litho print - Newman Thomson

The 10 Commandments of Typography

Newman Thomson — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 15:13:35 +0000

Typography is one of the most important elements of design, after all, with an unreadable font, a book or magazine would be essentially useless. The info graphic below details what types of fonts compliment others, the differences between weights, sans-serif and serif fonts amongst a load more useful info. Team the info from this up with the 10 commandments of logo design and you’ll be well on the way to logo nirvana.

Know your font families – GHOTMS, Geometric Sans, Humanist Sans, Old Style, Transitional, Modern, Slab Serifs
Combine a sans-serif font with a serif font – contrast is king here, the combo of sans serif and serifs can be really effective, just don’t go overboard (see no.7)
Combine a serif font with a sans-serif font – the same as above, just turned upside down
Combining two similar fonts is not cool – You’ve got the opportunity to do something striking, don’t make it look like you’ve forgotten what font you initially used then found something similar
Contrast is key – See points 2 and 3
Stick to two fonts, only go to three if you absolutely have to – Don’t over complicate things, only go for three different typefaces if it’s essential.
Don’t mix different moods – don’t mix something ‘Wild West’ with a graffiti type font then some sort of calligraphy font, that’s never going to work.
Combine fonts of complimentary moods and periods in time – it stands to reason that these will ‘get on’.
Use different weights of fonts from the same families – they were designed to match up, so make use of that.
Lastly avoid using any of the fonts shown in point 10, there are a whole lot more to add to that list as well… (this is purely down to personal preference of course!)

Credit to Designmantic for the artwork for this info graphic.

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How to set up a cutter guide

Newman Thomson — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 15:22:49 +0000

The process of creating a cutter guide is not terribly difficult, however there are a few considerations that need to be made when working with more complex jobs. Probably the easiest tool to use is Adobe Illustrator, though it is possible to work in Photoshop or InDesign. In this guide we’ll concentrate on Illustrator as it’s the most commonly used method.

First of all you will need to size your artboard to a bit larger than the artwork you are working with, once you have done this you can place/import your artwork onto the the artboard. At this point it’s good practice to name the layer ‘Artwork’ and to lock the layer to prevent any accidental editing.

Once you have done this, create a new layer, and name this ‘Cutter Guide’, from here you can begin to design your guide, if you are making your own, or to drop one of our templates on if you are using that. If you are working with a fairly simple shape this will take you no time at, just bear in mind that you will want some bleed (3mm is ideal) around the outside of the guide.

To make the guide use the pen tool, or a specific shape if you’re after a simple square, or ellipse type shape. You want to have the stroke or outline set at no bigger than 1pt in size, and you should make a new spot colour up when assigning a colour to the stroke/guide. By assigning a spot colour it makes it easy for our pre-press team to separate the guide and the artwork, just make sure the spot colour isn’t used elsewhere on the document.

One important thing to remember with any type of cutter guide is that a cut is represented by a solid line, a fold is represented by a dashed line.

If you are working with a more complex shape, such as a folder or a wallet which will have glued or taped flaps/pockets then make the tabs at least 13mm wide, the capacity itself will depend on what is being put into the pocket/wallet, our studio can advise you on the thickness needed if you can tell them how many sheets you are inserting and what stock they are.

It is also worth thinking about where the tabs will sit, as if you are putting inserts into a wallet with a top opening, you don’t want a tab at the bottom, as the inserts may well get stuck on this and not fit snugly into the wallet. On the job above, it does have a bottom tab, this was due to the yield being better setting it up this way as we could get 2 copies to a sheet. Another consideration with pockets etc. is the orientation of the artwork, so if you have an image running from the folder onto the pocket, then the image on the pocket will need to be rotated 180 degrees so that it shows the correct way up when the pocket is folded up to its final position.

The die makers we use are vastly experienced, so if there are some small tweaks needed to the guide which will improve the design, or produce a better result, they will make any necessary amends. Our pre-press studio know how best to set up a job for die-cutting, so if you are looking to get several items (the same shape and size) out of one sheet, don’t worry about producing multiple guides, we will lay it up to be most economical in terms of cost per tool, and usage of paper.

Once you have your guide set up, save it (artwork included) as a hi-res PDF and send it over as you usually would.

If you do have any questions regarding cutter guides, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch and one of our team will be more than happy to help out.

Please note, whilst the above guide has dimensions on it, there is no need to add the dimensions, this was done so a client could see exactly what dimensions we were working with.

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Digital Vs. Litho Printing, what are the differences? Info Graphic

Newman Thomson — Tue, 19 Jun 2018 13:45:20 +0000

Digital print has come a long way in the last few years, however it does still differ from Litho in a number of ways, click on the image below to see our differences between Digital and Litho info graphic. Originally deemed inferior to litho printing, digital has now truly come of age and the difference in most cases is indistinguishable in terms of quality to litho. There are of course still advantages to using litho, the main one being speed, and the fact once you’ve hit the point where litho becomes economical, it represents very good value for money.

Digital vs Litho print

General notes:

Digital is more suitable for shorter runs and Litho for longer runs. We have already established that digital is more cost and time effective on shorter run jobs, and that the quality of print is pretty much equal to that of litho. So, what else differentiates the two then?

Digital tends to produce a single copy of a file, so if you have a 28pp self cover document of which you want 100 copies, a digital press will produce 100 collated copies of a 28pp document, which will then need binding, and any other finishing (trimming etc.).

A litho press would produce 100 copies of the first sheet (so OFC, IFC, OBC and IBC) then 100 copies of the next sheet, and so on, which would then need collating, followed by whatever finishing was specified by the client.

Litho printing requires plates being made to transfer the image to the paper, a digital press simply uses a file to print from much like you home desktop printer, though obviously on a totally different scale.

Downtime between jobs and set-up times are much less on a digital press.

Different stocks

Most litho presses can run down to around 90gsm stocks if you wanted them to, and up to 450gsm, the digital presses tend to run around 115gsm lowest and up to around 350gsm.

There are specific stocks designed for digital and litho printing, though increasingly more stocks are compatible across both methods.

DPI

This is where digital has an advantage, a digital press can produce decent quality images from a 150dpi file, a traditional litho press would need 300dpi minimum to create the same results. Whislt this doesn’t mean you can print web graphics at an acceptable level of quality, it is a little more forgiving.

Overprinting

It is worth considering that if you plan to overprint the job (i.e. it will be going through another printing process such as a desktop printer) then some digital press processes are not compatible as the image will be melted in the process.

Variable Data

This makes each print a unique print and as such is most suited to Digital printing. The use of this service will considerably increase the return on investment and response rate for mailing campaigns compared with the shotgun approach.

To learn more Wikipedia has this to say about digital printing.

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