From the show floor of PRINT 09, we post you this interesting film-

Xerox DirectMail on the “Prepress for Digital Printing” Book and retro FlightCheck; a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkj70fyy-CI

Transcript:
How many of you remember this one? Why fight it, preflight it! With FlightCheck. Now this is an old one, going a little bit retro here. I don’t know from when this was exactly, probably about 1999 and maybe even earlier, like 97, or 1996 But anyway that brings us to the next subject of today which is a little letter I got a nice direct mail piece, nice to see that. Not only was it a direct mail piece it was personalized and it came from no other than Xerox.

BREAKING- since this video was made, FlightCheck 6.5 with QuarkXPress 8 and CS4 or Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat and thus PDF support is now shipping! Save one hundred when purchasing here!

Making a print-ready Acrobat 9 or similar PDF file can be tricky. Naturally, quality control or preflight should be a key part of any graphic design or publishing workflow. This said, here is a good initiative I came across while cruising the Graphicstart collection of RSS feeds:

Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat Updates Require New GWG Guidelines for PDF Creation from Office Applications

To make it easier and faster to get quality results in PDFs created from Office applications, the Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG) has issued new best practice process guidelines. The new guidelines were developed in response to recent changes made to Office applications and the Adobe Acrobat family of products.

The new Office Printing PDF Creator Guidelines are available for free download at: http://gwg.org/Office_Document_Printing_-1.phtml

Says Menno Mooji, co-chairman of the GWG Office Document Printing Subcommittee and a founder of ISI Publishing Innovators, “With the software changes in Microsoft Office Service Pack 2 and Adobe Acrobat 9, new ways of creating predictable PDFs are now possible. As a result, we’ve released a document outlining best practices that cater to the new developments.
Source: http://www.quickprinting.com/web/online/Industry-News-and-Trends/Microsoft-Office-and-Adobe-Acrobat-Updates-Require-New-GWG-Guidelines-for-PDF-Creation-from-Office-Applications/1$10765  Read more... (217 words, estimated 52 secs reading time)

Yet another interesting email popped-up within the In-Box, this time from Dewald Rosema of Exell Technologies, the Markzware distributor in South Africa. Here it is, with the kind approval of Dewald:

In today’s economic climate and growing competition, it is essential for creative, publishing and print production organizations, to ensure it stays ahead of the game and finds new innovative ways to reduce costs reduce human errors and produce high quality jobs quickly at competitive pricing.

Designing for Print?
Where does print start – designing? Who is responsible for printing what was designed – the printer? Who should carry the cost for correcting incorrect design work – the print buyer?

Most common design problems – time wasters – cost adding factors:  Read more... (438 words, estimated 1:45 mins reading time)

• Missing or incorrect bleed
• Incorrect job size
• Missing fonts
• RGB images
• Missing graphics – Links
• Resolution to high or to low
• Trapping
• PMS color – Should it be a spot or standard process (CMYK)