Graphic Designers job?

[ulikogl]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

Being a designer and prepress person I can build a lovely print friendly file. But, I to have found this very thing. Even after training some designers will revert to thier comfort zone and design technique. I guess to put a positive spin on it. I have learned much in rebuilding many files for print due to the disorganization or color correct required for various parts of a design. Legal/ License information ( TM / © / ® -date owner name ) Biggest thing for me is please please please use photoshop layers!!!! (for everything) I'm not fond of vectors in PS either.
Good luck to you sounds like you have a strong background and will continue your growth. /cheers! ")


1. Please include print out of desired look and PMS callouts for spots. (this is a biggy for me, as we work in food color and PMS matches are tough!)

Edited by: Ulrike Kogl on Jul 1, 2008 1:05 PM

Edited by: Ulrike Kogl on Jul 1, 2008 1:08 PM

 

[John M Girimont]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

Honestly, you couldn't have picked a better time to have this discussion, at least for me personally. For the last month I have been promoting my freelance design, production art and photo illustration business, and this topic demonstrates perfectly my USP (Unique Selling Point). What makes me unusual in this field is that I started out in digital prepress and worked in that field for 17 years, learning everything about the needs of the press, while learning design by watching the work that came past my desk -- seeing what works and what doesn't from both a design and a communications viewpoint -- and spending every free moment I had creating files in Photoshop. I approach my design work from both angles: design what looks great and set it up so it prints great. It doesn't matter how it looks if you can't get it to run on press!

At my last print shop I saw the writing on the wall when they went with the PDF workflow and started to insist that the designers supply press-ready PDFs. The printers themselves no longer wanted to pay for experienced talent in prepress; they just wanted easily trained button-pushers. In these print shops, the responsibility to create error-free files is being pushed up the line onto the shoulders of the designers. Which is why when that satellite print shop was closed and all work moved up the road to the "mother plant", I got out of printing and sold my services to the designers.

For the last three years I was the production coordinator and imaging specialist for a marketing agency and learned to my horror that it is the standard "wisdom" in advertising to have students and recent grads populate the Studio Department where the art directors concept is made ready for the press. This practice alone explains so much about why the files many print shops receive are laughable (though they actually make you want to cry!), because they have the ones with the least experience preparing the files. It has been the assumption on the part of the agencies that a) file prep is not very difficult and is not a skill worth paying for, and b) any problems with the files is the responsibility of the printer to fix.

Obviously the industry is currently struggling with figuring out just who should handle file prep: prepress or the designer. It is my marketing plan to sell my services to both sides of this great divide. I offer designers the chance to focus their time on working what they are best at, developing the concept, and let me handle the job of executing and prepping the files for both press and internet. To the printers I offer my design skills and experience in prepress to their clients that do not have the faintest clue on how to create their own files.

Things are slow right now as I have been focusing this last month on getting my promotional material together and making cold calls and e-mails, but this discussion just proves to me that my marketing plan is sound. Thanks for the inadvertent boost to my confidence!

 

[rcollman]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

I have worked in PrePress outputting pages and in Design department creating ads. Have worked for a Newspaper/Magazine as well as a Print Shop.
I found it EXTREMELY beneficial to work closely with those outputting the plates and the pressman so that my creation number one appears as intended. But ALSO so that it did not create any more work for anyone else. BECAUSE if I did do something wrong (which wasn't very often - but it did happen), they would catch it and let me know before running it on the press. And in turn if they had an issue with something I would do everything I could to resolve the issue making it easier for all.
So all in all I believe it really is the responsibility of the designer to create "Correct" files for the Platemaker and the press! You don't blame the oven for a cake tasting bad, go to the source of the problem.

 

[Neildawg]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

Matt,
I"ll try to address your specific issue as best I can relate in my own world. It is very similar. When I started (5ish yrs ago) we were still 3 'designers' with film and a separate darkroom employee. I was on the bottom rung and as we moved forward with transition to ctp, I became head of the prepress/design/platemaking dept., and we cut 2 jobs. We stayed with 2 positions file prep/platemaking and designer for a few years until about a year ago when we added one more position back to the dept. because of growth. When we did that we separated each person into a specific job description. We have a designer, a file prep dude, and myself. I run the dept. and also handle ALL of the final prep and platemaking work. That is our structure, so now I can address your specific questions.

I will agree with your boss on one point, it is the designer's responsibility (in-house or client) to give the end customer something that looks good and what they have asked for. However, a designer who does not intimately understand the print process, techniques and limitations of that process, and the challenges associated with bringing a design through prepress, will never be fully able to achieve with any accuracy exactly what they are selling to the client. So if a designer thinks they can make something look great and rely solely upon you to output plates that will match what they have as a printout or on their screen, then there is a very serious communication and knowledge gap present. Now I know you see it everyday and most likely for a lot of clients or designers, slight color variations aren't a big deal. But, I'm sure you have some clients who take it very seriously because their livliehood depends on it. You spoke in fairly general terms about "getting it right", so I'm taking some liberties here with my response and leaning towards matching colors since that is the first problem usually encountered.

My approach since I started as a lowly pee-on when these opportunities arise has always been first and foremost to talk with either a customer service representative or client/designer directly and, in a professional, nonthreatening way, educate them as much as they will accept about the printing process as it specifically relates to their project and the whole process in general. Obviously some folks are more receptive to this than others, but I'm sure you understand that too. When I took over the dept., we hired a new designer. He had no real background in printing, but a good eye for design. The first thing I did and at every opportunity for awhile afterwards, I gave him jobs that were unusual print projects and required him to elevate his knowledge in some aspect of the actual print process. Sometimes strange layouts, manually arranging hard mechanicals in efficient press layouts, picky client files that I knew would cause him grief, and things like that. I did the very same thing with my file prep guy, who was fresh out of college when we hired him.

With all that being said, it is our responsibility in the platemaking world to give our press guys what they need to get the job done according to the specs we receive and the files we have to work with.

In one respect, your boss is right, it is our responsibility to make the file run as best we can, even though it sounds like he or she is oversimplifying the task. You are correct also in that it is a GOOD designer's responsibility to get it right to start with. I'm going to go out on a limb here (as usual) and add to your responsibilities. You should seize every opportunity to establish communication with your in-house designer, (if possible) clients, and even your customer service representatives and try to help them understand the challenges that you face. After all we are in a service business and the knowledge you have and are willing to share only benefits the customer. It's not about making your job easier, its about making sure the customer's expectations are met and exceeded. Your designer may view it as you trying to make things easier on yourself, but I guarantee if you present it to your boss in the manner I just did, he will give it some thought.

Honestly, we can take nearly any file and make it print. But if its not designed from the beginning to print on paper, and all of the factors associated with that process not taken into consideration, then that is ultimately where the problem begins for everyone. So to close this ridiculously lengthy response, it is a team effort. You and the designer should work together and share your accumulated knowledge to produce the best possible end product for your client. Finger pointing leads nowhere. Step up and take charge in your efforts to solve the real problem of communication.

Good luck and let me know how things turn out.

Neil

 

[LoweringTheBar]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

Hey Matt,

Here's the good news; your boss is an idiot.
Here's the bad news; he's still your boss, and you need him to sign your checks.

Maybe this little analogy will help you come to peace with your lot in life.

A print shop is like a pizza shop. That's right, except in our restaurant the customer supplies us with all of the ingredients. The client can walk in with a can of Pillsbury dough, a sliced hot dog and a can of cheese whiz and demand that we make a pizza that tastes just like one from Gordon Ramsey's Hell's Kitchen.

The cook scratches his head and says "But Gordon, I need quality ingredients to make a Michelin Star pizza!" Gordon Ramsey then screams "The customer is doing the best job that they can, and it's up to you to make a quality pizza... you f—ing donkey!"

The cook realizes that he can't use the customer's ingredients, so he runs around to local supermarkets and steals some ingredients from other client's pizzas to try to make a pizza that satisfies Gordon. When one of the customer supplied ingredients is found to be rancid, you ask the waiter to kindly inquire if the customer can provide you with a fresh replacement. The waiter doesn't want to disturb his valuable customer, but reluctantly agrees. When the waiter returns, he curtly states "The customer used these ingredients yesterday at another pizza shop down the street, and they didn't have any problems."

At this point, Gordon notices that nothing is cooking in the kitchen and assumes that you're screwing around. "Bloody hell, I'm not paying you to surf the f—ing internet. Give me my f—ing pizza!"

Realizing that he'll never get what he needs to finish the pizza properly, the cook proceeds down the path he should have taken from the beginning. He throws the customer's ingredients in the bin and creates a proper new pizza from scratch with the correct ingredients that tastes delicious.

The customer is thrilled that yet another tasty pizza was produced from the fine ingredients they supplied, and they can continue to consider themselves "Culinary Designers".

Sadly, Gordon isn't impressed. "Hey wanker, why did it take you so long? Your efficiency is crap. I just bought you a fancy high-end oven. You should be able to make pizzas fly out of your arse... you f—donkey!!!!"

Well, I hope this sheds some light on our glamorous and rewarding profession.

Gotta go... time to make the pizzas!

Edited by: LoweringTheBar on Jul 1, 2008 4:41 PM

 

[GaryFielding]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

Fixing customer supplied files is what I do for my company. We're mid-sized publications printer in Georgia who requests only PDF from our clients. Relatively few of the people producing these pubs could be referred to as Graphic Designers. No matter though. Very few design schools cover design for print in their curriculums and the ones that do touch on it as if it were an afterthought. My experiences began with a large web printing company of real estate related magazine as a Graphic Artist and with further training, on to Graphic Designer. I worked extensively with prepress departments and through learning the ins and outs of prepress, began to understand that design for print was not so much about "making pretty", but more so about making pretty so it prints pretty. I also began to handle the collected Quark jobs from all of our commercial clients, furthuring this knowledge. Ask an average designer these days to explain a concept like trapping to you(let alone achieving a specific trap) and they'll look at you like you're speaking Inuit. What we've adopted here is to work with clients to help them learn how to properly prepare their files(all the way through to press-ready PDF) for best output. If we do anything for them on our end with Pitstop, etc, we'll give them feedback to help them avoid costly prepress hourly charges in future jobs. The more bulletproof a designer's files are when submitted makes something undesirable less likely to occur coming off press. This strategy definitely works and has given us a competitive advantage over those print companies who do not provide these services. Our clients feel like they've never had it so good. And the reality is that they probably haven't.

Gary

 

[cbrooks]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

I am a designer with roots in the print industry. 25 years in print and 8 years as a designer. Your boss must not be dealing with competent designers. My job is to supply files that are bullet proof. That way there are no surprises when the sheets are flying off press. That is an expensive time to find problems.

 

[RoyalToad]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

LoweringtheBar hit the nail on the head!

Absolutely right on the button.

Dude, (or dudet) you are a genius. You should start your on small 3rd world nation.

--- Toad

 

[PantherMac]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

When non-print people ask me 'what do you do for a living?', and inquire beyond "I'm in printing.", I tell them "Designers make pretty pictures. I make pretty pictures print."

I advise them going further involves a very boring dissertation on color theory, computers, social-economic business trends of the past 15 years, and other such nonsense, and if they get me started, I'll blabber on all night.

Usually shuts 'em right up.



- Mac

 

[ar17]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

i am from prepress; i think you have to also question press. i get a lot of press issues before and everybody blames the file and the plate until i started teaching press how to standardize their process. after that, things went very well. there are times, press don't want to look in the so many variable factors in their pressroom and just want to fix it by re-working the plates... the effect of CtP technology in the press world.

 

[Chasfinch]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

I cannot believe this is even being asked.

If you are giving files to anyone to be plated they should be G-T-G (good to go) things the prepress should have to deal with is trapping layout and the occasional hickup in work flows.

If prepress has to fix your files company is loosing money.

 

[ar17]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

that's why i'm trying to open this issue> more often than not, we blame the file and the plate and the graphics designer not knowing how to produce a printable file, but in reality it is the pressman who does not have a standard? what if tell everyone that my file is pdfX1a compliant and my proof is iso12647-7 compliant, and yet during printing, the press comes back to prepress and says too muck blue, re-do the plates... any input how to fix this? thnx

 

[Chasfinch]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

If the pressman wants a new plate due to a dot or trapping that is not a designers issue. A signed color proof I am assuming has been given as a "goto"

so then the prepress has to work their magic to get to the pressman what the designer/client wants. That is what makes good prepress worth the money- they are not a monkey pressing the easy key

that though is different then sending a RGB pdf with 44DPI images that wont make it through my workflow unless I turn off every warning ... A designer needs to have the proper color seps specified and size with any dies needed speced. I never blame a designer for something my workflow screws up (transperencies anyone) or problamatic trapping due to not understanding ink and paper.

SO what I am trying to say is prepress are there as a mechanism to give the pressman what he needs to produce a designers vision. A good prepress understands at least the basics in how a press works and what issues to look out for on that particular press. Anything more then that (like fixing files due to no bleed/ wrong color space inccorect amount of colors ect...) should be on the designer IMO.

I have a hard enough time having the diecutters/foilers and pressman trying to come to a happy medium with trapping and layout I dont need a rough comp for a final file.

Cheers

PS get out while you still can........

Edited by: Charles on Jul 2, 2008 1:09 AM

 

[Rushlight27]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

In my experience a good graphic designer takes pride in making sure his files work. We check everything to see if it's spelt correctly, which it seldom is, but as a rule we're happy when we get files from a professional. If a file doesn't work we chuck it back at them, with guidance as to how to fix it.
The real problem we face is the rank amateur - "I've got Dee Tee Pee so I'm a graphic designer". God knows, they're spreading like wildfire. If you ask for a PDF and are lucky enough to get one instead of a Word file with more bugs than a zoo in summer, it'll have been created in Ali Bongo's Yo! PDF software and you land up asking for hard copy and the Word file.
If a file from a professional needs fixing, just be grateful that it hasn't come in DOA from an amateur!

Edited by: Nick Dixey on Jul 2, 2008 3:58 AM

 

[Lower Case]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

To me, a designer who doesn't think about how the file is going to be printed is like a chef who doesn't care whether his kitchen is clean or not. Making proper files is ABC. It comes BEFORE making things pretty.

Of course, some printers continue fixing the files for free, and then wonder why they are losing money.

 

[PantherMac]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

> {quote:title=mellowyellow wrote:}{quote}
>
> If prepress has to fix your files company is loosing money.


LOL! I would love a moments time w/ your customers...

Face it folks, if all the files came in perfect, and the vendor's products all worked like they do in the brochure, your employer wouldn't need you!

Prepress would be a box in the server rack some plate-monkey drops PDF's into, and an Epson on the Network somewhere's.

I used to have to remind some of the operators at my last shop of that from time to time, they never did seem to get it?

- Mac

 

[WrongFont]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

If all print houses embraced the same workflow applications, designers may be more inclined to produce print-ready documents. However, since this is not the case, I agree with Mark's first posting that that is why there is a Prepress dept. and a support system in place, where the customer is approached ahead of time what issues they will be charged for if Prepress has to fix, such as RGB, transparency, concerns and the option to submit better files. Printing knowledge is a specialized field these days and no designer and/or customer can possibly keep up with all the aspects of print technology. Just my 2 cents worth.

 

[kdwmson]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

I have worked as a graphic designer for 30 years and now work quite a bit in macintosh support and work closely with our CTP people in house. I take it as a matter of pride and professionalism to try to create files that output well and want our CTP folks to let me know if they have problems. Certainly some designers don't care, but there is also a segment who are never told when there are problems. It is hard to correct a problem you are unaware of.

As in most occupations you have those who care and work hard to learn all they can and those who don't.

 

[Padzilla]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

Hey Matt-

I'm sure you're getting lots of insight, and these replies are interesting to read, if only to know I'm not alone out there. Although I should point out I work for a corporation. I work in prepress/production, attempting to make our files at least barely printable, when they get printed in Texas one day, Singapore the next, and Toronto, next week.

While I could agree with your boss that it's a designer's job to make something nice looking (which could be a whole rant in itself) , i wouldn't expect many designers to know all the limitations of presses and software.

Much as I would love to hear our designers say "I made this gradient in Photoshop, since the version 5.0 of the Hoodad RIP software doesn't rasterize as well as the Jammalamma version 6....", I hear questions more like "...do we know who is printing this?" and "...why are my Word files printing with no bleed...?"

And that's where good production/prepress folks come in. They may not design the "nice looking" stuff, but they contribute to making it look good. The uphill battle is usually in justifying time, for the work you do.

I have the discussion all the time:
You can't bill these many hours for this job, because
1. I didn't budget any time for you
2. The file is fine! I was able to open and print the low res pdf the designer emailed me!
3. We don't need PDF X1 files (whatever they are)... it's for a newspaper
4. Other (make up a good one)

One good one I heard, once, was "i just downloaded a demo of Flightcheck. I don't need you to check this file." It made me nervous (and still does) but I couldn't help but laugh when the job came back, and we found page 2 had a different font color than page 1, and the RGB images across the top of the page weren't aligned. Pushbutton solutions creep me out, they are no replacement for a trained eye.

My solution is I always try to wedge myself into the upstream part of the process. It's hard, sometimes, but if I can educate a designer in one thing, working on a job with them, I re think the idea that my tombstone will say "we'll get it right next time"

Good luck.

 

[John W]

Re: Graphic Designers job?

>Printing knowledge is a specialized field these days and no designer and/or customer can possibly keep up with all the aspects of print technology.

Hell, even we prepress people struggle to keep up. A really top notch prepress person will devote at least two hours of study each and every day and I mean off the job time! Some are lucky to have two hours a day when on the job and a boss that understands why they must be on the internet every day (the company can check what sites you are visiting).

As instructors (and as students) at our union schol, we upgrade twice a year for 9-11, 4 hour weeks per time! Even that is barely enough to cover all the aspects needed. We teach that you must hit the wall after hours and crash through it after hours so when the problem occurs in production, you can implement the instant fix or whatever. If you do and your colleague does not, well there you have it. I know of one really good operator that took nearly eight hours getting nowhere while the second shift person came in and had the job GTG in about eleven minutes. Why? Because he does homework every night once the jobs are completed. Lucky bugger!

John W