Today, I visited a commercial printers in Kirkstall with Chris, Amber and Rob called Duffield Printers, which was organised by Paul! Thankyou! They believe that the logic to the company is all about people and business relationships.They also care greatly about being eco-friendly and kind to the enviroment. They specialise in litho technology and digital technology.
Whilst there today, we were spoken to and shown round by Clive Elston, their sales rep. we got to see how the files from clients get sent in and how the staff there then go about checking the pdf files, then to send the finalized pdf back to the client for them to double check it's all okay before going to print. They can get a job done between 24 hours, if its just a simple print job, but if the client wants embossing or.....'''''''''''....then it has to be sent off and this can take up to two weeks.
These requirements for print files included...
- Files can be prepared in either Quark OR InDesign, as long as they're saved as PDF files.
- Along with the files you send them, include any fonts or images within the document.
- All documents sent to them need a 3mm bleed.
- Remember 'trapping' could occur in your image when printed. (Similar to overlapping colours in screenprint) When you put a dark colour over a light it may make the dark colour over the light much, much lighter. If the dark colour was black, the black overlaying the lighter colour wouldn't be as black as the original black.
- Make sure images are in CMYK colouring, cant accept RGB.
- Lastly save the pages in their right order, where as in year 1 when we had to arrange the pages of our book correctly for print. Duffields, has a bit of software called 'Cockpit', which automatically does it.
It was interesting to find out that they get most of their work from freelance designers rather than design agencies and businesses. This all came down to clients not wanting to pay the additional charges put to them through agencies.
We were taken into the print room itself, where all the paper is stored, however they don't store much paper as it's very expensive, he explained that they can order paper at 6 o'clock in the evening and it would be with them by 7am the next morning. The print world works 24 hours!
In the print room they have 3 printers, a 5 press lithograph printer; and a 10 press lithograph printer also an HP Indigo Digital Press. The 10 press printer is able to perfect the images. Clive told us that 'Perfect', is where you can print both sides of a document on one run through a printer; the machine reverses the sheets when they pass the fifth press. Amazing machinery! ...and some of it HUGE! Within the machinery was also a folding machine, which folds one piece of paper every second!
This was emailed to me by Sharon Long someone who worked at the printers, preparing images for print...
One suprisingly good work ethic at Duffield, is the fact that they offer competitive prices but if they feel they cannot take on a job and it would be better done somewhere else, they will turn it down.
One suprisingly good work ethic at Duffield, is the fact that they offer competitive prices but if they feel they cannot take on a job and it would be better done somewhere else, they will turn it down.
No comments:
Post a Comment