The site for prepress & print devotees
Prepressure covers design techniques, PDF, PostScript, fonts, JDF and numerous other prepress topics that have to do with printed communication and graphic arts. This site teams up with B4Print.com, the favorite stake-out of many prepress professionals who regularly visit its forums or the front page which offers the latest news on design, prepress and printing.
The poll: a career in graphic arts
There are numerous movies in which the main character somehow goes back in time and gets the opportunity to restart his or her life. If you had that opportunity, would you once again go for a career in graphic arts or would you avoid it like the plague? Cast your vote to the right and compare the poll results to those of early 2008, when I asked the same question.
Mac & Firefox are doing fine…
I had Photoshop open while staring at Google Analytics, so why not share some data just for fun? It is no surprise that Prepressure.com is popular with Mac users. A lot of them are working in prepress and design. It is however interesting that FireFox has pulled ahead of Internet Explorer! I am surprised that Chrome is doing so well. January is also the first month in which this site got to 5000 page views on some working days.
OS & browser statistics for January 2010
… but Playboy isn’t
While waiting for my turn in the local barber shop, I read a few ‘articles’ from the Dutch version of Playboy. One of them seemed to be a reprint for which the pictures had been rescanned from an earlier copy. The woman in those pictures had an ugly zebra moire-pattern across her skin. It is amazing that Playboy seems to have dropped its standards so much that they accept such bad quality.
My barber caught me staring for an embarrassing amount of time at one of those pictures, so I deemed it better not to ask if I could borrow the copy to photograph the effect. You’ll have to buy a few issues yourself ‘out of professional interest’ 
Fun jokes from ‘Customers from hell’
The client horror stories that can be found at the ‘Customers from hell’ blog are mostly from web designers. There are however a number of print related fun stories on that site as well. Here are some of the highlights:
“We need a 4-color, 1 sheet picture menu. PICTURES ONLY, NO WORDS. It’s for the blind and hearing impaired”.
“Can you add an infinitesimal amount of red?”
After I sent a client a mockup with lorem ipsum as filler text: “It’s good but there is a weird language on the page. It will either need to be translated or removed”.
“We don’t like the font in the logo – could you use the one Microsoft use in their software…I think it’s called Arial. I think everyone likes that one – you see it everywhere”.
“Could we try a darker black?”
“Can you send that logo over in electron form, at the highest granularity you have”.
Prospective client: “$400 for a logo?! Why are you so expensive? My nephew has Photoshop—I can just get him to do it”.
Me: “Does your nephew have Microsoft Word?”
Prospective client: “Yes”.
Me: ” Then have him write you a novel while he’s at it”.
“Can you make the circles a little bit rounder?”
“Yes! I want all them, embossing, de-bossing, foil, gold ink, thick black card. I want it to be the most amazing and truely unique business card ever that people say WOW too”.
Client: “You see where you have a full stop at the end of the first sentence?”
Me: “Yes”.
Client: “Can you change it to a comma?”
Me: “Er, well I can, but you should put a full stop at the end of a sentence”.
Client: “Oh, that grammar stuff is very old fashioned”.
“Can you make it red, but not red, you know? And maybe try a primary color, like green”.
“That’s not Quark red. I want Quark red”.
Client: “You’re fired”.
Me: “Why?”
Client: “You printed it upside-down”.
Me: “You’re holding the board upside-down”.
Client [when briefing a designer]: “I am not going to tell you anything, because I don’t want to limit your creativity”.
“Can you make the font more dangerous?”
“Can you please put page numbers on the two-sided postcard? I’m not sure people will know how to get to the other side”.
“No, I said that everything should be in all caps. That’s how important the message is”.
“Please remove the bold styling from the table headers. It will save ink”.
Client: “I want a poster that’s bigger then a piece of printer paper”.
Me: “Well, a lot of people also get 11 by 17 posters made up”.
Client: “How big is that?”
Me: “11 inches by 17 inches”.
Client: “Yes, but how big is it?”
“The proof just has too much purple. Can you just pull out some of the purple ink? Like 2%?”
I sent a client the first draft of an 8pp brochure with Lorem Ipsum filling in for the text I hadn’t yet been supplied. The feedback I received the next day was something along the lines of: “I don’t think we should put the text in French. It might seem a bit elitist to people who can’t read it. Otherwise all looks fine…”
Client: “We’d like to have the background color a bit lighter.”
Me: “The background color is already white #ffffff.”
Client: “Is there anything lighter than that?”
Me: “We can’t print this; this image is really low resolution, even for a 72 dpi thing off the web. It’s literally 300 pixels and we are printing it on a 6×9 inch postcard.”
Boss: “It’s fine, just go with it.”
Me: “But we are a commercial printer—if our own ads look like crap, why should anyone hire us?”
Boss: “We just have opposing philosophies.”
“Could we print the brochure in RGB? You know, it would be cheaper if we use one color less…”
“All these drawings about dinosaurs… Why can’t we have photos?”
“I really like the gradient – going from red to yellow – but I don’t like orange. Can you make it go through another color?”
PrepressPete is tweeting
JOY is having a back-up but not telling the sales idiot that you could recover the report that he once again ‘accidentally’ deleted .
What’s new?
New or reworked pages on Het huis van Alijn, the 2010 archive, DIN A7, 2009, using Windows 7 in prepress, Windows 7 typefaces, QR codes, the A6 paper size, the names of glyphs, Windows 7 font handling, Snow Leopard font management, finishing, prepress, Bifur, the historische drukkerij, various dictionary terms, 1986, artwork from hell and troubleshooting InDesign.
Also have a look at
- B4Print – the prepress forum for people willing to go off-topic once in a while.
- Prepress Pilgrim – DJ’s ramblings on prepress, the web and whatever itches him.
- InDesignSecrets – The podcasts are even better than the site.
- Publicious – Interesting blog about publishing & XML.
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