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All information presented in this blog is the product of Jamie Bowman. Any images or information presented that is borrowed will be accredited for as posted.

Company Day at the Kansas Technology Center

Today I went and spoke with some of the representatives present at the KTC Company Day. There were nearly 100 companies listed on the Participating Industries and Organizations print out, so as you can guess there were a great of companies to learn about. I began by walking through the hallways past the company booths getting a feel for their company and what they were looking for. I noticed the great variety of graphics displayed on their banners, pens, hand outs, and other memorabilia, but didn't see one QR code!! I was actually surprised by this following the conversation that Mrs. Benson just had with us about them being all over at the Chicago Company day she had attended. I didn't even see any vinal prints on the floors or walls!! Not even in the GIT hallways!

ALLEN PRESS After moving past this shock I stopped to speak with Dean Mills, Plant Operations Director of Allen Press in Lawrence, Kansas.He said that his comany has contracts with people all over the U.S. and even some clients outside of the U.S. They focus on a large variety of print services and some online visual publishing as well. After graduation I will be moving to the Orange County California area so I asked him if they had any associates who worked remotely from home, He said Yes!! They call it telecommuting he joked. Their only plant is in Lawrence so they do a few "telecommuters", but he said they would consider hiring more.

CONSOLIDATED GRAPHICS

I moved down the GIT hall and recognized two girls who had attended PSU in the recent past. They were both representing Consolidated Graphics and work at the Wichita, Kansas plant. They proceded to tell me about their company and the 3 year Leadership Development Program they have you go through to throughly understand what their company does, inside and out.One girl said, to her it's like getting your masters in print AND getting paid for it! During those 3 years you can be trained to fill a position of someone higher up who may be leaving or changing posisitons. They said their company hires people who have studied a wide variety of subjects, some have never even discuss CMYK!  This about made me have to literally pick my chin up off the floor, but also lead me to believe, this company has a way they like to do things and they will take the time to fully train their employees to complete their duties correctly. The information handouts this company seemed very intuitive and inviting. I also asked about the Orange County location in connection with this company and the girls said they have plants all over the U.S. and were able to provide me with a map displaying these locations.

KIEWIT

I stepped out of the box and went to the construction management section of the KTC and deciede to speak with one of the Kiewit representatives. He wasn't very informative about their needs in their graphic department, but he did say they do have a department such as that, but today he was here to recruit construction management interviewees. So I looked over their display and decided I would have to learn more about their career posisitons through their website.

SOUTHWIRE

This company makes electrical wire. Not the type of company I would've even thought about applying to before Mrs. Benson made a valuable point in our Digital File Prep class, that "every company has someone design their graphics and print them." I have also applied this theory with my skills in communication and advertising, "every company has to have clients and get their product out there to consumers." So I stopped and talked with Kayan Nash from Human Resources about the company and found a connnection with them through the electric wires. My Dad worked as an electrician while I was growing up, so I have been around and helping him with wiring jobs for as long as I can remember. This company said they do have plant in California, but it is about to be shut down, so for me, I don't think this company would work for time being, but one like it migh be right up my alley.

OVERVIEW 

All in all company day was a great experience to see the people behind these well known and even not so well known companies. It gave me an oppourtunity to tear down those hipathetical walls separating interviewees and interviewers and get to know the persona. I also too home a list of companies who were present at KTC Company Day and a the day before a list of companies at Career Day at the OSC on main campus. I plan on doing research about these companies and finding a few for which I will target when the Spring Career days come around.

*Images placed in this file represent companies for which I visited with at KTC Company Day. The logos belong to the companies and are used here for association purposes only.

Self Promotion Notepad

PRICING AND LIMITATIONS

For our first true project we have been assigned to create a 5x7 Self Promotion Notepad. These notepads can have any graphic on them, but must contain our name, telephone number, email, and a QR code that can be scanned to direct our audience to our blog site. My notepad is a 5x7 50 sheet pad with a chip board backing with only black ink. I spoke with Printing Services and found that if I submitted a PDF they would be able to my notepad in about 2-3 days and it would cost $3.30 per pad.  That's not bad!! I think this is a much better idea that business cards for students in our standing who will be attending business fairs and need an edge to stand out.

 BRAINSTORMING AND THUMBNAILS

I began my creation process by considering who my target audience will be. For my purpose I will first be using the pad as a visual example of my understanding of the process from computer to print and then tearing off a sheet of this pad to leave behind with those prospective employers as a way for them to remember who I was and a way to suggest they research my work further through the QR code and contact me if they see fit. With that in mind I began with a word bank and then drew out 10 thumbnail sketches that signified some of my best skills.

 

 

ROUGH

After reviewing the layout and design elements of the 10 thumbnails I then selected 1 that I thought displayed my skills best and created a life size rough with .125" bleeds and .25" margins. 

QR CODE

Once the planning process was done we went to the computers to reproduce what we had drawn. Mrs. Benson showed us how to create a QR code at www.qrcode.kaywa.com which we downloaded as the largest size possible in order to get the best resolution when we resized it in Photoshop before bringing the code into our InDesign file. The QR is our audiences call to action and bridges the gap between our print skills and interactive media skills. It's a great tool to use due to the number of people who own hand held electronics which have access to QR Readers.

GRAPHICS OF DESIGN

I chose to use to face profiles looking at each other with swirly lines coming from their mouths to symbolize my skills in communication as well as graphics since the skills needed to created it are ones that I have learned from classes. My progress thus far is below, but I may do some editing as I continue.

ON-SCREEN CRITIQUE

After our on-screen critique I decided to remove the swirling lines which I had anticipated as representing conversation, but can easily be mistaken for smoke. Instead I replaced them with text bubbles which contain my personal information and QR code. I truly think my final notepad is a better display of my communication skills and allows space for the pad to be more functional.

BUSINESS CARD REMAKE excercise

Mrs. Bensen provided us with an example of a unique business card and gave us the assignment of recreating this business card, and applying our own design. To make the assignment more focused on recreation instead of the design we were only allowed class time to complete this assignment. We were challenged to make our recreation a 2 over 1 design with Black + PMS / Black, with a .125 bleed, a .125 margin at the minimum, and include one vector image.

The first step I took was to find measure our given dummy and then convert the measurements to decimals. Next I applied those measurements to create rectangles on 2 pages in an InDesign file. I also created the same rectangles in an Illustrator File to form the base for the rest of my design. From here I selected my Pantone color and applied it to my the first page on the Illustrator file. The next step was to find the vectors I was planned to use from my Image Bank and copy it into the first page of my Illustrator file, scaling it proportionately to my desired design. Once I placed the 3 vectors into my Illustrator file I rotated them 180* to so they would be placed in the direction I wanted them to be viewed in the final creation of the project. After this I moved to page 2. I created JRB as text and converted it to an outline to make it a graphic and added my name and title.

Next in the sequence of work I placed the Illustrator files into my InDesign rectangles and  created the text that would be joining them. Once the whole file was created in InDesign it was time to package my project in order to send it for grading to the server provided to this class. We were asked to turn in a packaged folder as well as a PDF with marks and bleed marks as well as a PDF without. The PDF without is the one that I was most excited about because I knew it would be viewed exactly as I had planned for it to be viewed!!

This recreation became more of a personal project when I added my own words and graphics to the pages viewed. Creating such a project makes me aware that I can create business cards in the future that provide a more in depth example of my full skills as an advertiser and designer.

Ch. 1 and 2

CHAPTER 1

Then and Now

 Design has become something more encompassing than just the actual design. A designer has now taken on the responsibilities that were once separated out among many individual employees. Desktop Publishing not only changed the process of print from that of a specialized craftsman to an area of possible DIY. Companies were eager to save money by reducing the number of employees for which they must pay for their labor and quick to adopt the thought process of, "Do more with less" after the turning point of desktop publishing.



Sales Representatives are, in most cases, the first person you will have contact with with you enter a printing company. This person can help suggest size and weight of paper for your job.

Customer Service Representatives (CSR) will most likely be who you contact from here on out about your job.This person is your in to the printing company, the person who watches your back to help prevent any printing problems or unnecessary reprinting and also is your voice during the job's printing duration.

Estimators due just what their title implies, they make an educated guess to determine job costs, including labor, paper, ink, proofing materials, press time, and bindery time.

Preflight Technicians run your job through a process to check for and problems with setup and content before it is sent to print. They use dedicated software that understands the codes embedded in the specific type of file you have submitted.

Prepress Operator is a position that is rarely around now in print shop due to the fact that computer-to-plate is so common.  Prepress operators used to tape out or graft replacement film pieces for last minute corrections when a film or plate was created before the actual print was made. Now prepress is a term that combines all the prepartory work that takes place before actual printing.

Definitions

• RIP- Rastor Image Processor- interprets the incoming job information and translates it to a bitmap image that will be printed by the output device.
• Trapping- The combination of color at ajoining edges to camouflage any slippage of the page during print.
• Imposition-Placing individual pages in the correct position with the correct spacing to make a correct final project.
• Die Cutting-trimming the edge of a printed piece with a specifically shaped metal cookie cutter, no that's paper cutter.

CHAPTER 2

1/2 tone dots are shown in the example above. When a black and white image is printed it is not colored with a range of shades of gray,  it is printed by a single color of ink in a pattern of dots that create the illusion of a smooth image.

There are three common acronyms used to describe the number of dots used to create an image digitally.

1. dpi- (dots per inch) Describes the resolution of an imaging device.
• desktop printer ranges from 600-1200 dpi
• platesetter/imagesetter ranges are usually
  around 2400 dpi
2. ppi-(pixels per inch) Describes image resolution
   when viewing. 
3. lpi-(lines per inch) Describes the frequency of half tone dots within a row. 

 CMYK vs. RGB

CYMK-cyan yellow, magenta, black = process color

•     The combination of these four colors create a variety of many colors, but of course not every color.

RGB- red, green, blue = colors that can be displayed faithfully on a monitor.

CMYK can create a larger aray of colors than RGB that can be percieved by the human eye.

Monitor Gamut displays RGB range

Spot colors- used to print those colors that fall outside the range of colors created through CMYK combinations. The term spot color is commonly interchanged with Pantone colors, but this is not in correct form. Spot colors can come from other resources, such as Toyo Color Finder and the DIC guide.

Registration-  is a term meaning accurate alignment of the printed inks.This can be a problem because printing inks are not applied to paper simultaneously, but in succession which allows for some paper shifting, causeing an offset print.

Misregistration example

Rich Black- is used in areas where there will be a large area covered with black. To prevent a black that is not completely saturated it is recomended to use "Rich Black" which is a combination of all four of the CMYK colors. Be aware of the chance of color fringes causing unsharp edges where the rich black ends and paper begins.

 Color Managment - is the science of profiiling one device (monitor) to match another device (a press). This is not cheap, but does provide a more realistically represented image on the monitor. If color management is not something you feel comfortable doing quite yet there are still other ways in which you can control your environment:

• Minimize lighting interference
• Subdue the psychedelic effect of the monitor background
• Claibrate and profile your monitor
• Treat your desktop printer kindly
• Invoke printer profiles

Thanks For Reading. Enjoy the days we're given!

*All images presented in this blog were provided by "Real World Print Production with Adobe Creative suite Applications" by Claudia McCue