Prepress Trends, SPONSORED BY EPSON
Prepress Trends, sponsored by EPSON, covers the latest trends in technology and materials for package-printing prepress operations including workflow, processing, platemaking, proofing and imaging. Regular posts are written by Brian P. Lawler, a graphic-arts and prepress consulant based in San Luis Obispo, CA.
Folding back on the box
The cartons we made in my Advanced Typography course this last week suffered from a flaw that most of you readers could probably have cautioned me about. The diecutting line fails to compensate for the thickness of the cardboard itself. In the finished carton I should have made one of the two side flaps thinner by 0.05 in., the thickness of the E-flute board we used to make the cartons. This woul ...... Read More
Comments (0)Jolly box-maker
The students of Advanced Typography will be making their collections of typographic monographs next week. In the short term, we built boxes this afternoon, and they are coming out delightfully well. The boxes, in case you have not been following this event, were cut on a Kongsberg machine at Cal Poly, then they are hot-glued together by my students on a wooden jig that I built that helps to ensur ...... Read More
Comments (0)Kongsberg meets Gutenberg
My Advanced Typography cartons are cut now, thanks to the efforts of one of my former students. She cut 70 of them for me, and now it’s up to the students to make them into 3D boxes. We’ll get started on that tomorrow, between visits to the Special Collections office at our university library. Today I took the students to see the replica of the Gutenberg 42-line bible in the collect ...... Read More
Comments (0)Cricut cuts the prototype for the prototyper
As you may have read in my last blog, each year I teach a course called Advanced Digital Typography. As a part of this course each student makes a printed monograph that describes a type font that they love. We print a complete set of these monographs, then put them in a cardboard display carton that we make in class. The boxes are cut on a Kongsberg cutter at the university, and then assembled a ...... Read More
Comments (0)Box design and production
As part of a class I teach called Advanced Typography, the students design what I call typographic monographs. These are quarter-fold sheets that describe a love affair with a type font. As a part of this assignment, the students design and make a cardboard carton to hold their monographs (every student gets a complete set). This is the small cardboard carton my students produced last year to con ...... Read More
Comments (2)Micro QR codes and the future of print advertising
I wrote a few days ago about my renewed interest in Goss RSVP, the bar-code and online marketing program developed by the press manufacturer. One of the options for RSVP is to embed a very small 2D bar code in an advertisement, and then to set-up a specific response on the back end. I mentioned the use of billboard-size QR codes being flashed around the shopping districts of Tokyo. This is the ex ...... Read More
Comments (1)Modifying and scaling UPC codes
Yesterday I jumped into the topic of various bar codes, and touched briefly on the topic of UPC codes. These little critters are everywhere, and they are a requirement of wholesale and retail business. But, barcodes of all types are also ugly, and they interfere with good designs. They get in the way. So, what can be done to diminish their unsightly appearance and minimize their glaring presence? ...... Read More
Comments (0)Cryptology 101
Several moons ago, I wrote a program in PostScript that will generate UPC codes. I did this back in the late 1980s when I owned a service bureau. I needed to generate in-spec UPC codes for wine labels that my designers produced, and there was nothing on the market, short of purchasing a UPC code made on film, that worked for my particular situation. This is a standard UPC code (2x magnification) ...... Read More
Comments (0)A sea change in graphic-arts education
I just woke up after sleeping for a couple of days–or it seems that I slept that long. I was recovering from International Printing Week, an annual event that makes us in education look outward to the industry, and which affords our students an opportunity to see presentations by industry experts on all topics related to the graphic-arts industry. Dr. William J. Ray holds an example of a ...... Read More
Comments (0)Wine labels and wine packaging during International Printing Week
This is International Printing Week. For my students it’s a week of a much different type than a “normal” week in school (though I’d like to think there is no such thing as a normal school week). We have over 100 guests visiting this week, dozens of guest speakers, days of presentations, and a career day scheduled for Friday. Students filled every available chair at t ...... Read More
Comments (0)Using Image Capture to drive an older scanner
Another victim of the Snow Leopard upgrade (I have written quite a bit about this since July) is that scanners made more than a few years ago will no longer work. This is nothing new, as we have experienced incompatibility between scanners and computers since the two technologies were invented. [I also remember a time when scanner manufacturers made their devices intentionally incompatible so tha ...... Read More
Comments (0)Happy New Year
Happy New Year wishes to all the readers of my blog on Converting Magazine online. Though I have not been blogging here long, it has been very rewarding, and I thank you for your participation in this form of publishing. I have worked to find interesting topics to discuss in this space, and I have written about some new things that inspire me. I hope it is valuable to you. If there are subjects ...... Read More
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