Viewing the Design category, page 1
A facet of the business that perhaps was overlooked originally, is the fact that visitors to the website might need to print off pages. Finding a particular aluminium sign or engraved sign that the customer wants, but then having to show a partner or employee (who might not have access to a computer at the time), necessitates the need for a printed version.
That brings up a niche subject in website design – that of the print CSS file. For those unfamiliar with CSS, it is a language that websites use to control how web pages appear. Instead of coding the visual style into each page, CSS allows the designer to put all of that design style into one file that each web page inherits.
The print CSS file that we are now using ignores the sidebar, header, menu, and footer files, and only prints the real content of the page. The one exception to this is the blog which currently will print as is, without any particular styling.
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I think if I asked around work about Web 2.0 I would get a lot of stares and blank expressions. The reason? Because the term itself, while not misleading, isn’t exactly mainstream. You don’t hear ‘Web 2.0′ on gadget programs (at least here), and I haven’t seen a single television program dedicated to using the Internet.
It’s a bit of a collective term too, as if to encompass everything that is happening in the online world. AJAX, XHTML, CSS, Ruby-on-rails, you name it, the terms exist in multitudes but really only for those that use them, or interact with them on a daily basis. Even these aren’t really indicative of Web 2.0 as the term really encompasses far more, such as tag clouds, blogging, social bookmarking, podcasts etc.,
Running a small business, or a small business blog, has little or nothing to do with Web 2.0. Or does it?
At GRS I think they’re more aware of the Internet only because of my own experiences. Sure, most people here have broadband or at least a connection to the Internet, but dealing with Web 2.0 is not a regular occurrence. No-one here, asides from myself, blogs, for example. The GRS blog itself is kept current and we have found it useful as both a marketing tool and as a method to talk about sign-making but I doubt it would be thought of in any Web 2.0 terms.
We’re not about to jump into Flickr-style photo-sharing, or podcasting (although that might be a thought to consider, along with vodcasting), but I think that for the time being blogging will be the limit of any Web 2.0 interaction we dabble in.
Another indication of embracing Web 2.0 however, could be the adherence to Web Standards (XHTML & CSS) which I must say, the website and blog were both coded too. This is IMHO important for any website but moreso for a business not just to tout the benefits of having an up-to-date website and blog, but to keep that ‘on the cutting edge’ mentality that should be prevalent elsewhere in the business.
So all in all even though we have small amounts of Web 2.0 in our web effort, we do employ it. Even though it might not be seen or known, it’s there, which goes to show you that the integration of Web 2.0 into everyday use is seamless from previous ‘versions’ of the web.
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In this newly disovered world of multi-culturalism it is becoming more and more common to see signs that are written in more than one language. Being in England doesn’t mean everything you see is just in english, you might catch signs with some farsi on, or arabic, or sanskrit (see here for an example).
As a sign firm it is important that we get the language correct, but since none of us speak or read farsi for example, we are forced to rely upon translations done for us. There are other methods of course, using online translators for example. But many of these are unreliable and can produce some rather embarrassing results as you might imagine.
So as you may understand, sign-makers do go to some extremes to make sure that the language is correct, and not just our own native language(s).
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How many fonts are there?
If you a vague guess you’ll probably be several orders of magnitude off. There are that many it’s mind-boggling. There are several favourites of course, and after reading many articles online and looking at websites you can see that real-life fonts are still popular in online formats. DIN-Medium for example, very popular.
Others that occur frequently are News Gothic MT, Gill Sans MT, Swiss 721 BT, Rotis Semi Serif (one of my favourites), as you can see:
This is just six of the common ones we encounter, there are hundreds more that Universities, the NHS, Government bodies, and private industry use – too numerous to count and display here.
So remember, if you are considering ordering your signs through us, and you want a specific font type – please tell us and we will look high and low for it.
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Will the invention of reusable printing paper spell the end for traditional ink? What about ‘traditional’ printers (I mean the company type, not the hardware type)? In fact Xerox’s ‘invention’ isn’t really even that.
The new reusable paper however, wasn’t invented to replace real paper in everyday life. It was meant to replace that paper which is kept internal in companies, the paper documents you print out and then throw out within one day. As Treehugger puts it so aptly:
Almost half of the paper used in American offices is for daily use. It is for display, not storage and, at the end of the day, it’s in the trash can. All of the energy that was put into harvesting, processing, and shipping that paper was, in the end, for less than a day’s use.
That’s a lot of paper.
A bit on the ‘new’ invention: the reusable paper actually fades after 24 hours, allowing it to be printed on again. It might be useful for other applications of course, secret documents anyone? As Gizmodo also points out – there are those conmen and nefarious characters that might use this for contracts that simply fade away.
All in all the invention of reusable printing paper isn’t going to sound the death knell for professional printing firms, it’s just going to lessen the amount of paper large companies use if they choose to adopt it. It could make for an interesting line of products in the future where vinyl is impregnated with inks (like photographic film is), the printer applies heat to thermoset the ink into place, and voila printed vinyl without the need for solvents.
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In the design department we use several programs to design signs. I won’t delve into the particulars of course, but let’s just say that we have one main program we use to design the layout and look of any given sign. This goes for printing and cutting both, as well as formatting engraving output.
But that’s not where the story begins, or ends.
It sometimes begins with clients designing a look, a logo, or an overall idea. Mostly they do this on Adobe Photoshop. Some do this on Adobe Illustrator. There are two types of graphic, bitmap and vector – defined below:
Bitmap Graphics
Representation of a document as an image file in digital form.
For black and white images, each bit represents one unit of information. Logical 1 represents black and logical 0 represents white (bitonal). This allocation originates in printing where 1 = true = print black. Other allocations also exist.
Gray-level and colour information are represented in the same way, whereby the gray or colour value of a pixel is defined by several bitmaps.
Vector Graphics
A graphics format that uses shapes and lines, called paths. Vector graphics are resolution independent graphics that appear smooth and crisp regardless of how magnified the image is on screen. They also can be enlarged as big as you want them without having jagged edges. This format is best for line art and logos that don’t require complicated coloring or textures.
Complicating matters further is the fact that some clients are quite media-savvy. This can sometimes be a negative factor as they might send us graphics formatted using CAD software, which is highly specialised and produces output files that are just a series of lines, extremely difficult to print properly.
To add to this plethora of choices there are those that believe one thing and give something else. Saying that a file will be formatted a certain way, only to find it is formatted in entirely the opposite way, can really prove a nightmare when imported into some graphics utilities.
The moral of this story? To clearly state what format is required of a client, and if you are a client, to clearly state what format a graphics file will be in, and provide it so. We wish to represent you properly, and to present your design in the best light possible.
Because we want to get it right, here are the formats that we accept for work:
- Illustrator (CS or lower), Vector EPS, High-res PDF or Vector PDF, or High-res bitmap (JPG/TIFF etc.,)
- All vector based output must have font converted to outlines.
- Photoshop (CS or lower) files.
If you are sending them to us via email please attach directly to the email rather than zipping the file up first. This is for quality’s sake. And please, do not send us Macintosh based files as we do not use Macs, we use PCs.
One word on artwork: if you are sending us artwork and you want specific colours to be shown, please tell us the Pantone colour reference in your email or with the vectorised artwork. Remember that colour displayed on a screen is different from the same colour printed on paper which is different to the same colour printed on vinyl and so on…
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I think, speaking from experience as a layman and as someone involved in the industry (now), that we tend to take colours for granted. Biologically speaking it is difficult to work out how many colours we can actually see, but most experts agree that the high end is around the 10 million colour mark. That is, we can see those colours, and recognise them as distinctively different.
Matching those colours to samples however, can prove taxing. Even worse, matching those colours to other colour schemes, can take hours out of the day. Of course, people tend to take this for granted, ‘can’t a computer do that?’ etc., We have to do this manually because at the end of the day it’s humans who are going to be looking at it and right now there are few matches to a human’s perception.
When it comes to most signs, there are a few choices for aluminium sign colours, white being the most prevalent, but when it comes to vinyl signs, or wide format printing, that’s where it gets a little more complicated.
Most vinyl colours are matched at GRS using Pantone or Mactac colour swatches. We use both as they have a wide variety of substrates to choose from, and according to the job we might have used some in the past and continue to use them now even though we may not use that vinyl colour for anything else. There is a dizzying array of choices. Let’s just say we stick to a selection of 50 or so, which does us just fine.
Computer designed wide format printing however, is another matter. Clearly, computer programs can create and manipulate a massive amount of colour, there are literally millions and millions of combinations of CMYK values (4!100 <- is this the right notation?). Getting the right colour can be somewhat difficult, and matching a colour to one a customer has provided, especially if we don't have a record of it, or what it looks like on vinyl, can be difficult.
One of the methods we use to match Pantone colours for our vinyl printing is by using their swatch and printing out a small colour block. Then altering the CMYK values, print out subsequent blocks and match the Pantone printed colour to what we see on the vinyl. The reason for this? Different inks print slightly differently on different substrates. What looks purple on satin paper might look maroon or red on vinyl and so depending on what substrate we're printing onto we have to get it right.
So as you can see, colour matching is more of an artform, and highly dependant on the eyesight and skill of one person, rather than relying on a computer which currently cannot do the job.
Update: As evidence of the difficulties faced by printers in such circumstances, I quote this article: ‘Virtual Proofing: A better predictor of color than hard proofs?‘ from PrintCEOblog.
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