here some great tips for both the advertiser as well as graphic designers:

Three Things You Should Know About Print Ads That Sell

Context matters. Many of the ads that drove purchase were of natural interest to the readers of the magazines in which they appeared. Ads for America’s Milk Processors (purchased by 55% of ad readers), Vaseline Clinical Therapy Body Lotion (purchased by 26% of ad readers) and Lipitor (purchased by 18% of ad readers), for instance, all stress wellness and healing, and all appeared in Health magazine. The Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs” ad appeared in Maxim, whose audience is largely male. Let’s face it — dirty jobs may be more interesting to men than women; 21% of ad readers said they watched the show as a result of seeing this ad. So, too, with the James Bond-themed Swatch ad in Wired, another male-oriented title. It was the top ad in the watch category — and I think it’s safe to say that, in general, more men than women wish they were James Bond. Moreover, the TurboTax ad in Us Weekly appeared a mere five weeks before the dreaded April 15 Tax Day — and 27% of ad readers said the ad sparked their purchase.  Read more... (452 words, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

Two pieces crossed the desk today which highlighted the continued growth of social networking tools such as Linkedin.com, FaceBook and most notably, Twitter.com. First, we read here on WhatTheyThink.com this:

Businesses are slowly adopting social media marketing. Each month Discover Financial Services publishes a monthly report called Small Business Watch, and April’s “Poll of the Month” focused on social media. Some interesting responses by the small businesses polled:

38% are members of online social networking communities, as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or My Space.
45% of those who currently belong an online social network use it to promote their businesses.
62% percent of small business owners still do not have Web sites for their businesses.
Source: http://blogs.whattheythink.com/going-green/2009/07/10-ways-twitter-will-permanently-change-business

Now, those are numbers for small business in general. We for sure see a lot of graphic designers, advertising studios and creatives using Twitter and a growing number of printers (See this list of printers on Twitter.). This same article above, which was titled, “10 Ways Twitter Will Permanently Change Business” goes on to list why and how Twitter is changing business… check it out, as it is very interesting imho.  Read more... (428 words, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)

“I see more and more people using lo res images more then ever and they don’t care about the results once the job prints” says “Prepress_Online” via their Twitter account to “Markzware.”

Is a low-resolution image pandemic sweeping the world of printing?

• Are creatives, graphic designers and print-buyers preflighting less than ever?
• Is quality assurance taking a back-seat to price?
• Do you use an electronic method of preflighting on your brochures, color graphics and other posters & cards heading to print?

Would love to see, via the comments section below, some answers to these general preflight and prepress problems. Hearing from both designers, publishers and printers would also be great.

You can follow Markzware’s and Prepress Online’s tweets here:
http://twitter.com/Markzware
http://twitter.com/Prepress_Online/

Testimonials (video)  -

Graphic artists, designers, publishers and printers giving their feedback and experience on the power and advantages of using Markzware’s software tools for the graphic arts industry. Video testimonials on Markzware’s Adobe Plug-ins, QuarkXPress XTensions and stand-alone Macintosh and Windows applications:

To view the rest of the non-video testimonials on Markzware’s FlightCheck, Q2ID, ID2Q, PUB2ID, MarkzTools or our service to fix bad Adobe InDesign files, see:

http://www.markzware.com/marketing/testimonials/