What is Design for Print

Stock thicknesses based on the weight of

a 1-metre square which is translated to

GSM (Grams per Square Metre). The

weight doesn't always resemble the thick-

ness as some papers have been made to

be more dense of fluffy. They majority of

the time this doesn't apply and the gsm

does give you an idea of thickness.

it is very important to grasp the funda-

mentals of when to use certain weight of

stocks to be successful withing graphic

design. Here is a quick guide of what dif-

ferent thickness are used for in the indus-

try.

90 - 100 gsm - used for stationery, text for magazines

and booklets, flyers and brochures.

120 -170 gsm - used for text for booklets, flyers and

brochures. The heavier the weight, the more "upmar-

ket" the feel.

200 - 250 gsm - used for magazine and booklet covers.

Robust enough to give some body and stiffness when

used in a publication, but not quite heavy enough to be

used on its own for cards etc.

280 - 300 gsm - used for cards of all sorts and book

and booklet covers.

Stock Wieght

Print FinishesFoilsA metal plate is produced which has been etched so what you are wanting to print is raised. It's then put into a machine and heated the foil. so between your product and the plate is the foil. when stamped the foil makes contact with the product then the raised heat transfers the foil from the reel to the product. Most foils are done in silver or gold, they can be don in different colours but the main attraction is the metallic surfaces. you get a much clearer colour than you would if using screen print and me-tallic paints. Embossing Embossing is where you areas of a surface is raised compared to the rest of a product. This is adds cost to printing but give a very professional effect. it is done by creating a stamp of what you wish to emboss. the area you wish to emboss is raise on the stamp and is simply pressed against the product on the reverse side leaving a raised imprint. Die CuttingDie Cutting is the process to cut out shapes which aren't possible with a guillotine. it is mainly used for things like business card and leaflets if they what to use an interesting shape. The die cut is made by using a metal blade shaped to the neces-sary design, placed into a wooden block. rollers go over the blade cutting the shape out of the product.

Stock Types

brief look into paper stocks.

Bond: writing papers, including ledger, that

accept ink readily and can be erased

Coated: book paper with a clay coating en-

suring smoothness (dull, satin, gloss, matte)

Text: uncoated book paper (often of an inter-

esting color) used for announcements and the

like

Offset: uncoated book paper treated with

sizing to resist moisture

Opaque: uncoated book paper treated to be

less transparent

Cover: coated and uncoated; used for book

covers, brochures, etc.

Mill Bristol: a board grade receptive to fold-

ing, embossing, and stamping

Newsprint: used for printing newspapers;

highly acidic, degrades quickly

Digital: for copiers and ink-jet and laser print-

ers, as well as high-end digital presses like

Xeikon and Indigo

Coated One Side - A cover stock that has a

coating on one side and is dull on the reverse

side.

Coated Two Sides - A cover stock that has a

coating on both sides.

Printing Methods

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Paper SizesIn the Uk the most common size of sheets is based on the A0 size. Cutting down the long side of the A sheet will give you the next size down. If you want printed A4 size you will often have to print on something larger than A4 as Printers need a place to put regis-tration marks and also printer's marks (blocks of verifying tints to measure ink density to make sure the inks are at the correct level) so a trim is needed around the outside. There are 2 size standards which allow this on "A" sheets, they are know as R which is the smaller of the 2 and then there is SR. They are used on the front of the a size such as SRA4. SR is the more commonly used by printers due to the trim given and allows more infor-mation to go around the outside, ena-bling a higher quality print. There are 2 other standard size used in the Uk and they are B0 which is 1000 x 1414 mm and C0 917 x 648.

Pantone

The Pantone Matching System (PMS) are a

huge verity of colour which have a written

formula for each colour so you can get con-

sistency within your work and also the col-

ours printed. The colours available on pan-

tone stretch much further than what you can

achieve only using CMYK, so using PMS

against CMYK can cause similar problems

as CMYK and RGB dilema. This is because

Pantone mixes a veriety of colours not just

CMYK it uses colours such as Pantone

Purple, Pantone Orange etc which come

straight out of a tin.

PMS is and "international reference for se-

lecting, specifying, matching and controlling

ink colours"(pantone.co.uk)

Making sure you tell a printer which pan-

tone colour you are wanting to achieve will

make your work more accurate. but also the

PSM comes on a variety of coats you can

see how the colour you have chosen will

look on different stock and coats which

makes it very useful when applying it to a

print based format and knowing what to

expect.

CostingCosting when it comes to print isn't as simple as doubling as many prints you want for double the price. For example the dif-ference between 5'000 and 10'000 flyer isn't double as the printing and the ink are not the highest cost factor. When using Litho print for example the main fluctuation of cost if from getting a job to converting to separate C, M, Y and K plates. printing these plates, loading them into the litho printer and checking and adjusting the inks. For ever how many items you print this cost will always be a factor. so the more you print the better price you get for each print because when the machine is going time and energy is a little factor when it gets going.in bult litho is much more cost effective. very small amounts of print is best done digitally due to the lack of manpower needed, but printing in bulk using digital will cost a more than litho as the toner used in digital print is a mammoth cost com-pared to the ink in litho.

Printing ChecklistPreparing the file for print. When you are finished and ready to send work to a printers there is a few things you need to make sure you do. check that all your images are saved as a CMYK-Tiff/EPS, not RGB and no GIF's/JPEG's or PSD's. Bleeds that run off the page should run 3mm beyond the page except for binding where they should end at the edge of the page. it's always a good idea to send separate film containing images incase the corrupt. Make sure the printer has the fonts needed to print.Check all the graphic elements to make sure they aren't in RGB.Check if type and image overlap that they print correctly. Choosing stock and considering folding/varnishing and other print fin-ishes and testing them before hand

Mono,Duo and Spot. Duotone is when an image is printed in 2 spot colours. this can be any to colours. This printing method can produce very different effects depending on the colours used and easily done on programs like Photoshop and InDesign. You can use more colours which are know as Tritones for 3 colours and Quad-tones for 4. . Spot colour is a specially mixed colour op-posed to a result of CMYK or RGB. This can be usefull for a designer wanting to produce say a campaign for a company and wanting to use a specific colour all the way through. the colours can be put into the printers to create consistancy within prinitng. This tech-nique is extremely popular with photogra-phers wanting to highlight part of a black and white photo. . Mono is only using one coloured ink and the stock its printed on. It doesn't have to to one tone the ink can be used at a percentage such as tints of the colour used. This creates a tonal image. Black is the most common colour used for monoprints but others can be used also.