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Andreas Wagner

I view my job as communicating and translating your ideas and objectives into tangible designs that will pass peer review, will make you and your products look great or simply say – buy me!!! The way I see the working relationship with my clients is that for the time of the project I become some kind of part-time team member, yet one that is going to be around for the long term. I am only a phone call or flight away and that’s what I have been doing for some of my clients for over 15 years – and I like it this way. I treat every client as the individual she/he is and because no two jobs are the same, I try and serve you best by talking through your project in detail. Please be prepared for me ask you many questions, to dig deep and wide into your proposed project and your objectives before we get started.

About costs – how long is a string, or better actually: how long should a string be?

Almost every time I am being asked for a quote, my clients initially ask for a fixed costs quote, which is based on the estimated hours required for the entire production process, based on an hourly rate. This is what you would likely ask for and likely get from most designers.

However, based on my experience with many clients, I do believe that to achieve the best possible outcome for you, I will become a team member to you, rather than an independent consultant that is engaged on a fixed contract scenario. The task at hand for your team and me will be to develop your product as best as possible within limiting parameters. Obvious parameters are timelines, budget availability, delivery requirements, creative resources, content readiness, etc. It will be in both our interests to get to a result that we are proud of, but that is at the same time financially viable and delivers within the defined timeframe.

So if you feel that that you do want to work with me but may have problems meeting costing, I am more than happy to sit down with you and work out what and how we can achieve your project within constraints. At the end of the day there are many ways to tackle tasks (cleverly allocate expenses and avoid unnecessary costs) and if you are happy with the hourly rate I charge, I am certain we can achieve a viable product within budget constraints.

During a recent large scale multifaceted project this meant that the client and I collaboratively decided, which areas to expand on, or what to limit and how to overcome certain hurdles. I have completed the project based on an hourly rate with detailed timesheets kept and communicated to the project manager. This did allow us to work flexibly rather than sticking to a rigid proposal and produced a much better final product.

Being a freelance designer, this means you will not be dealing with an agency that has every expert on the permanent payroll and the invoices and expense accounts to match. However, this does not mean I am a one-man show. Over two decades I have established and fine-tuned networks of appropriate professionals, and if I need a good and reliable programmer, photographer, printer or writer, I know whom to call.

But obviously we are beyond the days where you would simply hand a design sketch to a reproduction house and tell them to turn this into your product, it is essential for a good designer to know his/her tools. So similarly to driving a car through a busy downtown to get somewhere, working with computers and all desktop publishing tools that are available today does have to become second nature in order to produce distinguished products.

I can offer you a list of impressive previous government and corporate clients, but also an enormous list of small treasured clients, I have worked for during the last 20 years. Having worked across small and large corporations, government and non-governmental, in Germany, France and Australia, has provided me with an incredible width of design experience in print, web, multimedia, photography and film production.

While I specialise in print and web design, I have also worked in multimedia & film projects and professional photography. Owing to two decades of industry experience (see CV), there is literally no print product that I have not already designed (logos, brochures, flyers, posters, business cards, letterheads, large banners, flags, billboards, airport displays, CD covers, video covers, caps, T-shirts, pens; see graphic design and corporate identity portfolios).

My extensive web design experience for government and corporate clients has been predominantly shaped by steering the development of BoaB CMS content management system software, which is still used by many of Australia’s leading natural resources management & research agencies.

While I confess to being a design geek, my work in collaboration with my colleagues at BoaB interactive also received recognition that I believe might be interesting to web/ programming geeks: During my tenure as director of BoaB interactive, the company has been invited to join the world wide web elite standard body (W3C) as the only commercial body in Australia.

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.

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