Bleeds, and why they are important.

When I'm looking at student work for print from a technical point of view the most common error is forgetting, or not knowing about, the bleeds.
The printing company will trim up your job after it has been printed, collected and put together so that it has a nice clean sharp edge. Which is why you had it professionally printed in the first place!

Why have a bleed?

The most obvious reason is because you want to print an image to the very edge of the paper. Professional printing machines - and most domestic ones for that matter, - can't print to the edges. Normally they leave a small gap, since you don't want ink all over the place inside the machine. Incidentally, even one-off inkjet prints in my opinion shouldn't be printed using the edge setting, if the printer supports it; because this can still result in ink everywhere.

How can we set a bleed?

To enable this to happen when we are art working a publication for professional print - of any kind -then we incorporate in our artwork a bleed setting  so that the printer knows where to trim. Even if you are not actually taking the print to the edges the printer will expect it and may reject your artwork if it isn't incorporated. definitely it is needed if you have images - or just colour that you want reaching the edges of the paper. For this short tutorial, I'm using InDesign as an example, although many other professional layout software works more or less the same. Word is not considered a pro bit of software for this purpose.

Setting the bleed in InDesign

If you have a modern version of InDesign, then the file setup looks like the image below, the bleed setting is highlighted with the red circle. Note I've removed the side with all the presets on. Older versions look like the one below that. Bleed settings are usually 3mm for Litho or Digital print. If you are doing banners or posters, check with your supplier or use 5mm.

When you have done this, your document should have a red outline outside the page like shown here, the pink line is the margin - make sure you don't confuse the two:

All your artwork that you want printing to the edge should go over the edge to the bloodline. It's OK to take it further than this, you don't have to tidy up, as InDesign will just ignore it.

Practical example

So here's a job I just did and is at the printers right now. It's a flyer for some art exhibitions in about a month's time. This first picture is what the finished job wants to look like. The background image extends to the edges of the paper. 

So to do this, I have set up the file with a bleed. In the next picture, you can just make that out under the background image, and you can see how the image meets the bleed:

Once the artwork has been completed, my suggestion, always print it out with trims so you can check all of this; you need to make a PDF to deliver to the printing company. They will in turn run a preflighting piece of software over your publication to check that it should print OK. Often, if you have forgotten bleeds it will fail this, so get it right. It will also fail for technically wrong colours of ink and pictures that are too low res.

Making the PDF

Making a good PDF from InDesign is straightforward. Go to File > Export then PDF (Print). Select your print setting from the top drop down. I usually use PDF X3 (2002) but ask the print firm. Many don't care that much now, but occasionally one will. Incidentally PDF X3 will give you slightly better colour if you are printing digital IF the process allows, although most times it makes no difference.

When you are in the PDF dialogue box make sure that you click on "Marks and Bleeds" and select "All printers marks" and "Use document bleeds". See below.

Now make your PDF by clicking "Export" InDesign will grind away for a short period and then your PDF will be ready. When you look at it it should look like this:

Congratulations!

What's on the print-ready PDF?

Your PDF incorporates a number of marks. Here's what they all mean and do:

• Two sets of trim marks the innerness where the printer will trim your print and the outer set are the bleed marks. 
• On each side there are registration marks, used to align the separate colours when printing in full colour.
• On the top there are two sets of colour patches. You can use these to check the accuracy of any printing. If you print this out with the colour bars, you should get a nice even greyscaleon the left and colour patches on the right. If you do the on one of the college printers you notice that the dark end of the greyscale is hard to see any difference. One reason that these printers are less than satisfactory. Curiously, they print far better if you print from a PC rather than a Mac. Put your job on a memory stick and print out in the Library to see the difference! The reason for this is that the printers are calibrated for aPC colourspace and not that of a Mac/InDesign. I have tried to change this, but have failed. :-(
• At the bottom you can see a file name and the date and time of creation.

Print conundrum and smooth running...

Been trying to help with a print job. Author has had all sorts of issues. One thing that rand an alarm bell was finding out that the author needed to edit a PDF. 
Noooooo....

This isn't good. I know you can (After all I did the Adobe exam in PDF many years ago) but really PDF is a delivery medium. Not a work in progress file. They are designed to be bolted down. Attempts to do big edits is nearly always bad voodoo.

Suggested workflow

This is the kind of workflow you need. Basically, it's your text > InDesign >PDF. Consider each of the ">" as a one-way street.

In more detail:

1. Your manuscript. Completely finished and proofread, any graphics either scanned properly or to be created. Once you’ve passed it over, I wouldn’t expect anything other than very minor tweaks to the copy. You need/should not do any formatting other than very basic forms such as Chapter heads, subheads, lists, footnotes. If you are doing an index that will be done after formatting. Page numbers/folios will be added automatically, Contents, footnotes will be positioned and generated automatically.
2. I would take your text file and images (if any) and would do a quick and dirty format to judge length etc. I would properly format a chapter and send that back to you as a pdf for checking approval of layout style, fonts, sizes, etc.
3. Then make tweaks as required. 
4. Once approved the remaining sections of the book would be formatted - each chapter, if it suited the book, would be sent for proofing individually.
5. Once whole book approved, print-ready PDF would be generated. 

Printing the book.

Then I looked around for some low-run print prices. As usual huge variation, from around £3.50 a copy to over £8. Same product, same quantity, same spec. 

I only half understand why this is. I assume that expensive printer may be subcontracting to cheap. Or quality may be different, or expensive printer deals with people who need a lot of hand-holding while cheap printer just talks print speak. But it's still a huge difference.

Strangeness in the print costs.

So there's some strangeness in the prices for print. This is a small run, how small I'm not sure yet so I thought I would compare prices. Bit labourious, I know; but usually worth it. With care fun print buying you can save a lot of money. The secret is matching job to company.
Above you can see a graph of prices - they are all from the same company but different binding and quantity. Obviously hardback is more costly, but in a short run the lines are pretty straight. Not so softbound. Note the two kinks in the line and that actually hardbound is cheaper than softbound at some low quantities.
Also note that both softbound unit prices fall once you get 250. Probably a switch to a faster machine that needs a longer run through.
At the end of the day there's not much difference for short run in many cases. But sometimes the saving can be spectacular  if you allow the printer to dictate sizes and quantities.

...And they're off!

Last night was the first proper meeting about the 2017 Fringe Guide. Client wants three columns this year and some more sign posting. We have a very groovy cover, that I can't tell you about at the moment and we have some interesting stuff on.
All of this needs to be completed by 13th of April to get it to print on time. Nice short deadline :-)

New Day says "good night"

So good night New Day. Just 50 issues. What were the reasons for your failure and what can we learn?

The Launch
When the paper was launched back in February it promised to give an "optimistic approach" to news that would be unbiased and was aimed at people who consider themselves "time-poor" and who no longer buy a paper.

Some immediate issues:
"Optimistic approach" - in other words a "good news" newspaper. Repeatedly focus groups/surveys of people who don't read newspapers cite this as a reason for not buying a newspaper. But all attempts to build on this have failed. Good news smells of propaganda. Relentlessly upbeat stories feel phoney. Just like a review section with 100% brilliant reviews. 
Unbiased and politically neutral doesn't really work either. Look at the broadcasters: if you are on the left, you accuse the BBC of having a tory bias and if you are on the right vice-versa. On the whole it works better if people can see where you are coming from. 
Then the last "aiming at people who don't buy newspapers." This troubles me. The big question is "will they buy this newspaper?" And of course, they didn't.  Selling 40,000 at the end.

Other problems
The biggest being distribution. I take a keen interest in Newspaper launches. But I didn't see a copy go New Day anywhere until about a week after the launch. No outlet in Bath stocked it until then, there were no distributors on the streets or by the station on lunch day. No papers left around either to suggest that there might have been. Bottom line, it wasn't easy to buy until it got to 50p. 
It was too much like the Metro, which is free everywhere. Didn't have the gravitas of the "I".There was nothing that made it a compelling read.

Some lessons:
I'm sure they had loads of focus groups. I'm sure they did everything right by the book. Research, research, questionnaire and more. I'm sure they also went with their gut - that there was a readership amongst young professional women. But many products have floundered on these as well. Focus groups and surveys only tell you what people have seen, they don't predict the future. People have to find a need for the product - and if they haven't seen a product before they may just tell you what you want to hear. 
Secondly, there is an assumption that people will pay for content, where demonstrably that isn't true in a number of areas. People will pay for tangibles, if tangibles add value; but if they are the same as intangibles then you're going to struggle to get money for them. For many people, for many years, newspapers have been a problem rather than a solution. Look at the downsizing from Broadsheet (Daily Telegraph) to Berliner (Guardian) to Tabloid (the rest). All to make reading easier.
Finally, is there a market for even short news articles? Increasingly amongst my students I notice people just reading and reacting to headlines, also they want their normal news from sources they trust.

Colouring nearly done.

Four hours gone and I have painted the rocks and 245 carrot noses. There's still some pencil shading to be done and a look by the cool light of day for bits I've missed. The major elements to be done are a sky; which I'll paint separately and drop in, and I will hue shift the brown mountains to an indigo blue colour.

Right now I could go on all night, but common sense says "Quit while you're ahead"

Bath Fringe Festival: Day 4 - checking and installing colours.

The guide has a cover picture that has a number of colours in it. For the main part of the guide I want to be able to use those colours elsewhere. To do that I used the original Photoshop file, which being CMYK already meant that the CYMK breakdowns would be consistent and used the colour sampler tool to click and select various colours.
The breakdowns you can see in the box on the picture below.

These are then dialled into InDesign in the colour swatches. There is a colour picker tool in InDesign, but that reads the RGB component and then translates that to CMYK. While this is uvula, this method - although a little longer is more reliable.

You'll notice that there's a few very tiny percentages. Probably I'll round these off. Most presses can resolve a 1% dot reliably.

I noted down the percentage by doing the screenshot you can see here and then opened up the file in InDesign and make some new swatches.

Here they are in InDesign. As they are in the swatches they are 'global colours', which means that if I change the swatch, all the colours objects that use that swatch will change as well.

Thoughts on print buying.

I'm not an expert on print buying. I know two people who are*. But I'm still amazed at what people pay for getting stuff printed. Of all the things I get as part of my work, print costs vary the most. As a designer, when I get involved in the print side I simply pass on the cost. Any markup is minimal and I include a management fee if I negotiate with the printer. I think clients are unhappy now with so called agency markups of 20-50% on their print bills.

Having said that I don't always use the cheapest printer and I don't spend hours shopping around. I tend to use people that I've had consistent good results from and from who I know I'll get a good result. Also I want as much automation as possible, I want to be able to upload files and get them in the print queue as soon as they are ready to go. I want the process to be predictable and repeatable. And I want guaranteed turnarounds.

*one of them lives here: http://www.printbydesign.co.uk/, and no, they haven't paid for this ad, nor are they expecting it to appear.