Topic awaiting preservation: Need help with in the print area (Page 1 of 1)

Here's the deal - I had an interview with a firm for a position as graphic designer - something I have had moderate success with, though not in the print area. The Firm in question is an advertising firm, and here is my 'test' :

Create a Text form for the Imaginary Firm for Othopedics.
Logo
Main colors
other elements

All this in the forms for a Brief head, business card, Firm shield and auto-decoration.
These must be in a printable form (for Print medium)

The Firm uses HKS color schemes, something I have no experience with. The 'problem' the Imaginary firm has is growing competition from other like firms, and an expanding target group.

The target groups include normal customers, and a new, growing group of young, self-confident people that have handicapps due to accidents (for example, a motorcycle accident).

The imaginary firm's 'house' colors are HKS 52 and BLACK. I have found a website for HKS colors, so that's not a big problem converting to CMYK (that is used for the print area, isn't it?)

What I need is a way to create the different colors (primary, teritiary, complimentary, split-complementry, etc) There was a website for such things, but I can't seem to find it anymore. A link would be appreciated.

Also, what are the 'normal' sizes (and dpi) for the individual forms? (Brief head, business card, firm shield, and auto decorations). Help here would be a godsend.

The text type - so many different fonts to choose from, I'm almost lost, here. With text, I've had only the 'normal' experience with web-design, where text is somewhat limited.

-WebShaman

Sorry, I can't help with the color question, but once you have the CMYK values you should be able to find the complimentary colors without too much trouble.

I do want to point out an area of confusion in your resolution question. You ask for the normal size and dpi (dots per inch). You need to be aware that in print dpi is different from ppi (pixels per inch) used in digital art. In print dpi refers to the the actual ink dots placed on paper, usably this ranges from 133dpi to 150dpi, fine printing can be as high as 300dpi. Now, to get a good print your file resolution (ppi) should be about 2.5x the print resolution (dpi).

To get an idea for the resolution you need to start with, determine what will be the largest use of the shield. For letterhead and business cards, it won't be more than an inch or two, but you may want to do a large version for a brochure or report cover. Say the report cover will have the shield take up most of the cover (8.5"x11") and it will be printed at 150dpi. Your cover art should be 3188 pixels by 4125 pixels (8.5" x 11" at 375ppi) That is probably the largest you need to make it, it's easy to resample it down from there for the cards, letterhead, etc.

Hope that helps, and good luck with you interview.

Oh, one more thing, the "normal sizes" may be different in Europe that what I have used as an exapmle, 8.5 x 11 is a standard US size, sorry.

[This message has been edited by jedart (edited 11-30-2001).]

Wow, a post in the Print Forum!

I used to have a page about colours which had a system that could calculate the complementary etc. However, I let the domain (donaldj.com) expire about a month ago, so it is no longer available on that address.
I just went ahead and moved it to a new domain of mine though, so it can be found here: http://www.webwhirlers.com/colors/
I just sent a tech-note to the host about creating a DSN for the database, so hopefully the page will be working in a few minutes.
I can't guarantee that my site does a perfect job, and besides, you shouldn't rely too much on the pure mathematical aspects of color combinations, but use what you think looks good.

As for the sizes, I think Jedart covered that pretty well. I think the "standard" size for a business card is 2 by 3,5 inches, but it can vary.
The standards european size A4 is a bit higher and narrower than the US letter. It's 210x297 mm (if my memory is correct)

Thanks to both jedart and Zox. That with the dpi (here in Europe it is dpc dots per centimeter). At least I have a starting point, that's encouraging. Zox, yeah, it was your site that I meant (with the color), I remember back then when all this color stuff was 'floating' around, had that bookmarked. Thanks alot for the link.

As for the interview - that has already been done, this is just a 'sample' test, to see if I am capable of working in the print area. Since I already have a concept, and colors, it's going pretty good, I'll probably do well on this 'test'. I found a website that has HKS colors, that also helped alot. Did a lot of research on this one. Once again, thanks for the help.

Now, anyone have a clue on the font problem? I know twItch^ is a font wizard, hopefully he'll see this.

jedart, i've NEVER doubled (or more) the ppi of my print files when printing 4 color and my work is always crystal clear. Are you suggesting to work at 600ppi or higher? How the heck can you do that with a decen sized print piece, even with a bunch of RAM?

Chris


KAIROSinteractive

You are welcome for the link WebShaman.

About the text, I'd say that you should rather use some standard classic font, rather than something more fancy you can download on-line. Good old fashioned Garamond, Bodoni, Futura etc. are usually safe fonts to use, and there is a reason why they are so popular. One difference from the web use of fonts is that you can use serif fonts more effectively. On the screen they often look rather crappy, but when printed they look much better. Just stay away from Brushscript!
From a technical aspects you might be better off not to use truetype fonts. It depends a bit on the software, and the printing place, but many printing businesses do not like truetype at all.

Fig, what I was referring to, is the relationship between dots on the printing press (aka halftone screen frequency) and the file resolution. 600ppi would be unnecessary unless you were print fine art prints. A typical magazine, for example, prints at 133dpi halftone screen so a computer file should be between 266ppi min and 332 ppi max, 300 ppi is normal. Finer printing done in books and some high end magazines print at 150 dpi.

Me Again?

gotcha, thanks for the info

Chris


KAIROSinteractive

I've done a very small amount of print work and have used probably only 2 or 3 printers that I can recall but none of them wanted a file *less* the 300dpi, and sometimes 600.

If I'm doing print jobs on a printer at work I normally use 300 as a general rule.

I'm no print guru bany means but I am confused by this thread because of my experience. When I've printed at 150 it looks less than acceptable...?

Jason

One thing that I am confused on is that they are giving you a TEST? Like, you have to fill in the dots with a number 2 pencil, or what?

Or are they just making you do some of their work while they "decide" if they like you? I am a little suspicious... if they f*** around with you, sic the KM clones on 'em!!!

JKMabry, I think you are still mistaking pixels per inch for dots per inch. Take a look at a magazine under a magnifying glass or loupe. You'll see the picture is made up of blue, magenta, yellow and black dots arranged into little rosette patterns. These are in no way directly related to the square grid in a computer file. when a printer speaks of dpi, he is talking about the number of dots for each color "plate" (think channels in ps) so the total number of dots will be 150dpi for each color (It will not nessisarly add up to 600 dots though, because not all the colors may be present, and each press and paper will have a max ink coverage that will limit the dots in certin colors)

I was giving WebShaman a "heads up" on this issue, because it could very well become a trick question on his test, and he mentioned he has not worked in print much. I would suggest looking for a more detailed explanation, I think creativepro.com or aiga.com may have some good information.

WebShaman, I'm not suggesting a crash course in offset printing, but at least get a general idea and some terms down for the test, then when you get the job, work closely with the printers and learn what works best from them. They are the guys that will make your great designs look their best.

lotiss, it's not totally unheard of ask for a test design, but I would make sure it is an imaginary company he is doing the logo for. I think if he was asked to do a test, they must be seriosly considering him for the job.

Me Again?

Honestly, I had the same thought about a "test" design. It does sound a bit iffy to me personally, if you've got a portfolio they should be basing your capabilities on that.

chris


KAIROSinteractive

OK, the 'test' is legitimate, it's only to see if I can 'adapt' to the print sector, whether or not I can work together with the 'creative' mind. Basically, they were pretty blown away at the interview, and quite frankly, the subject of being 'over-qualified' came up. The Firm is a good one, with over 10 years of experience in the market. Besides that, I am the only 'contestant' for the position. No-one else is being considered. They contacted me by telephone (not me them) and asked if I could do an interview. I agreed.

The 'test' btw is an imaginary Firm, without a name. So they won't be 'stealing' my work, not on this. Of course, if they were really dirty, they could use my ideas for something else, but I think that would probably piss me off, and we would land in court over that. I do have all the files, with dates, so...but with their reputation, I hardly think that they would 'stoop' to something like that...too much to lose.

Once again, thanks for all the help.

One more thing - what type of file format should the finished products be in? I'm used to working in .jpg, .gif and .png, and since I also learned CorelDraw, in vector and bit-map, though I don't use CorelDraw much, anymore (PS is just so much better).

If it's print work they'll probably want it as an EPS file or an AI file. An uncompressed TIF would prob also be acceptable.

chris


KAIROSinteractive

It's probably too late to jump in here, but....

I'm not going to get involved in the DPI quicksand. I'm going to duck it by pointing in another direction (tho it's been mentioned, I'm going toohammer it.)

I dunno what your logo looks like, but there are *real* advantages to designing the logo art in a vector program. I don't know Corel, but Illustrator or Freehand would be good choices. Why? Flexibility. They scale flawlessly. Little, for the business cards; medium for the text form; bigger for the car decal, and even up to trade show exhibits. Color or B/W. Newspaper ads, annual reports - whatever. It's trivial to convert to GIF for web, and resolution for printing is ~gasp~ a non-issue! They print to postscript imagesetters at the maximum resolution, no sweat, no problem. It is a *nightmare* making a logo designed as a TIFF in Photoshop do all those tricks. If you want to look professional you want to know this. And if you still go ahead and design in in a raster format, cool but you'd better have a solid reason why.

Just a thought.....

And the "format? Well, if the final project is the print form, you're going to be thinking page layout software, right? Quark, PageMaker, InDesign - one of those.

And type - yeah, unless the imaginary "client" is really out there I'd play it conservative. Serif for body copy, sans serif for headings. No more than 3 faces. Serif might be one of the Garamonds for instance. Sans might be Myriad? (Helvetica family goes in and out of style - I don't know what phase it's in at the moment!) Gill Sans? Futura?

So now, after spouting off like a know-it-all, I'll admit I've never even heard of "HKS"; is that German for something I might know by another name?

Good luck!

Well, today's the day, at 5:30 this afternoon, it's crunch time. That's when everything has to be ready. I just installed a new hard drive (30 gig), and somehow I 'crashed' part of my old hard drive (I hate win ME!), so I spend the night getting the new hard drive up and running. Luckily, most of the data on the old hard drive could then be rescued, but I had to do a lot of installing of programs. Slept for a few hours, now it's time to get busy. Really like the idea of using vector graphics, then I can use one datei. Once again, thanks for all the help. Because the Firm uses CorelDraw, I've decided to import my work into this program. Wish me luck, I'll surely need it.

Steve, HKS is a color system, I don't know if it exits in America, but you can give it in a search machine, and it pops up some pretty good websites on it. That's what I did.

Good Luck.