IMAGESMITH has been hard at work here in western North Carolina providing print and marketing solutions for small and medium sized businesses for 40 years. We are happy to have been nominated as a Top NC Printing Company by The Startup Pill for our innovation and expertise in navigating a quickly changing marketing landscape. You can check out the rest of this list of great Tarheel print innovators here.
We love print, and the expanding and powerful role it plays in today’s ever-changing marketing mix. Still, the term “printer” can sound misleading. Today, printers do far more than put ink on paper. We have become media communications specialists for business owners and marketers, and we are your closest and most knowledgeable sources for consulting on your overall marketing strategy. A good printer will understand your budget, your marketing goals, and be able to suggest many strategies for creating results: integrated marketing strategies, direct mail, targeted variable data printing, promotional products, signage, branding, website development and e-commerce, social media marketing techniques, and unique design ideas. Discuss with them your target audience, your brand goals, who your consumer is, what your mission, budget, and specific goals are for the year. Together, we can develop and recommend specific marketing strategies that you can use to translate into profit and customer recognition of your brand and your work. The bottom line: why drain your energy trying to learn the new world of marketing on TOP of running your business when you already have a marketing consultant waiting to talk with you?
Call us at 828.684.4512 for any marketing needs. As a printer, we understand communication, design, and teamwork. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.
ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
Trade show booths, converted envelopes, coffee mugs, die cut folders, POS displays, folded mailpieces… what first step do all these design projects share? In each case, you will want to ask for a template from your printer before you design.
The print, signage and promotional products world continues to diversify with custom branding opportunities that allow you to print on just about any object you could want. Throw in the creative use of die-cuts, spot coatings, textures, and folds and starting your project layout on the right foot becomes all the more important. For the designer, that means working with vendor-supplied templates to make sure your design ends up printing in the right spot with no expensive surprises or added cost.
Vendors are usually glad to supply a pre-press template for your specific project. In fact, many require your files be submitted on their template – and for very good reason. The positioning, size, and bleed area are critical for successful output on projects using various substrates and printing surfaces, and complex bindery or finishing processes. When you submit files that need no adjustments, you save prepress and art department fees that would be needed to correct or modify your files, or perhaps save having to pay for a job that did not print as you hoped.
Often, however, instructions are vague about exactly HOW to work with the template. Here are a few pointers that may help. In MOST cases, the template you will receive is a PDF. If you are using the most common desktop publishing software – anything from Quark Xpress to the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite – the PDF can be used in several ways to guide your layout without getting in the way of your work.
We love Illustrator for many great reasons and it is generally our preferred software for design of promotional products, wide format signage, vehicle wraps, and even some regular print jobs that have complex die cuts or folds. The PDF template can be placed into Illustrator like an object, on its own layer, and used as a guide. But the most helpful way is to begin by choosing File–Open With (rather than just File Open) and pick Illustrator as your app rather than Acrobat. (If, as sometimes happens, the template PDF uses fonts that your computer does not have, just ignore the warnings. While they may not print well on your end, the vendor who made the template will have them, so no problem.)
Templates are almost always vector objects that will open and be editable in Illustrator. Of course you don’t want to edit the template, but it can be helpful to have the ability to manipulate it when using many layers or when you need to hide parts of the template in order to proof your project to a customer. You may also need to copy and use curved shapes or other features of the template when creating masks or other design elements.
Many PDF templates are very user-friendly in Illustrator. They use specific non-printing colors to designate the layout and help you see the placement of things like folds, edges and dyelines while specifying how much bleed area you need to allow as well. They will generally have the template elements on locked layers so you don’t accidentally edit them. Most have a blank layer already prepared for you to work on. If not, always leave the template on it’s own layer(s) and create a new layer to contain your print elements.
Sometimes, it is preferable to prepare your layout in InDesign or another page layout application. You can simply File–Place the PDF template into your document. It makes sense to create – and lock – a layer just for the template file. You can then turn visibility on and off as needed and move it up or down in the layer order as well. Your document size in InDesign should be the same size as the entire template, including crop marks if applicable. Upon export, you would generally turn all fonts to outlines and create your PDF/X1A with no crops or bleeds other than whats included in the template.
These PDF templates generally include other important information to guide your design. They will specify whether you need to use PMS spot colors or stick to all process. They define needed bleed area. And they usually spell out the resolution, size, and embedding specs for any images you include.
Templates save time, headache, and money throughout the course of your design project. Make it a practice to ask ahead of time for a template, and make the template your friend.
Call us at 828.684.4512 for any marketing needs. As a printer, we understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Personalization – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
We discussed the conflict between transparency and spot colors, and the ensuing print problems, in a previous blog post. That content is included below, but in addition we added some more information on how to resolve this conflict if you have already created your files in InDesign or Illustrator and either been contacted by your printer for file revisions, or worse, received a print job with “unexpected results.”
Using a spot or PMS color in a layout often makes sense to the designer – after all, we all want to ensure correct color output across our brand. But when you place a spot color logo, for example, in a project bound for CMYK process printing, you may be setting up a conflict that can ruin your print output. When you go to save or output your file to pdf, you may see the above warning – and it is an important one! If you have used a spot or PMS color in your InDesign, Quark or Illustrator layout and then applied some type of transparency effect — drop shadows, blending modes, gradients, feathering, etc — then this warning is telling you that your file will NOT print correctly. Your file will look fine on screen, and often even when printed from a desktop printer, but high quality print output will be compromised. Controlling your Swatches palette and color usage, and understanding color definitions, can prevent this problem. First a little background…
With the release of InDesign 2.0 back in 2001, Adobe integrated transparency effects directly into its layout program. New tools allowed us to apply editable transparency effects to text, graphics, and images, the result being a greatly enhanced set of design tools. PDF 1.4 debuted in Acrobat 5 at this time as the first version of PDF that supported transparency. The only catch was that most printer’s RIPs at the time were not ready to handle the transparency effects. Havoc ensued.
Times have changed since then and Postscript level 3 processors and pdf workflows effectively manage the flattening of transparent files at the correct time to produce accurate output. But the conflict between spot or PMS colors and transparency lives on. Saving your file as a PDF/X-1a doesn’t prevent the problem either as the X-1a definition allows for both spot and cmyk color definitions.
If your InDesign or Illustrator color palette is using nothing but CMYK (or RGB and LAB) colors, you can use transparency with no problems. If you place, for example, your logo or a piece of art with a predefined PMS or spot color into your layout, then you have imported that color into your Swatches palette. In turn, if you apply that swatch to color text or graphics and use a transparency effect on them, a high resolution output from offset or digital printing will result in the object printing as a blank or with an unintended color. Your print provider will most likely NOT be able to convert the spot color to process and retain the correct transparency effect. You must convert the spot color to process in your native file(s) and re-export to pdf.
The PMS Green with a transparency effect added will appear correctly on screen (left), but print as a solid (right).
The Fix: Keep Strict Control Over the Colors & Color Definitions in Your Swatches Palette
If you place your Spot Color logo into InDesign, that PMS color shows up in your Swatches palette and can not be removed or edited. (Deleting the logo will allow you to remove the swatch or change it.) So the simplest way to avoid any problems – and save time and prepress charges – is to create a CMYK version of your Spot Color logo for use in all projects bound for CMYK output, and to keep a close eye on all the colors that show up in your palette.
If you have already designed your project with spot colors brought in from placed artwork, getting rid of or redefining all those colors can be difficult. Replacing the artwork with CMYK versions is the first step. Once you have done that, the palette will allow you to delete and replace any UNUSED PMS swatches, or to redefine them to CMYK. This weeding out process can be complex, depending on how many colors have been created. In InDesign, you can delete color swatches tied only to native InDesign elements (i.e., not originating in any placed artwork) and be prompted to choose another color for all those elements currently using the one you are deleting. The final test is to choose “Remove all Unused Colors” from the pop-out menu on the Swatches Palette. If any PMS color swatches still remain, that color is being used somewhere in your layout. If it doesn’t interact in any way with a transparency effect, that will be fine. But if it does, you will get those dreaded “unexpected results.”
The Swatches Palette can quickly become a swamp of colors with conflicting names and definitions.
Obviously, the easiest fix is to be aware as you build your file of the colors in your palette, and notice how they change with each piece of artwork you place. If you see a PMS color show up, you know that last placed logo or element is bringing in that color. If you then use that color for a drop shadow, gradient, or transparent effect, it will not output correctly. Learn to control your swatches by experimenting with editing, changing and deleting them – getting an understanding of the differences in CMYK, LAB, RGB and spot color modes.
Why is “Transparency” Creating Trouble?
Before being “flattened”, transparency is considered “live” and exists as an optical effect onscreen and in video. It must be flattened in order to print. At this stage, the tranparent region is broken up into smaller non-transparent sections that can then be translated by the RIP (raster image processor) into a printable image. It is, however, a complex process and trouble spots arise from the use of spot colors as discussed above, where text or vector objects overlap pixel-based objects, and possibly with the overlapping of RGB and CMYK images. You can read Adobe’s Designers Guide for Transparency and Print at this link for further reference.
Rely on your printer for advice and direction with any questions you have when designing files that use transparency. They should be able to provide you with the time and money saving technical advice, and work with you on file preparation and submission. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer. The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
Shop our full ImageSmith catalog online here. We can work with you to find the best option to suit your needs. Please note, prices in online catalog do not include decoration, but call us for a quote at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
Creative thinking is a valuable skill in any line of work. Inevitably we all have days where that creative spirit seems to be missing, or we fall into work habits that ignore the benefits and fun we experience in exploring our creative thoughts. Here are five ideas to boost and foster creative thinking and problem-solving.
Play More
Play isn’t just for kids. According to The Leadership Guy, Peter Economy, writing for Inc., creative people revisit their inner child on daily basis, finding opportunities to play both at home and at work. A variety of research studies have shown that play has a large impact on the way we think and work creatively. One body of research dates back to 1967. In this study participants were given the task to imagine multiple uses for one object. Results showed that the participants were more likely to come up with more ideas if they were first allowed to tinker or play with the object first. For graphic designers, the process of doodling – playing around freely with ideas – often frees the mind to wander and begin exploring the options that form the basis of a great design. If you’re looking to spark creativity, take some time to play first. And if you want to keep the creative juices flowing, you must promote and accept play as well.
Don’t Be Afraid to Daydream
Take time from your day to let your mind wander. This act can significantly impact your creative thinking. According to Inc., research shows daydreaming can bring out the best in our creative selves, as it stimulates connections in our brains and allows us to consider ideas we may not have initially considered. Additionally, allowing your mind to wander enhances your ability to problem solve, reports Psychology Today. A study from 2009 out of the University of British Columbia found that daydreaming can help solve problems. Creativity itself is often defined as, at its core, a process of solving problems. Taking the time to relax and let your mind wander is a healthy habit, but far too often is characterized as an impediment to production. On the contrary, it can restore and re-energize.
Travel Often
Experts say that if you want a more creative brain, the answer can be found in traveling more often. Experiencing the world can open the mind to new ways of thinking, reports The Atlantic. Both psychologists and neuroscientists believe that traveling can affect a mental change, changing and revitalizing the way our brains are wired, opening up our minds and allowing us to think creatively. All of this comes from sights, sounds, even smells of the places we travel, which spark different synapses in our brains. Whether you take up residence in Washington D.C. or travel across the globe, you’re likely to come back more creative than ever before.
Take up a Hobby
While work is important, it’s equally important to have a hobby or activity that you’re fond of outside of the office. Whether you prefer painting on canvas, posting a blog or cooking in the kitchen, having a way to express your creative side through a hobby or side project can impact your everyday creativity. Fast Company reports that having a hobby can make us better at many aspects of our lives. Still skeptical? When Google began its 20 percent rule, which allowed employees to spend 20 percent of their time exploring creative side projects, they were surprised to see an 80 percent increase in both productivity and creativity at work.
Be a Risk Taker
Being creative and taking risks go hand-in-hand, as most creative thinkers are big, big risk takers. To envision a product, bring the product to life and then put it out there for the world to see is quite risky. But the rewards are plentiful. Imagine, where would we be if nobody ever took a risk?
Also – be sure to regularly take time to check out the creativity of others. In every field, people are continually pushing the boundaries in unique ways. Admiring what others have created will often nurture your own creative spirit with new ideas and excitement.
Call us at 828.684.4512 for any marketing needs. As a printer, we understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Personalization – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeap.comor call direct at 828.684.4538.
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
Another year in the rearview mirror. Imageblog – our online newstand of conjecture, knowledge, experience and opinion about print, design, marketing, technology and sustainability – takes the last day of a busy year to glance back at the topics we touched on in the past 12 months. Editorially, we strive to cover topics of interest to graphic designers, print buyers and small business owners involved in empowering their brand through effective marketing. With a year-end overview, we notice a few trends in our blog:
Creative Cloud: Adobe’s Cutting Edge
Adobe moved us all to the cloud in 2014 with new versions of all our favorite software programs, new features available only in the cloud-based apps, and new ways to share, collaborate and learn interactively. Keeping up with the CC innovations could be a time-consuming job this year, but thankfully Adobe did it’s typical stellar job of integrating new tools and features in an intuitive, user-friendly interface. In June, we discussed issues relevant to print designers when Upgrading to Adobe CC and settling into the new stand-alone versions of InDesign, PhotoShop and Illustrator. Another article focused in on the changes for Illustrator, which included a reworked pen tool, pencil tool and “Live Corners.” For InDesign, we took a look at how to Auto Generate QR Codes with Data Merge (which seemed unthinkable a few years ago), the wonderful new Color Theme tool, and the evolution of Kuler into Adobe Color.
Graphic Design Tips & Tricks
As always, we love to share ideas that might make the life of a graphic designer or busy business owner a little easier when preparing files for print or marketing projects. This year that included blog posts on How to Properly Create Bleed Area for a print project, an easy strategy for using layers to keep auto page numbering on top of other elements in InDesign, and how to design and create mock-ups of product labels. We’re always on the lookout for blogs featuring great prepress tips, and are happy to share new ideas and secrets as we learn them.
Time flies – and as it does we note the passing of great leaders in the design and print world, as well as the passage of trends and techniques in a quickly changing field. This past year, ImageBlog posted a remembrance of Al Feldstein, the well-loved and long-time editor of MAD magazine, as well as one on the great Massimo Vignelli, who almost single-handedly brought the European modernist aesthetic to American design. We also took a curious look back at some vintage artifacts from our own pre-digital Prepress Department.
Who’s Doing It Right: Great Design in the Real World
Cheers to a great and exciting 2015 ahead. We wish you enormous success with your small business marketing ventures as we all continue to learn and innovate.
Call us at 828.684.4512 for any marketing needs. As a printer, we understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
If you’re a business owner, you know that great creative sells. Whether it’s banners, business cards or an eBlast for an event, you want the presentation to be top-notch. But, getting great artwork can be expensive and time consuming. With seemingly limitless amounts of apps being released daily, Adobe is hitting the app industry hard with their new Adobe Shape CC. Even without the entire Creative Cloud suite of tools, anyone can catch and share inspiration for designs in a vector format right from a mobile phone.
What It Does
Marketed with the tagline, “Where ideas take shape,” the app allows users to choose a shape they like and want to use in their design. All they have to do is take a picture of the shape with their iPhone, and the app turns the shape into vectors, or editable, resizable graphics. Extremely user friendly, you aim your phone’s camera at the object you want to capture, adjust the view, then use your finger to swipe away any detailing or lines that you do not want the photo to capture. This means that whatever you take a picture of can be morphed into a graphic shape that you can edit. It is like having Illustrator’s Live Trace feature available at all times from your phone!
Now on Mobile Devices
For those who have used Adobe applications on a desktop or laptop, the new app brings many of those familiar features and functions to the palm of your hand. If you find a shape you want, you can instantly capture it on your iPhone, save it and edit it with literally a few swipes. The app also allows users to import existing photos from your iOS camera roll and save to Adobe’s Creative Cloud.
By saving the image, Adobe turns your picture into a vector, and you can easily edit on your computer, tablet, smartphone or any device that allows you to plug in your Adobe ID. Additionally, you can save your images to Creative Cloud Libraries so you can work on your project at home, at the office or on the go. With the cloud library, you also can work on your project in Shape’s sister apps such as Adobe Brush, Color, Draw and – best of all – Illustrator.
How Businesses Can Use It
This gives users as well as businesses a way to create and edit an intricate shape without actually having to draw one. For those without creative help, the app can serve as your artist. For those who do have a creative team developing their artwork, Adobe Shape CC is great for inspiration and tight-deadline projects. By making any shape editable, designers can go in and manipulate the shape without spending time drawing it from scratch. Not only does this save time, it gives employees who would not normally be able to come up with a creative concept, a chance to flex their artistic muscle without picking up a pencil.
Call us at 828.684.4512 for any of your marketing needs. As a printer, we understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
The latest update for Adobe InDesign CC 2014 gives you a great new tool for creating a beautiful matching color palette based on the images and artwork already in your layout. The Color Theme tool will create for you 5 different 5-swatch palettes or themes of color with a simple click based on the objects you have selected on your page, which you can then add to your swatches palette or export to Adobe Color (formerly Kuler – will get to that in a moment) for use in other applications and on other devices.
If you have a photograph placed on your page, select the new tool then click the photo. The Color Theme tool will select a range or palette of colors based on that image. It will also work on a vector object, shape or a selected area of your layout including several different objects. A main 5-swatch color theme shows up automatically. By clicking on the down arrow you will see four additional “themes”: Colorful, Bright, Dark and Muted. These will give you variations of the basic theme from which to choose.
A button to the right allows you to add any or all of the themes to your Swatches palette. Option clicking that button will allow you to add just an individual color. The colors are by default defined according to your “document intent.” If you hadn’t noticed, whenever you create a new InDesign document, there is a drop-down menu called Intent where you choose if your creation is heading for the Print world, for the Web or for Digital Publishing (e-Pubs). By double clicking the actual Color Theme tool in the toolbar, you can choose to leave your colors “defined as per document intent” or go ahead and decide for yourself to have the colors rendered as CMYK or RGB. In the prepress department here, we were hoping the tool would include the magic of matching the closest PMS color to the selected sample, but no such luck…..yet.
Now here’s another new feature. Adobe Kuler is now Adobe Color. You can access your Creative Cloud Color account directly in InDesign by going to Window – Color – Adobe Color Themes. In the panel that opens, you can access all your previously defined Kuler… er, Color themes, explore the themes of others just as you did with the mobile app or online, or create new ones from scratch. Any themes you create in PhotoShop or Illustrator are also here to share. Adobe has integrated the favorite advancements of its former Kuler app directly into the Creative Cloud applications in a very seamless, easy to use way.
You can watch a couple of very brief overviews of these new features from Adobe by going to Help – What’s New… These new features are very intuitive and a great tool for your color inspiration. The integration of Adobe Color directly into the Creative Cloud apps is very handy and will be welcomed by the Kuler/Color community, though I’m already finding it difficult to stop calling it Kuler.
Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
With each new software upgrade, organizing your workspace and learning the new tools and interface changes can take a little time. Creative Cloud software generally launches by default a Welcome screen with helpful info on “What’s New” in the latest release. For the first few days, these are helpful; after that they begin to feel intrusive. With Illustrator CC 2014, the “Welcome” screen is pretty persistent in trying to keep on welcoming. The fix is a simple one – albeit not as simple as it could be!
In previous version of Illustrator, the Welcome screen appeared with each launch, but the checkbox to hide the screen on future launches was always located at the bottom in plain view. With InDesign CC 2014, it is still there and easy to access. With PhotoShop CC 2014, there is no “Welcome” screen – it just lives under the Help menu and will take you to an Adobe webpage when chosen. But Illustrator expanded the Welcome screen for CC 2014, putting in four tabs to access different information. I wonder if Adobe is pushing a little harder to introduce PhotoShop and InDesign users to Illustrator? The expanded screen can be useful, but it seems Adobe went a little further in trying to make you work to hide it.
The “Create” tab, which is the default screen on my installation and includes the easy access to open recent docs or new projects, does not include the box to hide the Welcome screen. I have no idea why. For some reason, only three of the four Welcome screen tabs have the check-able option to hide the window in the future. And, even on those three tabs, the bottom of the window is not visible until you scroll down to find the check box.
The Welcome screen info always lives under the Help menu, so if you find it annoying like I do, just click on any of the three tabs other than “Create” and scroll to the bottom of the window. There you can access the SLIGHTLY more elusive than normal “Don’t Show Welcome Screen Again” box.
Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
OUR PROJECT: design a label and show it in use on the actual product. We need to create print-ready label files AND on-product demos for proofing those labels – a very common scenario for the designer. Moreover, our goal is also to end up with a usable set of files that are organized, fully editable and ready to be repurposed for any integrated marketing projects that lie ahead. What is the best approach for digitally sticking a label on a bottle?
We love Illustrator. The ability of vector artwork to be edited, printed in spot colors, redefined for other purposes and resized to any dimension without loss of resolution or quality makes it a versatile winner for multipurpose projects. On the other hand, PhotoShop is essential for realistic product presentation. Amazing effects can take a vector label file from the design stage to a true retail appearance and on-product photo. Using both programs in a coordinated way will leave you with a flexible set of files that can be used for offset or digital printing, wide format product displays, realistic proofing and any other application you might need. When you return to prepare other labels, these files are invaluable time-savers.
The label design for this whiskey bottle began in Illustrator. The customer’s requirements were a matte finish paper with a die cut shape. The handiest solution was to create the label in Illustrator, then manipulate that file into PhotoShop for the proofing and on-product look. Here, all of the type and design elements were created as vectors in Illustrator, and assigned the PMS spot colors that would be needed for offset printing. This part of the job is essentially a typical design/print job.
While working in Illustrator, it helps to be able to see your design on the actual bottle as you work. So, we placed the .tif image of the bottle on its own layer and locked it. An image of the paper was placed on another layer – just for reference – along with the outer shape of the label. We then made a clipping path of that shape on the paper layer so that with all layers turned on, the Illustrator file appeared like the finished label on the bottle – minus the PhotoShop effects. These two layers are not for print purposes – only to help you visualize the end product while designing. Play around with the design of the label until finished, turning off the “bottle” and “paper” layers as needed. From this file, we can generate any actual print files for production of the label.
Now – over in PhotoShop: we wanted to show the label on an actual bottle, both for proofing to the customer and to create imagery for use in several related projects (no special photoshoot necessary!) We start with the photo of the bottle itself. This image is much larger in size than the actual bottle, being a high resolution image suitable for wide format output. If you have worked in Illustrator at the actual label size, you will need to enlarge the vector design when you bring it into PhotoShop – no problem as vectors can be easily resized with no loss of quality. Copy the parts you want to use in Illustrator and paste into their new PhotoShop layers as Smart Objects. By working with Smart Objects in this way, you can double-click on your layer and the artwork will open in the native application (in this case, Illustrator) for editing. When done, click save and the art updates in your PhotoShop file. Learn more about how great Smart Objects are for design versatility here.
Tip: be sure and carefully name each layer you create. I often think I will remember which is which, only to wind up confused and searching through layers one by one to see what I have created. You can easily use dozens of layers in one simple project, so take the time to name them as you create them.
For certain effects to work in PhotoShop, you must rasterize the Smart Object layer before you can proceed. If you are unsure and want to do that safely, make a copy of your Smart Object layer and turn its visibility off – that’s your backup. Now rasterize the original layer and proceed. You can always trash that if the results aren’t right and turn back on the layer you saved. Here, we brought in vector pieces of the label in different groupings so as to be able to apply various lighting effects and filters on different parts, hopefully recreating the appearance of a realistic label. You can experiment with various layers to find which works best for your project. In this case, all the ink coverage (the red bar, the type, the logos) were kept together in order to use a light reflection effect on them that would simulate the ink on paper. The outer border required a different look, as it was set to print in metallic ink. We brought in a layer that looked like gold foil and a layer which held the label frame as a Smart Object. First we selected the pixels on the frame layer and turned its visibility off, switched over to the foil layer, selected the inverse and deleted. What was left is the shape of the frame, but filled with the reflective foil (see photo at right). As this is not a Smart Object layer, you can go ahead and apply bevel and emboss effects to make it stand out a little more from the rest of the matte label.
Save this heavily layered version of your project – it allows you to easily edit individual parts during proofing or for future applications. You could easily switch out the paper layer, substitute a silver background, entirely redesign the label, or even insert a new bottle and background. By starting off on the right foot, you can confidently edit and repurpose your designs with a minimum of wasted or repeated effort.
Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
The Data Merge function in InDesign is a powerful, versatile tool for integrated marketing. We use it for variable data printing to personalize individual pieces – text and images – and, if a direct mail piece, to address and barcode for delivery to the USPS. The latest enhancement to Data Merge is the ability to integrate automatically generated QR codes into the Data Merge workflow. The best part is InDesign does almost all the work.
As you may know, InDesign CC will automatically generate a QR code within a document. Choose Object – Generate QR Code. From the Content tab, you can choose which of 5 main classes of QR code information you want to create: Text, Website, Text Message, Email or Business Card/Contact Information. The Color tab will let you change the QR code from standard Black to one of your other Swatch colors. When you click OK, the code loads onto your cursor for placement (or if you already selected a placeholder box, it places itself on the page). It can be resized to any dimension needed and is a high fidelity graphic object – in other words, it behaves just like a vector piece of artwork.
To automatically generated MULTIPLE QR codes through a Data Merge, the key lies in correctly entering the data in your Data Source .csv or .txt file. You will need to create a column (in Excel for example) and – this is the important part – name the column beginning with a hashtag (for example, “#QRcodes“). Within that column you can mix and match any of the 5 types of codes, but the data entries must be in the following formats:
For plain text: simple, just enter the text you want to be encoded.
For an SMS Text Message: SMSTO:<Phone number>:<Message>Example: SMSTO:8285551919:Call me!
For a Website Hyperlink: URL:<url>Example: URL:http://www.imagesmith.com
For and Email Message: MATMSG:\nTo:<email address>\nSUB:<subject>;\nBODY:;;<body of email> Example: MATMSG:\nTo:name@gmail.com\nSUB:Your Subject;\nBODY:;;bodyofemail
For Contact or Business Card Info: BEGIN:VCARD\nVERSION:2.1\nN:<last name>;<first name>\nFN:<full name>\nORG:<your workplace>\nTITLE:<job title>\nTEL;CELL:<cell number>\nTEL;WORK;VOICE:<voice number>\nADR;WORK:;;<address>;<city>;<state>;<zip>;<country>\nEMAIL;WORK;INTERNET:<email address>\nURL:<website url>\nEND:VCARD
Back in InDesign, choose Select Data Source on the Data Merge panel options and then link the .txt or .csv file you created to this document. Draw a box as the placeholder for where you want the QR codes to print on your page. Now link that placeholder to the data by selecting it and then clicking the “qrcodes” field title in the Data Merge panel (the hashtag you put on that column in Excel will not show up in InDesign, but it does allow InDesign to recognize that data as QR code information). Your placeholder will then have a dashed border selection line around it, signifying it will create QR codes when merged.
Finally, merge your document either by choosing “Create Merged Document” (which will give you a multi-page InDesign document) or “Export to PDF” (which creates the finished multi-page PDF file). If your InDesign document is a 2-pager and you have an .txt or .csv file of 100 entries linked, you will create a 200 page PDF file.
One snag: I cannot figure out how to generate QR codes this way in any color other than black. While InDesign lets you choose a color for individual codes you create within the application, I have not been able to find out how to “colorize” the placeholder for the merge in order to generate multiple QR codes through Data Merge that are any color other than black. If you know, please tell us how. If not, then perhaps that ability will come in a future update.
Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
