Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

graphic design job question....

krossfyter

krossfyter

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jan 13, 2002
4,297
0
secret city
yeah need some explanation real quick on this...

to you all what is "pre press work"?

im thinking its the job before you get it to the printer... like assigning pms colors and such... anything else? traps and bleeds right... or is the printers job?


also... whats pre-flight mean? is this just another name for pre press? if not what does it consist of?


also whats basically involved in magazine design? if you told someone you understood magazine design and they ask you to recite your understanding of it what would you say?



thanks.
 
Pre-flighting is making sure that you tidied all your referenced images, fonts, etc. into folders which can easily be found by the printer. QuarkXPress 5.x includes a simple tool to do this and will collect all of the various things and put them into folders, plus correct the references to look at the new folders.

I'm afraid I can't answer the other two confidently. I know extremely little of magazine design, only newsletters, booklets, and brochures.
 
alright thanks man. got the pre flighting question knocked out. score!


i appreciate it.



hey ummm wouldnt pre flight be a part of pre press?



also bousozoku are you a graphic artist man?
 
I am a software developer and graphic designer. I would never call myself a graphic artist, though. I'm finally going to school to complete a graphic design degree to say that I can do what I can do. :)
 
Pre-press

Pre-press is essentially all events from when the job arrives at the print shop until it is on the press. These events include:

1. Preflighting
2. Trapping
3. Imposition
4. Outputting of films
5. Creating a contract proof and/or a blueline from the films
6. Building a dummy from the actual paper stock
7. Making plates from the films or direct from the computer

There are other tasks too but this is essentially whaqt happens.

Happy Holidays,

David
 
Originally posted by Choppaface
what is "ripping"? I heard that this has to be done when PDFs are submitted...?
Click to expand...

Raster Image Processing (RIPping) is where you take a certain document and turn it into all the various little dots so that the printer can actually print it.

PostScript, the most commonly used page description language for artwork, uses text and mathematical descriptions of shapes and tonal variation to allow a small image to keep its exact proportions when expanded from business card to poster to billboard.

PostScript is similar to Forth, by Charles Moore, which was a programming language meant to get close to the hardware and was used mainly in machine control and video game applications in the 1980s.
 
Sorry I didn't get to this post sooner.. I deal with a lot of these things as it
is my job haha.. but yeah.. quark is nice for prepress issues but have any of you tried InDesign? I'm hooked. I just love the modern feel of it.. and of course theres the added features from that to quark like transparency and such but to work in an adobe environment brings me home.. i like it. quark 6 better come quick ... i have a feeling indesign is taking a nice chunk of quarks ground..
 
Vector graphics must be turned into raster graphics (dots) to be printed, but raster graphics may need processing too. For example, printing a raster graphic might involve scaling it, representing color with grayscale, or representing grayscale with black and white.
 
I'm a magazine designer... but every job is different. In a lot of magazine jobs, for example, I've found that the pre-press guy at the printer will do most of the pre-press work (all those things listed above). Then again, some printers want you to impose the magazine yourself (yawn).

Most just want you to make sure all your PMS colours are accurate (and if it's a two colour job that you're using only two colours - wouldn't believe how often less experienced designers supply jobs with two different types of black, for example!) and that you've got all your fonts in order, and you've checked your bleeds.

What's the job you're applying for? Don't worry, I'm in Melbourne... I won't try and steal it!
 
Originally posted by bousozoku
QuarkXPress 5.x includes a simple tool to do this and will collect all of the various things and put them into folders, plus correct the references to look at the new folders.
Click to expand...

yes but be careful. It doesn't always work. Sometimes it will arbitrarily omit certain images and / or fonts.

to krossfyter: If you can get a pre-press job using InDesign, you'll be way ahead in marketability for future jobs. it's a virtual certainty that it is going to overtake Quark.
 
Originally posted by e-coli


yes but be careful. It doesn't always work. Sometimes it will arbitrarily omit certain images and / or fonts.

to krossfyter: If you can get a pre-press job using InDesign, you'll be way ahead in marketability for future jobs. it's a virtual certainty that it is going to overtake Quark.
Click to expand...

Don't worry. I haven't found it to truly omit anything but reference corrections don't always work. As some shops often use older versions of QuarkXPress, we were saving work as v 4.x files. The corrected links to the moved resources didn't often show on the other machine using v4.x, even though they were fine afterwards in 5.x. By the time they get v6 done, they'll have introduced more intresting bugs.
 
thanks a lot guys. im applying for a graphic artist position for a new city magazine here where i live. i feel this job is a little over my head in terms of getting it over everyone else. i know most other people that may apply will have more expierence and probably are better for the job... but im applying to any graphic design job that is taking applicants... im bound to get a job soon if i keep on doing that... may take a while but im determined. there arent many graphic design jobs around here so thats that. i feel i would probably fit better in an entry level production artist work.... you know helping the main graphic artist with his/her job.. but since there arent many graphic design jobs around here its rare that a production artist job opens up. im shooting for anything here.... i just need a graphic design job to get expierence... having only had on the job expierence at a university as a part time graphic designer for 2 years. i probably wont get this job but im still trying... oh yeah im suppose to be confident right!! heh i guess i bombed that one... nah but you know what i mean.
 
It's all about your portfolio man. If you show the company you can do good work.. they usually don't care if you know the ins and outs of print production.. they will teach you. You can learn that stuff pretty quick... you can't "learn" to be an artist.. if you have the skills your much more marketable than someone who just knows the PMS color chart by heart...so put your good stuff together and lay it all out on the line.
 
Originally posted by e-coli



to krossfyter: If you can get a pre-press job using InDesign, you'll be way ahead in marketability for future jobs. it's a virtual certainty that it is going to overtake Quark.
Click to expand...


im sure man. i know indesign is the future... but its hard to find a company or org. now that uses indesign since most the ad world uses quark still...as much as i want everyone to get on board with indesign... change costs money and is not practical i guess for them. indesign is the shiznit though! i havent really used much of either programs... used more of quark... but when i used indesign i was blown away by it.
 
Originally posted by insidedanshead
It's all about your portfolio man. If you show the company you can do good work.. they usually don't care if you know the ins and outs of print production.. they will teach you. You can learn that stuff pretty quick... you can't "learn" to be an artist.. if you have the skills your much more marketable than someone who just knows the PMS color chart by heart...so put your good stuff together and lay it all out on the line.
Click to expand...



true true.... thanks for that. thats what i do have the ART background and for sure the portfolio... thats my strong point. i know my art and i have a good background in it... i just need for the other side (people hiring) to give me a shot and see my potential.


( i dont think im the best im just saying out of everything else... art is my talent... i know a lot of other people are better)



check your pm insidedanshead
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back