Only a few weeks after the announcement that it had been acquired for $180 million by X-Rite, the color mavens at Pantone have announced a major update to the industry-standard Pantone Matching System, the Pantone Goe System.

The Goe System was created to offer designers and printers a simpler, more complete color process from start to finish. The Goe System offers nearly double the amount of spot colors as the current PMS system, as well as software similar to Adobe Kuler to help you find the right color combinations. You can read more about the Pantone Goe System here.

In the link below is an informative detailed explanation of the basics of colors and profiles.

If you ever sent a job to press and at one point or another said: "Why did these cards turn out so bad? They looked looked great on my monitor" then this is a must read.

Hope this is informative and let me know if it helped anyone!

Look out next week for "Resolution Issues in Printing"

Enjoy!

http://www.4over4.com//infofiles/colors.pdf

In the link below is an informative detailed explanation of what bleeds are and why we need them in PDF format.

This is basic knowledge that every graphic designer should know before submitting their files for print.

Hope this is informative and let me know if it helped anyone!

Look out next week for "Basics of Colors and Profiles"

Enjoy!

http://www.4over4.com//infofiles/bleeds.pdf

During a project for the American Institute Of Graphic Artists the creative team, John Neerland and Nina Orezzoli, discovered that many graphic design terms have an inherent dark side to them. They then quickly decided that this could become a fun ad, poster and interactive tool online to test the knowledge of students and young designers across the world. Oh yeah, you can buy some cool t-shirts, too.

Short version:
For print work you want your images at 300 dpi (dots per inch).
Lineart: 1200 dpi
For web design you want look at the pixel dimensions.

Long version: Are you seated comfortably? Then let's begin...

Client comes in,
wants business card,
doesn't have the company's logo,
points you to company website,
icky low res garbage on website,
you notice company has downloadable brochure in pdf format,
you download said brochure,
notice that the company logo is present in brochure,
hey that logo looks pretty damn good,
open pdf in Illustrator,
wipe tears of joy from eyes when you see company logo sitting there in all its vector splendor,
dump vector logo into business card layout,
present to client,
receive accolades, promotion, keys to the washroom...

For anyone wondering what to use for there font management needs under OS X Linotype have just released a new version of Font Explorer for OS X. Even more interesting is that they have released it as a completely free product.

Hopefully anyone that has been using InDesign for a time will have found this alread but for newbies or those who don't fiddle with apps…

One of the best things about InDesign over Quark for me is the ability to really control your workspace and keep things hidden and within easy reach at all times. I find it's much easier to work when your workspace is uncluttered and only the panels you need are permanently active. The rest I dock to either the left of the right of the screen.

To do this just grab the tap of the panel you want to move, you should get a ghost to drag around if you hold down on the tab for long enough. Once you have the ghost drag it to either the left of the right of the screen until it pops into an upright position, it will then lock into place. You can now click the tab to show and hide it whenever you need to, a bit like Photoshop's dock.

If you want to steal my workspace I have included it here for download just drop into this folder (you'll have to find it yourself if your on a PC);

/Users/user_name/Library/Preferences/Adobe InDesign/Version 3.0/Workspaces/

Corrupt file?
Bloated documents?
Need to send a big document over email?

These are all things that may occur rarely or often depending on how much you use software as complicated as InDesign. This is where the Indesign interchange format comes in.