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)

This was a nice overview on what a DTP’er for printing or web designs does and what the daily publishing workflow is like-

Hi mom, this is what I do as a Desktop Publisher or DTP layout artist at work:

Interesting the comment about a blend of print and web layout. Are you a DTP artist? Then perhaps this new desktop search-engine for DTP file formats is for you:
PageZephyr – http://pagezephyr.com

Watch the introduction (NEW) here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN9n1uvveIU

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Markzware’s Card.ly electronic business card for embedding on web sites, email signatures or social network pages (Get your own here):

Profile: http://card.ly/markzware

I learned of this via a Tweet on Twitter from @Minervity and a nice article or post from Bit Rebels, titled, “Create your Online Business Card!” Got to thinking though, this is not really a business card, but more a subset of social networking or perhaps even a network of itself. Enter printing…

What is cool, is step 3 when setting up your “hub” as they call it, which is where you choose a design. (Interesting choice for words, not an electronic business card, as we have reported on before as well.) Now look at that printing company down below the preview. Moo.com, who we just discussed in our last post, pushing the “real thing” a printed business card to compliment your electronic one!:

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)

I saw this Kodak Social Media guide (Download provided by Kodak) at Print 09 and was pretty impressed.

Impressive was not only the quality of the print job but also the content to help printers and other graphic arts professionals get started with the all important process that goes with online networking. We even posted about it here and Tweeted it out too. Thus it was cool to see this post on Kodak’s blog about how they printed the useful booklet:

Printing of our Social Media Booklets

Paulette Brandes
Interactive Marketing Manager Design & Usability
Rochester, NY, USA

Click here for full article… … …

The supposed Chinese proverb, “may you live in interesting times“, is perhaps true for those in  publishing (Newspaper, book and magazine publishers), printing and for that matter graphic design, as we read:

Condé Nast and Adobe collaborate on digital magazine app

Relax News

Saturday, 21 November 2009

Publisher Condé Nast and Adobe Systems are developing a digital-magazine application to be compatible with laptops, netbooks, smart phones, and upcoming electronic slate devices.

Wired magazine, which covers tech news and information, will be the first to adapt the app, which will produce full-color, high-resolution images to replicate the experience of reading a print publication with the convenience of the internet.

This collaboration will bring magazine content into digitalized form for devices available in 2010. The companies hope to create a technology that will be applied to the publisher’s other magazines and adopted throughout the industry.  Read more... (299 words, 1 image, estimated 1:12 mins reading time)

With president Obama just leaving China, this post may be seen as timely; Adopt a printer in China or other far-east markets. That is my idea for the day. Just as many small towns and cities will have sister, partner cities in other parts of the world, so should print-shops. Why?

Print is not dead. Neither is outsourcing.

We read here on this reply to a Chinese print representative looking for work with American printers:

“Many companies are taking their large print orders to Chinese printing companies in the hopes of saving money. I know of three sales reps in my area alone that are representing chinese printing companies.Their pricing is half to one third of mine on larger projects. They have a high degree of success bringing work to their Chinese employers.

But as always with a lower price, comes a cost…” (Read full source post for full details)
Source: PrintPlanet on Linkedin.com

And that cost can be partly be overcome by setting up real, perhaps even legal, partnerships. If you just shop for the cheapest print, you’ll be switching every job or monthly. Why not form a true partnership?  Read more... (567 words, 2 images, estimated 2:16 mins reading time)

Save FreeHand! They call themselves FREE FreeHand, but let’s face it, when you are up against such factors as ex Macromedia and the mighty Adobe, a miraculous “save” (I guess they would settle for an effective “import”) comes to mind…
http://www.freefreehand.org/

Yes, you read it correctly. I guess there are a lot of Spaniards on their list, for last I heard, Spain was one place that would not give up their favorite vector drawing app that easily.

FlightCheck supports preflighting FreeHand 11.0 (MX) down to version 7. Although not on our short-list for other file formats to add to our new indexing, search and text extraction technology, PageZephyr, it would also make sense to be added here in the future.

Free Freehand aims actually state this VERY PROBLEM that legacy files pose and Markzware, with it’s file format conversion knowledge, often helps solve:

“We want FreeHand to have a future. Not only because we love to work with it, but also because we have thousands of files from the past we may need access to on any given occasion (well, they open in AI, but are converted into chaos).” SOURCE: http://www.freefreehand.org/index.shtml  Read more... (572 words, 1 image, estimated 2:17 mins reading time)

This is a cool site for those in the printing industry in the UK, but useful for anyone that uses the English language really, PrintSpeak.

“Print is not dead, but circulation and readership of printed publications are falling fast“, says Karen Charlesworth. It is Karen’s honest reporting and fairness to both vendors, as well as the users alike, that makes this site a must visit, in my book. The site is like a portal for both print news, but also informative links on prepress software, hardware, as well as editorial views that are up to the moment. They even have a nice Pre-flighting software (stand-alone) category. Check it out:

http://www.printspeak.co.uk

They also have a great and easy to read print industry newsletter which you can subscribe to. Print’s one-stop product information shop • printing products directory, video library, product news and more..