VPA105 Week 9: Prepress

VPA105: WEEK 9 PRE-FLIGHT: GETTING READY TO GO TO PRINT

This week: LECTURE

As in week 6, this week's lecture will be integrated with the workshop.

There are screen shots on the following pages that you can refer back to as you prepare your assessment for submission.

BUT FIRST: WHAT IS PREPRESS? This week's reading list contains only 1 item: chapter 7 of Johansson, Lundberg and Ryberg (2011). They explain some important information that all designers should have regarding prepress, including understanding ICC colour profiles, knock out vs overprint, and imposition.

Please make sure you complete this reading!

To simplify your prepress, the rest of this lecture will take you through the practicalities of setting up a booklet for print. First things first, here are a few of the basic settings that your document should already have:

• Document set up for print profile (CMYK/300ppi) • A4 dimensions (either landscape or portrait) • LINKED IMAGE FILES (300ppi) • BLEED (3mm)

How do I DO THAT?

W is the shortcut to toggle between this view (which is great for viewing what your design will look like), and...

...this view.

You will be able to see...

Red bleed line

Purple Margins

Make sure you don't have anything selected when using single-letter shortcuts, especially text frames.

Cyan Guides

Checking your document settings If you need to fix one of your settings, don't panic!

Check in your document set up dialogue box that your document is set up for print.

Q: What else do you notice about this information? Is there anything wrong?

WHEN GOOD INTENTIONS GO WRONG...

What else is missing?

Changing your colour space after the fact can be tricky if you have used a lot of different blends or set your images up in the wrong colour mode.

A: The document has the wrong document size!

'Letter' size is part of the US standard paper sizings. The international ISO (standard) is sized as A, B and C. A4 is part of this standard of sizing.

For more information, visit: https://www.papersizes.org/

You can adjust your margins and columns from the layout dropdown menu. Click on the chain icon to unlink the margins so that you can set them individually, or keep the chain link on so you can adjust them all together.

CHECKING LINKS

| file name |

| page |

| colour mode | | effective PPI |

When you're working with InDesign documents, it's better to work with linked images and graphics, rather than embedding them, because your computer will respond faster.

However, once you have completed your design, you should go back to your links panel and check all of your images to make sure they're set up correctly. Mistakes happen! It's OK! But take time before sending the file to your printer, so that they won't have to send it back to you, wasting your time, theirs and your client's.

| file size |

The links panel can be tailored to suit your needs: some of the most common information to add is colour mode, PPI size and page location. Try customising your links panel now!

| PPI |

| folder |

The links panel can give you a quick view of all of your links & important information.

Click the fly-out menu button to open panel options and customise your links panel.

CHECKING YOUR PRE-FLIGHT PANEL Your pre-flight panel is a great resource for checking your work.

It will let you know when you have errors such as overset text, missing fonts, missing links and more. You can always check your pre-flight panel thoughout your design process by looking at the small section at the bottom of your screen (see right). It should always be green and say 'no errors', but if it does turn red, you can simply click on the arrow beside it to see what's going wrong. In the example here, I had some overset text. The pre-flight panel told me it was on page 10, so I clicked on the "10' and it took me directly to the error. A quick fix of the text frame size and we're good to go!

The preflight panel tells you what the error is & which page it's on. Click on the page number & go right to the error to fix it.

Overset text!

Oops! An error!

Click on the little down arrow to open your 'preflight panel' All done! Now you're ready to prepare your document for printing.

KNOW YOUR PRINTER'S MARKS It's important to ask your printer which of the printer's marks they need. If in doubt, use them all, but sometimes you might just need to add crop and bleed marks. We'll tak a look at what the marks are...

Learn more at https:// helpx.adobe.com/ au/indesign/using/ printers-marksbleeds.html

Document and page information (great for last-minute updates so that you can keep track of latest versions).

Registration marks: these are important markers in offset printing, providing a registration point for the printers to line up the individual CMYK colours.

Colour bars: Adds small squares of color representing the CMYK inks and tints of gray (in 10% increments). Your service provider uses these marks to adjust ink density on the printing press.

Bleed Marks: Adds fine (hairline) rules that define the amount of extra area to image outside the defined page size.

Crop Marks: Adds fine (hairline) horizontal and vertical rules that define where the page should be trimmed.

Crop marks can also help register (align) one color separation to another. By using together with bleed marks, you can select overlapped marks.

TO PACKAGE OR NOT TO PACKAGE...

It's important to talk to your printer before you send them the final design file. There are two main ways that printers prefer to get your artwork:

Some printers prefer a PDF file, exported with their chosen specifications (i.e. crop marks, bleed marks, outlined text, embedded images and exported as single pages, not spreads).

As a packaged file: this is done from the dropdown menu in InDesign (File>Package).

This will package up all of your linked images, fonts and the designed document in PDF, IDML and INDD files. You can then supply your printer with this package and they should have everything they need.

OPTION 1: PDF Only...

There are three important steps you will need to do BEFORE you export your INDD file as print PDF. They are:

SAVE AS! Keep your original, editable file in a safe place. Chances are you will need it. Save your new document with _PP on the end of the file name, so that you know this is your "Pre Press" version.

OUTLINE TEXT On each page, choose "select all' and then press CMD (Mac) or CTL(PC) + Shift + O - this is the short cut to outline the text.

You can also do this from your drop down menu: with your text frame selected, go to TYPE> Create Outlines.

EMBED LINKS Go into your links panel, click on the top link, press SHIFT and then you last link to slect all, then from the fly-out menu, select "embed link'.

Embedding links

OUTLINING TEXT

EXPORTING YOUR PDF FILE > EXPORT

SAVE

GENERAL SETTINGS

MARKS & BLEEDS

OPTION 2: PACKAGING YOUR FILE FILE > EXPORT

CHOOSE FOLDER LOCATION

PACKAGE SETTINGS

SUMMARY INFORMATION

ON-CAMPUS

This week: WORKSHOP

In this week's workshop, we will focus on how to approach your project in a strategic way: if you have conducted research on your client already, start compiling it into your brief. If you've completed your brief already, make a start on the experimentation part of your project (see subject outline for more details). If you have already started your booklet design, great! Use the workshop time to keep working on it, and make sure you take some time to get feedback from your lecturer. The key here is to make sure you're taking each step at a time, so that your thinking (and practising) strategically.

Pair up and discuss the following: • Who your client is and what overall visual approach you decided to take • Your typographic choices (what and why) • Other aspects in your design: use of colour, space, images, etc.

• Swap and repeat.

Practice setting your document up for print in the two ways discussed. It doesn't matter if it's not finished yet, it's just a good opportunity for you to practice prior to assessment submission.

Peer to peer critique is an important way for you and your peers to see alternative layouts, practice articulating your thoughts in design terminology, and to help each other.

ONLINE

This week: WORKSHOP

After we have gone through the lecture in this week's online meeting, we will open the floor for your questions, and demonstrate, in real-time, aspects of InDesign, document set up and print preparation that you would liek to see. This will be a responsive workshop, so we encourage as many of you to jump online as possible and join in the meeting. If you can't, please pop a note up in the discussion board one day prior if you would like to see a particular demonstration. We're happy to oblige!

Pair up with one of your peers in the discussion board and explain: • Who your client is and what overall visual approach you decided to take • Your typographic choices (what and why)

During the week: Practice setting your document up for print in the two ways discussed. It doesn't matter if it's not finished yet, it's just a good opportunity for you to practice prior to assessment submission.

• Other aspects in your design: use of colour, space, images, etc.

• Swap and repeat.

Peer to peer critique is an important way for you and your peers to see alternative layouts, practice articulating your thoughts in design terminology, and to help each other.