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:

We have seen the ROI and value preflighting adds to the design-to-print workflow in chart form, now let’s hear from a real user. In this case, it is from Randy Jamerson, Prepress systems administrator for EBSCO Media.

Located in Birmingham, Alabama EBSCO Media is one of the largest full-service sheetfed printers in the country. More info on their operation at the end, now onto how they use FlightCheck:

“FlightCheck has evolved into a very robust and customizable product.  For example, if your workflow automatically converts RGB to CMYK and honors tagged profiles, you can customize FlightCheck so that it does not flag these as error conditions.“

Randy Jamerson, EBSCO Media

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From: Randy Jamerson
Date: February 19, 2010 4:57:23 PM GMT+01:00
To: Mary Gay <pr A_T markzware.com>
Subject: Re: Markzware/Congratulations/Questions for blog

Here are some thoughts that maybe you can use in your blog.

I was hired at EBSCO Media to be the first “Preflight” person in 1994. We
didn’t have FlightCheck and desktop publishing programs ( Quark and
Pagemaker) at that time had non-existent or very rudimentary tools for
preflight.  Every image and graphic file associated with a job had to be
individually scrutinized. When FlightCheck arrived, it was one of those
“greater than sliced bread” events.  Read more... (586 words, 1 image, estimated 2:21 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

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)

Received this InMail from a connection on Linkedin, one of the many in response to our popular post on the history of desktop publishing late last week and wanted to share it with you all… Congratulations Mike!

Re: Desktop Publishing turns 25…
From: Mike Hilton
Date: January 24, 2010
To: David Dilling

Hi David,

And so too is Graphic Repro – having launched in SA in 1985 – the year everything started to move from Electronic Publishing…

Best regards,
Mike Hilton

>> Regarding David Dilling LinkedIn Status:: David Desktop Publishing turns 25 ? Aldus-Adobe-Macromedia-Quark. Timeline: http://bit.ly/8xo3EA (Fitting w/ Apple tablet on way)

This is shared with Mike’s permission and he added that one can learn more about the history of Graphic Repro magazine and it’s present day online site and thus printing via the hyper link.

Personally I will add that his weekly email newsletter is a must-read. I like the jam-packed format filled with the latest news from not only the South African print, prepress and publishing market, but really from the world. The “Technology-related articles” near the bottom is nice to keep an eye on as well!  Read more... (202 words, 1 image, estimated 48 secs reading time)

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)

Here was a popular discussion over on the “Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals” group on Linkedin.com where Sean Runchman of Tunicca posed an interesting post and something I think many on our side of the printing fence have been thinking of for while, titled, “Premedia – the new Prepress?”

“We are seeing more and more encouragement for printers to diversify from a product offering based solely on print to more service oriented solutions. This requires printers to embrace the digital age even further and look at providing additional services demanded by the marketers within large brands.”
See full post and details here:

Then, to show the Markzware side, especially with the content conversion, content extraction and file recovery we offer, the MASSIVE business opportunity for printers out there is summed up in my last post on this hoping thread:

“Ink on paper is a term used often by printers. This expands to, “Content displayed as ink on paper.”

The printers controlled, in essence, the content up until the Internet. That today (ironically enough, for Gutenberg invented movable type to free content!) has more apparent freedom. Yet is that really so?  Read more... (374 words, estimated 1:30 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.

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)

Markzware most recently gave a sneak preview of our new technology of PageZephyr at Print 09 in Chicago last month.

While at the show Stephen Beals, who has spent more than 30 years in the industry as a pre-press manager and has written hundreds of articles for several print and computer publications over the years stopped by the Markzware booth to check it out and has written a post about it sharing his thoughts….