Design For Print / An Introduction2009 Ian Edward Prentice

Design For Print

Introduction

Paper

Colour

LayoutTypographyProduction

Post Production

Glossary

Design For Print / Introduction1.2

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ContentsIntroductionFormats & sizesStocks & finishesCMYKRGBSeparationsGamutGreyscaleMonotoneDuotoneSpotcolourPage LayoutTypographyRotary printing; LithoRotary printing; GravureRotary printing; FlexoDigital printingScreen printingFinishingSpecialist FinishingGlossary of terms

Design For Print is your inceptive guide to all the basics of print processes, and a summary of everything you need to know when designing print-based publications, whether a book, zine, poster or large format advertisement.

Print plays a huge part in any form of design; from billboard advertisements, magazines and newspapers, to food packaging and novels, it is all considered more than you think.

In this book you will learn about all the basics, to the more complex issues regarding preparing a document to print.

Design For Print covers: Paper; what paper size, weight stock

or finish is best for your publication, what you need to consider when choosing a stock.

Colour; from basic colour spaces for print and differences to screen colour spaces, to different colour swatches and

applications.Layout; designing to basic grid systems

and the technical specifications of a document.

Typography; all the ways you change the look and feel of your type before you even start designing, and what will be most readable for your design.

Production; covering home-printing inkjets and laserjets, to industrial printing rotatory machines, and hand processes such as silk-screen printing.

Post production; from the final considerations and preparations before sending your work to print, to what you can still do your work after printing to give it that extra quality.

Compiled, edited and designed by; Ian Edward Prentice

ianep.co.uk© 2009

Paper formats & sizesDesign For Print / Paper

2.1

of a sheet in half, and you are left with the next smallest A size. Based on the metric system, each measurement is rounded to the nearest whole millimeter.

A0 is the largest of the A series, measuring just under a metre, by just over a metre. Thus, A0 is often used for large posters or hangings. While A4 is the standard size for general documents,

The standardised paper sizing system we use is the ISO system. ISO ensures that all sheet sizes have the same width to height ratio, of the square root of 2 (√2).

Place two sheets of A paper next to one another (longest sides touching) and the resulting size is that of the next biggest A size, or fold the longest length

allow a full sized A print with minimal paper wastage,

The thickness of a sheet of paper, or weight, is specified in grams per square metre, ‘gsm’. Copier paper is usually around 80gsm, while heavy duty card can exceed 140gsm.

letters, photocopying, etc.However, when printing an A sized

document that requires a bleed up to the edge, due to printer margins you have to either downscale the document, or to retain full size, print on the next A size up. Hence, commercial printers operate on Supplementary Raw Format A sizes (SRA). These are only slightly larger but

A0

A1A2

A3A4

A5A6

A7

A8

A0A1A2A3A4A5A6A7A8

SRA0SRA1SRA2SRA3SRA4

841 x 1189594 x 841420 x 594297 x 420210 x 297148 x 210105 x 14874 x 10552 x 74

900 x 1280640 x 900450 x 640320 x 450225 x 320

A paper sizes (mm)

SRA paper sizes (mm)

Design For Print / Paper2.2

great quality. Photo paper is great for, surprisingly, photographs, as the slightly thicker glossy surface can spread the ink much better.

Photo paper is an example of coated stock, paper that has a gloss or silk finish giving fine prints and a smooth surface with vivid colour reproduction. Uncoated paper, although not sharing

The stock you decide to use for your work can make or break your print. There are many different types of paper stocks, weights and finishes, each having its own favoured use.

Standard white copier paper is thin, flat and matte, as mentioned in the last section. This doesn’t allow much ink to be soaked in, so prints can never be of

7.2) can be so much more eye catching than the standard printer paper piece.

There are other materials you can print on to, too. From fabrics like canvas to plastics and vinyl, paper stock is definitely something that should be considered.

the qualities just noted, can come in a great range of weights and stocks, giving another tactile dimension to a piece of work.

Some paper stocks have light reflective qualities, shining certain colours at angles, and some improve colour intensity and accuracy.

Combined with specialist inks (see

Paper stocks & finishes

L-R: Paper used by printers Cranky Pressman and hand printed book on tactile stock by SpoonerGregory.

CMYKDesign For Print / Colour

3.1

resulting in a darker colour, eventually ending with black, as goes for any ink or paint based work.

In contrast to CMYK, RGB is additive colour; the more colours you mix, the lighter it becomes. The Red, Green, Blue colour model is used for anything screen based - televisions, computer monitors etc.

CMYK is the process colours Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (black). This colour process is what is seen with anything printed; Digital printers contain these four colour inks to make up every other colour.

CMYK is subtractive colour. This means the more colours you lay on top of another, the less the light is reflected,

RGBDesign For Print / Colour

3.2

red, green and blue from white light, you are not likely to have an exact match of colours.

And reversibly, anything designed or prepared for screen must be done so in the RGB colour space.

All the colours of the visible spectrum can be produced by merging RGB, however monitors cannot fully reproduce all these colours (see 3.4 Gamut).

When producing or preparing any work for print, you need to work, or convert to, CMYK. As cyan, magenta and yellow subtract varying degrees of

C

MYr

bg

W

R

GBc

ym

W

KK

Design For Print / Colour3.4

This becomes problematic when producing a document on screen, to be printed. Programmes like Adobe Photoshop have a “Gamut Warning” tool (View > Gamut Warning) to display which colours we cannot print. You can see above how the warning has greyed out unprintable colours, these often being bright greens and yellows.

As mentioned, the CMYK spectrum differs from the RGB spectrum, and both from our visible spectrum (i.e. all the colours we can see.)

This means that on screen we can only reproduce a fraction of the colours seen by the eye and, as CMYK has an even smaller colour space, a further fraction of these colours in print.

GamutDesign For Print / Colour

3.3 Separations

to be used in order to create the full colour print. And when screen printing a full colour image you must first separate the four channels (Channels > Split Channels, or in the Print > Output menu), and expose four different screens for the individual CMYK channels.

As an example of the CMYK colour process, the above image has been split in to its four colour channels. Once aligned on top of another you are left with the full colour image.

This is true of digital printing as well as screen printing. In digital printing the computer and printer would determine what percentage of each ink would need

RGB for screen

CMYK for print

GreyscaleDesign For Print / Colour

3.5

A greyscale image holds no colour information, this information is discarded once you convert it, leaving only black, white and all the tints and shades in between - the greys.

This is how greyscale differs from black and white, which contains only a solid black and white, with no tints or shades.

MonotoneDesign For Print / Colour

3.6

of a percentage of this colour ink.Many digital programmes convert

to monotone with ease, allowing you to choose any colour to replace the black, which can further be edited to increase or decrease the contrast of the colour.

Monotone is similar to greyscale in its use of shades and tints, though the black is replaced with a solid colour.

Although it is a clearly limited palette, the monotone process is often used in disposable printing (newspapers, mass produced flyers) for its cheapness - only one printing plate would have to be made up, and the tonal values made up

Design For Print / Colour3.7 Duotone

Design For Print / Colour3.8 Spotcolour

in two printing plates to be made in a process such as Lithography (see 6.1), which is still going to be much cheaper than a full colour CMYK process - four plates.

As long as the two colours are balanced, you can create a great tonal image.

Very similar to monotone is duotone. Again, a colour of your choice replaces the black, and this time another colour replaces the white (shown are the purple pantone 519C and yellow 123C). The shades and tints of this colour are mixtures of the two, and again the intensities of each can be increased or decreased. The two colours would result

CMYK, one plate will be made up per Spot colour.

Obviously when printing CMYK, the printer cannot always replicate the depth of colour and so matches it to the nearest printable equivalent.

As mentioned in section 3.4 (Gamut), the CMYK printing process is limited as to the vibrancy and contrast of some colours. In many commercial print works, CMYK is often replaced with Pantone Spot colours.

Pantone Spot colours are an entirely different ink, and much like different printing plates are made up for each

Page layoutDesign For Print / Layout

4.1

entertainment magazine will run to less columns, maybe 6 or so.

As an example, the specifications for this document are as above.

The 12 columns (purple lines) allow alignment with a lot of movement. The text boxes (blue) span three columns, meaning every block of text is the same width.

The layout of a page is an extremely important aspect of design for print. Any publication, from newspapers to a novel, confines to a structured grid of columns.

The columns provide alignment for text boxes, images and column spacing.

A broadsheet newspaper will typically be designed around many columns, 8-12+ usually. An

in. The bleed (red) is an additional measurement off the edge of the page. This allows you to print over the edge of the page and discard white space when cropping. (Also see Paper 2.1).

When designing a document for print we also have to consider margins. The margins are how much white space is left between the outside edge of the page (black) and the inner content. Printers need a margin to spool (roll) the paper through, meaning you ordinarily cannot achieve a completely borderless print, this is where the bleed comes

Page sizeWH

Orientation

Columnsw/gutter of

Margins(top)

(bottom)(inside)

(outside)

Bleed

Facing pages

Page specifications

A5148mm210mmLandscape

122mm

15mm15mm20mm15mm

3mm

Yes

read as its ‘serifs’ form a line above and below the words.

Next is point size. The standard point size on a computer is 12pt. 72pt is an inch in height when printed at 100%, give or take some ascenders and descenders of a letter, making 12pt 1/72nd of an inch. Obviously a larger point size is easier to see, but not

Like layout, the typography of a page is another fundamental part of any piece of design.

The first thing to think about is the typeface; typefaces are either Serif , like Times New Roman, or Sans Serif, like Arial, and many more. While sans serif is often seen for headings or small blocks of text, serif is subconsciously easier to

Following from this is line spacing. Ideally, your lines should be space at a point size of 20% more than the type size - i.e. 20% of 12pt is 2.4, so a line spacing of 12+2.4.

There are also several other factors you need to consider, but these are the basics. See above for the specifications of this body of text.

necessarily easier to read in a body of text. A novel typically has 8 or 9pt text, while a magazine is a few point larger, as you hold it further away from your face when reading (try it out!).

The size of the type also affects how many words you can fit per line in a text box, the ideal amount being somewhere between six and twelve words.

TypographyDesign For Print / Typography

5.1

Body font(size)

(type)(weight)

Header

Line Spacing

Justification

TrackingKerning

First line left indent

Arno Pro7.5ptSerifRegular

16/19.2pt Bold

9pt (7.5/9pt)

Align left

N/AN/A

3mm

Page specifications

Rotary printing; lithographyDesign For Print / Production

6.1

then fed around the top cylinder (there are three, vertically) of an offset lithographic press. The cylinder turns clockwise against a set of smaller ink rollers, transferring ink to the plate. The plate then transfers the ink to the next cylinder wrapped with a rubber ‘blanket’. Finally, this blanket transfers the ink on to the paper.

Rotary printing is the process of printing using ‘plates’ wrapped around a revolving cylinder. These plates can be rubber, malleable plastic or, usually, metal sheets, and are chemically etched to create a slight relief where there is ink, and remain flat where no ink is to be printed.

In lithography, these sheets are

Lithographic processes are typical of most commercial print jobs. Paper can be individual sheets for designs such as posters, or fed from a large continuous roll of paper (WEB offset), typical of publications with a higher quantity print run.

As mentioned in section 3 (colour), only one colour ink can be used per plate. So for a CMYK four colour process, four plates are needed. Thus, lithography presses are made of multiple printing towers. This enables the first tower to print the first plated colour, and the paper be fed to the next tower, for the second layer of colour, and so on.

Wearethefriction by SingStatistics.

6.2

long print runs - both long in terms of number or publications, i.e. newspapers, and in terms of time, as plates can be stored and returned to at a later date.

This process can also handle stronger materials as it is the surface itself that is inked.

Rotogravure is an intaglio printing process, meaning the design to be printed is etched on to a copper plate, of which is directly inked, fed around a cylinder and prints straight to paper (therefore the design has to be mirrored).

Due to the strong, durable nature of gravure plates, this process is suited to

of surfaces, from paper and plastics to foils and metals, and is mainly used for packaging (see Clipper packaging above).

Flexo plates are typically cheap and quick to produce, with quick drying times, so fast, high numbered runs are suited.

Flexography has a similar set up to gravure, in that the ink is transferred directly from the plate to paper. Though flexography typically uses rubbery, silicon plates, which as the name may suggest, are very flexible, with a relief of only about 2-4mm.

The surface allows a more sticky ink to be printed, which is great for a variety

Rotary printing; GravureDesign For Print / Production

6.3 Rotary printing; FlexographyDesign For Print / Production

Clipper Tea packaging.

Digital printingDesign For Print / Production

6.4

There are two main types of digital printers, inkjets and laser printers. The inkjet process is relatively simple; a number of inks, more often than not the four CMYK inks, pass over the spooling paper dispensing varying percentages of colour in tiny dots, layering CMYK together to form the other required colours, as shown above (the tiny dots of

Digital printing is best suited for smaller print runs of colour, and black & white, work. Unlike the aforementioned rotary processes, digital printing does not require any plates to be made up. Instead a digital printer works in conjunction with a computer to translate a digital file in to digital colour information.

then passed on to the paper.Laser printing is the much faster of

the two, best suited for black & white document copying and printing, and high runs of imagery.

High quality inkjets are slow but can produce great images on a variety of stocks and paper sizes.

colour build together in a similar fashion to the pixels of a monitor).

Laser printing is more complex. The same digital colour information is passed to the printer, though the data imaging signal is passed through a series of different optics, to then positively charge a photoconductor with static electricity. The static areas hold the ink which is

As an example of how colour is applied in digital printing; the left image is a flyer, and right is a digitally simulated zoom of the CMYK dot makeup (Photoshop > Filter > Pixelate > Colour Halftone, with settings: Max Radius 6px, Channel screen angles 108, 162, 90, 45).Strong magnifying glasses will be able to see this.

Screen printingDesign For Print / Production

6.5

and the paper; the ink can obviously pass through the gaps of the stencil, but is stopped by the solid part. The other, more commonly for detailed, accurate printing, is by ‘exposing’ a screen. You must first coat the screen with a light sensitive emulsion, which is left to dry in a light sealed cupboard. You must then print out a positive of your imagery

Screen printing, or silk-screening, is a traditionally manual process of creating imagery. A very fine mesh, the screen, is held taught by a wooden or metal frame, and ink passed through the screen on to paper.

There are two ways to create an image on a silk screen. The first is a simple cut out stencil placed between the screen

the emulsion, and cannot pass through the dark areas, allowing the emulsion to wash away in these areas.

You are then left with a screen with areas the acrylic ink can pass through (the image), and areas it cannot.

CMYK inks are commonly used for paper-based printing, along with specialist inks (see Post Production 7.2).

in black and white - this is simple for a one-colour piece, but requires a separate print out for each colour if printing in more than one colour (see 3.3 Colour). The positives are placed under the screen on a UV light bed and exposed for a predetermined length of time. The UV light can pass through the unprinted or light areas of your positive, sealing

L-R: A four colour process (CMYK) screen print on to paper; A close up of a four colour print on a tee-shirt; A specialist silver ink of a silk-screened poster.

FinishingDesign For Print / Post Production

7.1

check if your document can print at 100% scale without loosing any print, due to printer margins (see 2.1). If not, consider printing at 100% but on the next largest available paper size.

Consider if your type be readable when printed, not too small, not too big (5.1). Programmes such as Adobe Indesign, used for layouts, have options

There are two things to refer to in this section - the first is what you must consider before sending a document to print; the second, what you can do to your printed piece post production.

When sending any document to print, it must be in CMYK colour mode to achieve the colours you set out to achieve. Next, paper sizing and scaling;

important part of post production (when relevant). There are dozens of ways to bind your publication, 3-up stitch, Japanese bind, perfect bind, to name a few. And equally as many, if not more, ways to fold your work; half folds, gate folds, concertina folds, cross fold, half accordion - research in to these to best fit your print piece.

to go through to make sure everything is as it should be (File > Preflight).

Post production, there are plenty of things you can do to improve the finish and effectiveness of your work.

If you need further protection, would your work benefit from laminating or coating.

Binding and folding is also a

L-R: A digital print-out complete with colour bars and registration, crop and bleed marks; a book that also folds in a continuous concertina; a gate fold by Tom Davie.

As mentioned in 6.5, there are a variety of different inks and finishes at hand when silk-screening, from metallic powders, shiny foils, glossy varnishes and raised flocks.

Of course the stock itself can provide a great tactile quality to your work as discussed in 2.2, but by a simple screen print of clear glue and overlaying a foil

Following on from the previous section, there are even more specialist post production finishes that you can apply to your print work, making it a cut above the rest.

Large printing processes (see section 6.1-3) can apply specialist inks; glow in the dark, fluorescent or metallic, or even just add a glossy varnish to the page.

shape below your paper and rolled through a traditional plate-press, forcing the paper the desired way.

These methods can turn a flat digitally produced piece of work in to something much more personal, interesting and tactile.

before sealing in a heat press, you can create something superior.

Embossing and debossing is another brilliant finishing technique. Embossing, is raising the surface of the paper, and debossing is indenting in to the paper. Both are achieved by creating your desired shape out of a thick, sturdy stock, often lasercut, and placing the

Specialist FinishingDesign For Print / Post Production

7.2

L-R: Embossing and debossing by Letterpress; business card by The Mandate Press; foil for the cover of a Chinese Arts Centre publication.

Glossary of termsDesign For Print / Glossary

8.1

A (paper) - Common paper sizing system. (2.1)

Additive colour - (See RGB)Bleed - A measured margin off the

printable area of the page. (4.1)CMYK - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key

black. The colour space used for all print based publications. (3.1)

Crop marks - Marks on the printed paper to indicate where to crop your work to size. (4.1)

Duotone - An image made up using only two colours and the resulting shades and tints. (3.7)

Flexography - An automated rotary printing process. (6.3)

Flock - A tactile finish that can be applied post production. (7.2)

Foil - A metallic specialist finish that can be applied post production, or as opposed to printing. (7.2)

Gamut - The spectrum of colour in a

certain colour space. (3.1-4)Gravure - An automated rotary

printing process. (6.3)Greyscale - An image with no colour

imformation, only black and white, with tints and shades. (3.5)

Inkjet - A type of household or professional digital printer that prints using using ink-filled cartridges, usually CMYK. (6.4)

Laserjet - Another household to more commercial type of digital printer, though using photoconducters charged with static electricty to move ink to paper. (6.4)

Leading - The line spacing of a body of text. (4.1)

Lithography - A commercial rotary printing process that uses ‘plates’ to transfer ink to paper via a series of rollers. (6.1)

Margin - The Space between the edge of the paper and the inner content that is

left blank. (4.1)Monotone - A colour application like

greyscale, though a single colour replaces black, to make a series of tints and shades of that colour. Often a Pantone spotcolour. (3.6)

Pantone - The name given to a type of colourbook, containing colours that are mixed independantly of CMYK. (3.8)

Point size - The size of a font or text. (5.1)

RGB - Red, Green and Blue. The colour space used for all types of screens. Screens emit light, and colours are added together to produce white. (3.2)

Rotary - A type/group of commercial printer(s), including lithographic, rotogravure and flexographic printing. (6.1-3)

Silk screen - A traditionally hand printing process, using inks pushed through a fine silk mesh screen. (6.5)

Spectrum - A range of colours. (3.1-4)Spotcolour - An ink in commercial

printing that is mixed independantly to the CMYK process. (3.8)

SRA - Supplementary Raw Format A. A classification of paper size slightly bigger than the standard A-sizes, to retain full scale prints without having to resize paper. (2.1)

Stock - Name given to paper, often when referring to its individual qualities of weight and finish. (2.1-2)

Subtractive colour - Opposite of additive colour, associated with CMYK colour space. When mixed together, the colours subtract from light, leaving black. (3.1)

Weight - In Typography, the visual heaviness of the type, whether bold, regular, italic, etc. (5.1)

In Paper, the thickness and density of the stock. (2.1-2)

Design For Print / An Introduction2009 Ian Edward Prentice

Compiled, edited and designed by; Ian Edward Prentice

ianep.co.uk© 2009