Note Pad Project

My notepad design I tried to design was one using my photography business, which is called JP Saunders Photography. I plan to put some of my black and white photos on my notepad to make it have a little bit of an edge to my project. The purpose of my product or notepad is for my digital file preparation class, but it also could be used for future clients that are in interested in photo sessions. My target audience obviously is my future clients or customers. I made a chart that I will post on here of what I thought made up my photography business. My project will be 5 x 7 inches for the trim size.. There will have a 1/4 inch bleed for my project. The colors will obviously be black and white since it would save me money in the end. The margin is also 1/4 inch for my QR code. The copyright for all the images that I am posting is by me and the pictures I plan to use on my notepad are also all mine. Each pad will have 50 pages. There will also be a card board back to the note pad as well. I will try to use Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop for this particular project. The call to action would be that customers or clients would notice the pictures on the pieces of note pad paper and see who it is by and then become interested.

According to Quick Print, it will cost $3.79 for just one note pad and it will take somewhere between one business day to one week to be produced for 50 pages. The type of file that they need to print the pad is .indd or .pdf. They prefer though a PDF is what I was told. Below this paragraph is the photos I scanned of my papers for digital file preparation.

First picture is my chart, second my five thumbnails, and the third one is my rough draft. Final draft planned to come at a later date.

Ch.1, 2, 3, Blog

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 goes through the meaning of prepress and preflight and processes to go through to accomplish a certain job. It then goes into detail about the Raster Image Processor (RIP). RIP interprets PDF or Post-Script documents or files and converts the data of them to a bitmap image that tells the marketing engine of the output device of how to image the film, plates, or in case of toner-based printers, the electrostatic drum. The finishing touches on the project is one of the most important aspects to each assignment. The chapter then goes into detail about the proofing and corrections process before going on to creating plates, which goes to the pressroom. The finishing process includes either trimming, folding, stitching, die cutting, binding, or gluing. Trimming is used to cut the printed sheets of paper so the size of the product can be finalized or cut apart content if they are to become business cards, according to the Print Production Book. Folding may have to happen if the paper needs it. It can be done inline or in a bindery. If it requires more folders than that like for instance, if it has pockets like in a folder than it will require handwork to complete the job. The only bad aspect about handwork is that it will cost you more money. The folding dummy is a blank sheet of paper that is folded in a process so it can be used in the finishing job. The pages are numbered and the folding dummy could be made by a planning department by certain operators that check the folding dummy for any errors just to make sure everything is correctly folded. Imagesetter is a device for scanning film.

According to the Print Production Book, "A RIP converts incoming PostScript or PDF information to very high-resolution bitmaps that guide the imagesetter's marking engine to expose the film with a laser or light-emitting diodes." The last part of the whole process is the shipping and the fulfillment. Pica is a unique measurement for Adobe software to design projects with. There are six pica's in an inch and a pica is equal to 12 points. Point is another type of measurement as well. There are 72 points in an inch. There are some designers that specify almost everything in points and pica's. They only used points when it's being referred to text size and rule thickness.


Chapter 2

In chapter 2 it mainly talks about ink and all the different colors like cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK), and talks about black and white plus spot colors as well. When printing in black and white the white is the paper and the black is the ink. When someone speaks of a two-color job, it means that it requires two colors for printing. The chapter then goes on talking about printing a four color job, which would be like CMYK. Prints that use a single color of ink is printed in tiny dots, which is known as halftone dots. It gives the color gray more of an edge when it's printed. When an image is printed with these tiny dots it's called a halftone. Screen ruling is expressed in lpi, which is lines per inch because it measures the halftone-dot sequence. These dots usually don't show up until the job is processed through the RIP. DPI is dots per inch, which is used to describe the resolution of an imaging device, which an example would be like a desktop printer, or an imagesetter that's talked about in chapter 1. PPI is pixels per inch and it also describes a screens resolution, and its usually set at 250 to 300 pixels per inch. It is common to save images at 300 ppi. The chapter then talks about the aspects of color printing and screen angle combinations.

CMYK is what is talked about even more in depth next, which is said before that it is cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink. Even though it has so many colors, it still has a limit of what it can do. Images that can be seen on the monitor of a computer look much different when printed because what the human eye sees is actually lighter then what is actually being displayed. Spot colors are then explained in the chapter and they're used when it's necessary to print colors outside the range of CMYK inks. An example of the colors that fall out of this range would be like bright orange and navy blue, which is why spot colors comes as some importance. The Pantone Matching System actually goes with spot colors in InDesign or wherever else you may see them. They say its a recipe book for printers and ink-mixing formulas according to the book. The book then goes and talks about press issues and registration. Registration is accurate alignments of printer inks using the four process colors because its so crucial if something would happen to go wrong. Basically the reason why registration is so important because it makes sure when you print  your file or project, it won't be all over the place because the registration keeps everything in line. Later on the book talks about digital printing and VDP. VDP is variable data publishing. An example would be like if I said Dear, Mr. Smith for a letter because this would describe variable data publishing software. This kind of letter designing requires extra careful planning to make sure nothing wrong happens. Some customers find the extra expense to use Direct Mail worth it just so nothing happens to the letter you have wrote ends up missing or torn. The rest of the chapter describes the digital printing issues.


Chapter 3

Chapter 3 discusses mainly about the different kinds of binding and what steps to go through for the finishing touches for the project. Die cutting is the process of cutting or making a printed piece into a custom shape. Examples of this would be like packaging and pocket folders because it requires both die cutting and scoring. Scoring makes sure the folders are correctly folded using the die cutting to make the shape necessary for the printed piece. The die is made of sharp steel that cuts the edges to make sure you get the custom shape you need. Computers are now used to help with the die cutting process as well. The computers make sure the die cutting process is successful. Most the die-cutting devices are platen-based, which means that the die is a flat surface. Not all printing companies you know of perform their own die cutting just a quick note. You also sometimes need to create your own bleed areas if you plan on creating artwork because you don't want any of your art to be cut off or anything. Like told you in chapter 1 that the finishing process includes either trimming, folding, stitching, die cutting, binding, or gluing. In chapter 3 it describes all different ways you can bind your final projects. Examples are like saddle stitching, case binding, comb binding, coil binding, and others as well. Talking about the die cutting earlier also plays a role in the finishing process of your project because without it, you could have either your project not cut into the right kind of shape or you could have a piece of your artwork chopped off because you didn't give any bleed room. Toward the end of the chapter the last part of the finishing process is embossing, which adds dimensions to your paper or foil stamping, which uses heated, raised metal die to transfer fancy foil from a roll of material onto an underlying paper. I researched all this information from the Print Production Book by Claudia McCue.

QR Code Blog

A QR code is a piece of information from certain medias that look like a small box with no border and has tiny black squares inside it. These tiny black squares have information on each of them that can be scanned with a smart cell phone that takes you to the certain internet site that is imprinted on this square or it will tell you information about certain jobs as well or details about a specific product you are interested in buying.

You can generate smart codes by using the Open Source code that is usually an app on smart phones that allows you to take a picture of the QR code and it will give you information about what you took a picture of. The smart phone that is needed to allow you to scan the QR codes is either the Iphone or the Android phones. The QR codes are also used for a marketing technique as well. It is said that also Google as a tool that allows people to scan QR codes too. QR codes can be found in many places now, such as restaurants like Chili's or Applebee's. I know even Walmart has certain products, both food and non food items that has a QR code on it now. You would want to use a QR code on a printed product because it would allow your customers to retrieve more information about that product and will convince them to possibly buy the product if it interests them.

The reason why I would want to use a QR code on my printed project because then people would know more information about my project and about me, who made the printed project. I know people always want to know more information about who makes which project. There could be more than one of the same project. It's mostly unlikely , but if it ever happened and someone scanned the QR code then that individual would know who created the printed project and know more information about that person. I got all my information from the website, "What is a QR Code and Why Do You Need One?" It helped me so much when answering these questions for this class. Below is an example of a QR code that was off the site that gave me information over what QR codes actually were.

Preflight Blog

During the preflight process, it is best to discover problems during the beginning of a job, rather than toward when the deadline of an assignment is due. It is mainly for when problems are happening with the job and sometimes the printer is able to fix these issues as well. The only problem that is occurred when having the printer fix the issue is that it costs you money to do it. An example of this would be like misspelled words, over set text, or wrong document sizes. Preflight arranges job files into one folder, plus it renames folders and preflight rebuilds image links in page layouts. I actually retrieved most this information from the Real World Print Production Book, or at least the part of the first chapter that was online.

An example of the preflight checklist would be like creating a page for the newspaper, such as the sports section because it has to go through eight steps just to make sure the page looks right and the catch the viewers eye. The eight steps the preflight checklist says that the creator is to include all fonts, include all linked images and photos, include all embedded and nested images and photos, save all image files as CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black), DCS multichannel, or gray scale, which depends on the job. The last few steps are to save the file to the correct file formate, and at the proper resolutions, set bleeds at least 1/8 inch beyond trim, verify your document size, and lastly supply laser proofs at 100% for reference. The Google site that helped me with this section of the assignment was the Premier Print Group website.

A job that would fit with the preflight subject would be like a prepress manager. They are responsible for creating plates that has the images run on the press. They do it either with chemicals or do it digitally. Prepress supervisors make a salary anywhere between $40,000 to $62,000 a year. I got this information off of the eHow Money website.

Below is one of the pictures I took at home during break and I just wanted to make sure that uploading an image would work. If you want to know what the JPS logo is toward the bottom right of the picture, it is my photography logo for my small business I just started last semester.