Production for Graphic Designers

Some things about Graphic Design…

Production is a very important factor in Graphic Design, and should be looked at as a creative asset. Headline: catches your attention with text, and sometimes has subheadsThe #1 attribute a student’s portfolio is usually lacking is typography. The Graphic Design usually earns $100 per hour, and are the ones who figure out what to do with the time and budget they have.Usually the work slick the work is, the more expensive. However, some clients want a cheaper product with a simple logo/design (like Wal-Mart’s Great Value line). Display is extremely important. Product must contain company’s image, and the Graphic Designer must judge according to the product. The best design is the one who sold the product. The Graphic Design also must take into account if the product will ship, will it ship economically, and what will the packaging take; must have the means of paying for things such as this. Logos are now more abstract, and difficult to produce. Television and magazines are all about advertising. Multi-task theory = fail. Designs today are usually 50/50 digital and non-digital. The only things constant is change.

What is Graphic Design?

So what is a Graphic Designer? We are basically problem solvers. The profession is very young.Graphic Design first started out as Commercial Art, and was more mechanical than anything. During the 1950’s, half of type in magazines were made with a brush.Now Graphic Designers are apart of the process of “which one of these ideas is going to work the best?” Graphic Designers estimate the cost, schedule, and how much time does it cost to get something out of the design studio? Time, Art, and Money!Creativity is essential, and the people create the value in a design studio. You are ultimately paid for your ideas, and you must adopt are for different purposes. You may have the best design in the world, but if it cannot be produced efficiently, everything goes down the drain. The least time anything is spent on is creativity. Pictures are with ink, and with a computer it is 0 and 1’s. Graphic Design is also all about communication. You can talk all day, but if no one hears or understands you, there is no point. People often steal ideas; people enter contests and blow their ideas. The Graphic Designer sets the price they work for. Sometimes the client is not the quality you need. They can be too cheap or unprofessional. Those who are too cheap have no respect for you. At the very least, prevent your idea from failing from technical means. Be careful not to over-design, and know the production means!Every stage of printing and production will influence your design.All in all, Graphic Designers do it all. This gives us a lot of control.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Some history

Printing is not too terribly old. Paper was created in China, Korea, and Japan. 105 A.D, paper was created from pulp. Printmaking = cut away areas you do not want to print = relief. Relief: printing from a raised surface. Oldest form of printing). Limitation: one had to cut it out and do everything backwards. Another was although it was beautiful, it was limited in gradation and therefore very abstract and flat. Done as woodcuts. Etching (aka Engraving): now one can obtain tones. Continuous tone: like a photograph. Usually done on copper. So as time went on, people went from woodblock to metal. Some people want printmaking out of university level because the students were not willing to learn it. Extremely time-consuming. intaglio: printing from below the surface. Involves etching of engraving.

Planographic printing

Relief printing

Intaglio printing

Copper plates have been used since the renaissance. Everything from stamps to currency was done by hand. Resist: usually put black wax, and then scrape off to expose the metal, submerge in acid, then take off acid coating. Acid does the work for you.Gutenberg was a goldsmith by trade, then saw the opportunity of a press + print = movable type $$. At the time, only government and clergy had an education, and all books at the time were created by hand. In addition, only the rich could afford to buy books. This is how they controlled the population- cia uneducated public. In 1963, the first press came to the U.S. at Harvard (the printer died on the way over though, lol)In 1886 linotype and monotype were invented, and a machine could set type. It was usually difficult to combine type and print on the same page. Monotype: hit key, and one letter is printed at a time.Linotype: hit key, and an entire line cast (usually in molten lead)Both these methods were used up to the early 1900’s. One pulled a lever to bring the line back. Very primitive, but was considered the hottest technology at the time.

Etching/engraving printing

Half-tone

Now you can print with 50 instead of 500, and make three times as much money. If you were to use a woodblock, you’d have to use thick lines. Wood engraving: is a relief printing technique, where the end grain of wood is used as a medium for engraving, thus differing from the older technique of woodcut, where the softer side grain is used. You just scratched away more of was not already there. Lithography: is a method for printing using a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface. Ink would set on the oil-based medium and not on water.Offset lithography: based on the repulsion of oil and water, the offset technique employs a flat (planographic) image carrier on which the image to be printed obtains ink from ink rollers, while the non-printing area attracts a water-based film (called "fountain solution"), keeping the non-printing areas ink-free.

LinotypeMonotype

Wood engraving

Lithography

Offset Lithography

Process Fine Arts Application Commercial Application

Even with all these options, however, artists were still limited.But now, Photography came about in the late 1800’s. Now for the first time ever, the illustrator can work in any medium, and any size. Groundbreaking! However, this still only had to be line art with no gradation or tones. And in addition, people could not put print and type on the same page. Breakthrough: development of the process block (it too 2,000 years for us to figure it out, lol)

<=== Process

blocks

The type on a process block is traditionally lead with movable type, and was manufactured at a certain height on a block. Now they could take whatever metal they needed, took the height, and mounted it up on a block and viola. Type and print at the same time! Still no continuous tone, though.

A photograph was through a large camera to take negatives of your artwork to manipulate and scale. During the late 1800’s, all of a sudden, 90 degrees sandwiched screen in the light mad a dot.Half-tone process: dots composed to make a toned image/continuous tone.

Photographs and images could now be confined and toned. They could now also be printed at the same time as text.

Half-tone is the reprographic technique that simulates continuous tone imagery through the use of dots, varying either in size or in spacing. "Halftone" can also be used to refer specifically to the image that is produced by this process. In half-toned images, the dots can also be any type of shape.

Unfortunately, with each level you lose quality.

In modern times, there is no negative, and you go directly to the plate. In the mid 1900’s, with magenta, cyan, and yellow-- you could get colored half-tone images. Through all these processes, Graphic Design now became easier, and people started getting into the profession more. From type setters to plate makers, graphic designers did it all. Art, photography, and type are treated as the same on a computer screen. What you see is what you get: “wysi wyg.” The computer opened everything up! 1984, PageMaker was the first software program for designers on a computer. Xerograpgy, invented in 1938 and wasn’t until the 60’s when we started to use it as a copier. Today is print less, digital more, design better. Time = money. Best intentions, however, are not going to always give you your best results.

1690: First American paper mill1822: First photograph1938: Xerography1948: First colored scanner1985: PageMaker & Desktop publishing

1987: Mac II and Quark Express1990: Adobe Photoshop launches1993: Mosaic, first web browser, first digital press2010: Apple 10 launched

It’s harder now to start a studio then back then. Having a computer is essential. Today, Graphic Designers have to learn more than ever. All thinking and mistakes are done by you-- cannot blame printer or computer.

Fathers of Graphic Design….

Chapter 2: Text and Type

In 9 out of 10 entry level designer portfolio, the worst aspect in a portfolio is typography. People in the beginning had to make their own ink, bind, paper, and type. They had to choose the best font. There were 8 fonts to choose from in the beginning, now there are over 500. By scribbling, you can understand another’s thoughts.In 1100 B.C., the alphabet is created. Capitals derived in Rome with distinctive serifs.

Writing and Lettering

3 Characteristics of the Roman Face

1. Slanted stress:

2. Distinct serif:

3 Variation of stroke thickness

In the beginning, there were no lower-case letters. Old style fonts are actually used the most. Why do we have serifs? You had to chisel into stones, but had to lay it out first. It was a declaration of an ending. Sans serif = without serifs. Roman Alphabet: beautiful and well proportioned. Scribes wrote books by hand, and even painted and sometimes put it in gold. Only the rich could afford these books. All lettering was also done by hand. Black-lettering: strong, bold, and always referred to as Gothic.

Slanted italics came about in the 1900’s. People in courts had to write really fast, so they wrote in cursive. “fl” “fi” look good together, but apart are ligeture. William Craft was the first to cut-out metal letters and mount them onto paper. What is a font? A complete set in one size of the alphabet, complete with apostrophes, symbols.If one were to develop a font, you would have to design close to 52 separate characters.Fontography: Designing fonts. Could use software to develop a system for an alien alphabet. 5 characters are composed to make an alphabet. Vertical, horizontal, diagonal, right curve, and left curve. Typeface: name given to the design of the alphabet, usually named after the publisher or designer. Sometimes even a field: optima from optimist. Letters used to be called sorts (where the saying out of sorts came from). The saying of upper and lower case came from what drawers the letters were in.

Lining font Non-lining font

Upper: uc, magisculeslowerL lc, minisculesItalics and bold automatic is okay for note-making, but not for commercial works. Italics and bold are fonts. Automatic italic slants and skews, and bold just duplicates. A type family uses all that are associated with the font. The two largest classifications are seif and sans-serif. Odd # = Roman, even # = Italic.

How Type is Measured

In 1737, a point system was created where the French inche was divided into 12 lines, then divided further into 6 points. In 1886, the American Type Association defined a point as 0.013…There are 72 points in an inch. 1 point is 1/72 of an inch. A pica is 12 points, or 1/6 of an inch. 6 picas = 1 inch.The measure of a block face is 72 points.

Base line: line the letter sits onX-height: measured by a standard “x”Cap line: line where all the caps hitAscender: line above cap lineDescender: line below baseline

Text vs. headline & text vs. display. You usually want text to be 8, 10, or 12 points. Never measure by the top of the letter to the base line. The x-height is the most critical in determining the size of the height.

How to Space Type

Text, what looks good or bad? Leading: the space between the lines, not the letters. During the 1700’s, they would stick a piece of lead in between to space it out. Type with a generous amount of space between lines is said to have open leading and type with relatively little space between lines is said to have tight leading Body: the body of the text that is in between the leads. 1-2 point reading is the norm for reading. Sans serif is technically easier to read; but there are only guidelines and no rules when it comes to typography. Think about them and go on your way- it just has to look good. [ 10 / 10 / 32 }

10 point text, 10 point leading, 32 pica width. Flush right, rag left.

10 on 10 = solid. 10 on 8 = under lead. We lead type most often. Students tend to make type too large and space things too far apart. These options are always design options, and most of these things have to be what look good; not technical. Column width: 32 picas. On a typewriter, all the letters are the same widthPica = horizontal, column width, point = vertical.Never use the space bar for paragraph indentions. The indention width depends on the type.

Kerning: spacing between two adjacent characters. <==

Tracking: spacing between words and sentences.Tracking can be negative, but usually not desirable because the spacing is too small ==>

Line length is more important than points and picas. An “em” is a unit of measurement in the field of typography. This unit defines the proportion of the letter width and height with respect to the point size of the current font. Originally the unit was derived from the width of the capital "M" in a particular typeface. This unit is not defined in terms of any specific typeface, and thus is the same for all fonts at a given point size. So, 1 em in a 16 point typeface is 16 points. An “en” is half of an “em”; 6 points in 16 point typefaceSet solid: leading that is equal to the point size of the font in use. Generally used only with larger display sizes. 10 on 10 = set solid, and is spacing as if the lead were not there.How do you format your type? Display, headline, and text.

How to Space Type

Chapter 3: Illustration