Who has not seen this before? You are looking at your designer’s computer screen and think wow – this will be a great product. You love the freshness of the colours, the vibrancy and sharpness of the details. But when you finally have “your baby” in hands fresh off the press you are rather disappointed: The final product lacks that fine touch you have seen on screen. All those beautiful dark sections of images, well they are just black. None of the colors actually look as vibrant as on screen, and even the selection of stock paper just does not feel right.
Here are a few pointers that will give you an appreciation of what thought processes and steps have to be considered by your designer, to not just publish your product, but to achieve a great product.
This is by no means a complete list. And I will not go into technical details, but I will explain the issues in my own language. The objective of this article is to give my client’s an appreciation of the processes involved, rather than being a learning tool for designers.
It obviously all starts with designing a splendid product. But this is a story in itself and I want to take this as a given, and for the purpose of this article rather focus on production issues:
1. Colour accuracy
2. Quality and resolution
3. Selection of stock/paper
4. Selection of an appropriate coating/finish
5. Enhanced chosen for print system
6. Enhancement for the selected stock
7. Printed proof
8. The right binding for the product
1. Colour accuracy
Your monitor uses RGB (red/green/blue) colors and so do your digital images as they come into your designer’s computer system. In fact your designer may not even leave the RGB colour mode until just before sending your files to print. This can be very misleading unless compensated for. When it comes to digital images there are even different RGB colour systems and settings, but that gets us too deep into technical aspects for this article.
RGB vs. CMYK
Here’s the hitch: A monitor is a luminance device, the more of one of the channels is pumped out the lighter it gets (to get white you need all 3 channels emitting full strength). Your printing house on the other side will traditionally print your product using the CMYK colour space (Cyan /Magenta/Yellow/Black). No colour output is white. The more colour of all channels is printed the closer the colour comes to black. This is a mode that only contains a fraction of colours of RGB. So some of the colours you may see on screen in RGB may not even exist in the printing world. Have a look at this colour example:
RGB vs. CMYK
A vibrant turquoise tone (left) and how this will translate to print (right):
So how can you avoid disappointment? You need a designer who is aware of the issues and uses calibrated systems and colour management practices. What you may see on your screen cannot always be reproduced, but your designer’s monitor should be close to your final product and you will also see a colour proof before all goes to print (see also point 7). I don’t want my clients to fall in love with something – knowing full well that that is something they can actually never have.
2. Quality and resolution
All elements that are sent off to print will have to be considered for resolution purposes. There are only a limited number of pixels in digital photos and this may not be what your printer requires. Some elements such as outline objects (your logo for example may be determined by a vector – and can be resized to almost any size without loss of quality. The obvious thing is: The better the resolution of an image the more detail you will see.
But as your printer prints in a specific resolution, images actually need to be enhanced for that specific resolution. If they are left larger than needed they will look not as sharp as if they are resized and enhanced to their final print size.
3. Selection of stock/paper
Since you will be flipping pages in your final print product (unless we are talking poster or billboard) your hands will judge the quality and give you the thumbs up or down. Is the selected stock shiny or matt, coated (smooth finish sharp details) or uncoated (very rough natural look), how thick does it feel, does it feel flimsy? If it has a cover, how thick is the cover, how thick are the internal pages. If your publication is dealing with environmental issues or products, it is important that you reflect this by using environmentally friendly stock. In this case a high gloss, spot UV varnish or worse Chromolux stock, is definitely off limits!
The choice of stock is also very much influenced by the use pattern of your print product. An annual report for example will most likely be read only a few times in an air conditioned office, while a field guide for tropical plants will be subjected to humidity and will have to withstand the wear and tear that heavy use will bring with it.
Time and again I have come across print products that have a great design and layout but the choice of inappropriate stock gives it a substandard and disappointing look and feel and even a much reduced life span. Don’t make the choice of appropriate stock and afterthought, but consider it as an essential part in creating that perfect print product.
4. Selection of an appropriate coating/finish
Another big factor in the final “touch” (literally) is what coating is there on for example a cover: There are fantastic coatings such as matt cello, or UV varnish that gives some great effects if used appropriately, while making the product very durable. But be aware – not everything is good for every geographical region: I am currently living in the Tropics in North Queensland and what happens if you have this great matt cello coating on the outside of your report and leave it in your non air-conditioned office or use it out in the field?
IT WARPS!
Thanks humidity. So if you have a product that is designed for outdoors use, such as a field guide, ensure that the binding system allows the use a double sided Matt Cello coating: There you go, warp free and water resistant.
5. Enhanced for chosen print system
So let’s talk a little bit about print systems: The most commonly used ones are traditional offset print and digital press. These are not the only print systems, with web presses and enormous bubble jets printers are used for displays and billboards. Every print system has specific traits and therefore any calibration and file management should take this into consideration. For example, in my experience you can currently achieve sharper results using offset printing rather than using a digital press. Also, any gradients and solid color areas will be much smoother in offset. So how much detail do you need? Can you live with a slight loss of quality? What is the print run (number of printed products) that you need? What is more cost effective? You will be surprised by cost differences of different printers using different printing systems, and using different sheet sizes! For example, I recently received quotes that varied by about 30 % in some of the aspects due to the different printing press/sheet sizes. And even an offset process was cheaper than digital even on a very small print run!
6. Enhanced for the selected stock
Here is an important factor: The difference between coated and uncoated stock! Printing the same colors on coated and uncoated stock will result in quite dramatic differences in colour vibrancy, sharpness and contrast. On uncoated stock, black will be lighter and the paper is generally not as white as a coated stock. This alone already limits the colour range one can use for any print product. In order to compensate I generally drastically enhance contrast, sharpness, saturation and curves to compensate. Have a look at your local newspaper (generally the worst case scenario) and you will see how ”flat” most images appear.
7. Printed proof
I do want to see a printed colour proof! And you as a client should insist on seeing one. Call me old fashioned, but the current trend of printing houses only sending out low resolution PDFs for proofing purposes, is like looking at a shoe in shop and buying it before trying it on.
A low resolution PDF proof does nothing more than showing that any imposition is done correctly and that fonts and all elements are displayed correctly at your printing house. But one of the most important functions of a proof is to show that the colours are correct, that all elements have the sharpness you want. You can only see this on a printed proof. These days this could be a digital print or an inkjet printout. It should be very close to your final product (normally it has an accuracy of 90 – 95% of the original) as your printer will have to have a printer that is calibrated to their printing press (otherwise the term proof is not quite correct).
It is important that you are prepared to challenge a proof if it doesn’t feel right before you allow 10 000 brochures to be printed in substandard colours! I might have made myself very unpopular on occasion with printing houses when I challenged proofs that were definitely not matching colour values sent to the proofing device. And I have almost always been right owing to more than 20 years experience in the industry.
8. The right binding for the product
It might not appear to be an important consideration in the entire production process, but there are a number of factors that have to be considered in order to get the perfect binding for your product.
How is it used? How often does a person open a publication? – Some binding systems are cheap but tend to come apart once you open it up for the 50th time. But they will look great if they are sitting in a shelf or laying flat on a table! (Burst binding and Perfect binding)
How thick is it (some binding systems allow only a certain page number or thickness) – Saddle stitched, low costs and one of the most durable systems, will only allow a certain thickness.
Do you expect that pages may have to be changed at some page? Realistically this means spirals of some sorts.
So don’t treat binding as an afterthought but ensure the options are discussed early on to ensure a value for money and whole of life costs for your product.
Obviously everything that I described in this article is my opinion about what is important in production process and that I consider that this is one of my particular strength.
Here is what one of my clients thinks about me.
Russell Kelley
Dear Andreas
I can’t say how pleased I am with the outcome of our work on the Nutrients, Catchments and Reefs booklet. The design is superb and your mastery of the colour production process ensured that what we worked so hard to achieve on-screen was faithfully reproduced in print. I would also like to thank you for your patience and good judgement when working directly with our many stakeholders. They too are very happy with the end result and the care and accuracy taken with the technical subject matter. I look forward to many future collaborations!
Russell Kelley, Science Communication Producer
