Design for print.

Design for print.

Here at Apple Print Ltd we spend quite a bit of time making sure the files supplied by our clients are going to produce a quality product. There are challenges that make this difficult but we find that just communicating, from time to time, the kind off issues we face the most can limit the impact of these issues on both the printed product and the timescale of the job.

RGB - The RGB colour model is an additive colour model in which red, green, and blue light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colours. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three additive primary colours, red, green, and blue. Our Apogee Pre-press can convert these colours to CMYK (the standard printing process colours) but these can be washed out by the conversion colour profile used. What’s best is if you are going to have something printed, Digital, Litho or large format, is to double check everything is converted to CMYK in the native programme before PDF’ing or sending to print. With this in mind if you do provide us with collected Indesign or Quark files we can sort these issues for you, it just may add some time to a job as we’d have to re-proof. Other creative programmes have the same issue like Word and Publisher, and we expect in these cases the files won’t be converted because they are not professional design applications, the issue is that if MS programmes are used and then PDF’ed we won’t find the RGB until we rip, again not a great issue but it all adds time to a project.

IMAGES – While making sure images are CMYK another thing that can be quite upsetting in a beautifully designed job is LOW RES IMAGES. Once again if you are not an expert we understand how this happens but unless an image is 300DPI at the size it’s to be used it can end up looking fuzzy. It needs to be understood that if you grab images / logos and bits like that off a web site then more than likely they are going to be 75dpi and whilst they’ll look great on a website they will look beyond awful when printed in hi-res – just contact us, chuck us a file and we’ll check it out for you.

BLEED - Bleed is a printing term that refers to printing that goes beyond the edge of the sheet after trimming. The bleed is the part on the side of a document that gives the printer a small amount of space to account for movement of the paper, and design inconsistencies. Bleed ensures that no unprinted edges occur in the final trimmed document. This is very important if you have images / text close to the edge of the sheet and helps us to make sure we don’t have trimming issues and also on digital where we can get small 0.5mm movements when printing.

So just to re-cap here are a few helpful terms:

BLEED - Extended areas that extend beyond the ‘trim’ or the final finished size of the page. Without a bleed, we will find it near impossible to finish a job accurately and white edges may show where the pages are cut.

CMYK - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (black). Printing requires this colour mode to create superior printing to that using RGB (Red, Green, Blue). Many digital cameras produce RGB JPGs which we will happily convert for you, but you will need to check you are happy with the colour conversion.

DPI - Dots Per Inch refers to the number of dots produced by a printer.

EPS - Encapsulated Postscript. These can easily be re-scaled without loss of detail. JPEG Joint Photo graphics Experts Group. JPEGs compress the file size, which means it is crucial to ensure

images are set at 300dpi or higher.

PDF - Portable Document Format. This is the most popular file type for transferring files between computers, regardless of their systems (ie PC to Mac).

TIFF - Tagged Image File Format. It is cross-platform compatible and retains better image quality than a JPEG.

Vector - These images are defined by mathematical formulae rather than built from pixels. This means they can be reproduced at any size without degeneration in image quality.

You can find this info HERE on our website and you can always call our studio on 01635 521654 if you have any questions.

So we are in full swing preparing for our 25^th Birthday Party on the 11^th of Aug, if you would like to come then please just drop Elle an email and let her know you wish to attend – click HERE for more details.  Also please all check out http://www.projectcolombo.com/ this great idea is being supported by a great client of ours and we hope we can support them with this worthy cause - @StrandUK on Twitter to also learn more about them and their business.

Hummmm cookies!

In a way I love cookies, chocolate chip and may other flavours make their way to my mouth on a regular basis. For most people when you use the word cookies this is the picture they would have in their head. A few years  (many years) ago while working on my rather fast 233mhz Intel Pentium 2 computer and playing on my Dreamcast with built in 56k Modem, I started being asked by the settings on these systems about how I would like to treat my cookies? Silly questions like “would you like to accept cookies?” and such – now before the World Wide Web I would have 100% accepted cookies and maintained my bulk with pride but I started to ask questions about what these little buggers do? For a while I thought they were bad, telling secret men in underground bunkers who worked for the KGB just how much time I was spending on the Spice Girls site or even worse, copying my passwords and sending them to nasty gangs of Nigel Havers style blagards and cads.

It was like this for a long time, there was information to be had to tell us what they did but I think we (me) were much to happy to believe that they were nasty bleeders and needed to be stamped into crumbs.  Are they Spyware...when I run a check so many “Tracking Cookies” were coming up.....why were people out to get me, or was I just paranoid? And just because I was paranoid it did not mean they weren’t. I got over it and with new browsers and systems like the XBOX Live network they became something I no longer cared about. In fact, I realised that when greeted with a big “HEY ANDREW” on sites I been to before there could even be a benefit to them.

Did You Know...

The name cookie derives from UNIX objects called magic cookies. These are tokens that are attached to a user or program and change depending on the areas entered by the user or program. You can use that UBER nerd piece of info at the next party you go too....

So there are web cookies, session cookies (they expire when you leave the site) and persistent cookies (used by analytics to identify your return to a site) and more but I have only had so much time to research. Analytics is an important topic when discussing cookies because people pour over their figures without wondering: are some of these visits from the 25% of people who clear out the cookies once a week? How many came to my site with cookies turned off? And with the new EU Directive (back off Brussels) on the privacy of communications where you will have to approve and accept cookies as you browse it could really affect your results, will this really affect people’s use of Free analytics software? I would imagine it could because right now by default visitors are not notified when cookies are collected.

I dont image this is the end of the world (wide web) but it will create new challenges and a new opportunities – we are more than happy to advise in this area so shout if you have any questions.

To sum up, good cookies are cool cookies – safe surfing and being careful on-line is really easy and we’d all love to know how many people are taking an interest in our businesses and I hope we can continue to collect this harmless information.

Update on Apple Print.

So we have had another great sales month, over target by 11% - beginning to think I need to up the targets J - we are all looking forward to our “Open House” 80’s themed 25^th Birthday party on the 11^th of August here at Apple Print’s offices Starting at 3pm, feel free to come along and have a Babycham with us.

I will sign off with a wave goodbye to one of Mankind’s greatest engineering feats “Space Shuttle” its final mission comes to and end and I think it a shame to say farewell, this Iconic vessel will live on in the hearts of many a middle aged little boy! John Morgan was just telling me about the great system of cooling the Ship employs, using its own fuel to cool the surface of the exhaust nozzles....learn more here and it’s worth a read if only as a final sign off to a great machine.

Have fun and good luck!