The Drive to Design

Laid off from the PE, now at IntelASource

tomtattletut — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:01:36 +0000

I was recently laid off from the Press-Enterprise where I was hired as the lead pre-press technician for the Dallas Morning News. After 9 months, the work from Dallas stopped coming in due to a decrease in TDMN’s ad sales and my team was eliminated. The day that I was laid off, I touched base with my network and had an interview the next day! From my work at All Print USA, I had met Scott Oliver at his wide-format print shop, IntelAsource. He was looking to expand his business through sales and selling design ideas to local and regional business so he hired me to do this. I have little experience in sales, but believe in what he’s doing and I believe in myself to do this.

Ad make-up at the Press-Enterprise (a Belo Corp.)

tomtattletut — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:54:22 +0000

Oh, all the terms that encompass ad creation in the publishing industry: ad make-up, adbuilding, graphic design, composition, layout, etc. My second week just concluded as “operator” at the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, CA and I primarily create and update ads for the Dallas Morning News – the mothership of the Belo Corporation which the PE is part of. Great work so far in that I’m using a Mac and all the programs that I was first started using, namely Quark. I’m using 6.52 at the PE and they plan to upgrade to 7.0 soon – which I’ve been reading about for years now. One feature I look forward to seeing in use is the multiple user editing feature for single documents. That is, with one file open, multiple users can view, edit, and save changes to the file in realtime while other users working on the same file see the changes.

Another notable software feature they use at the PE is Apple’s Action Scripts – very cool feature I’ve been interested in for awhile now. With Quark open for example, a user choose automated tasks for routine processes like drawing a picture or text box and employing stylesheets.

I think that I will learn a lot while I’m there!

i was looking for a job and i found a job

tomtattletut — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 23:20:03 +0000

In my first month at a printing/reprographics shop, I’ve printed for a bigger variety of jobs than I ever have before. Yesterday, I spent half the day reproducing a bottle label from scratch. By the end of the next day, we had a digitally printed adhesive label. Other jobs in the shop included printed and cut decks of playing cards, many posters and books – the place handles a variety of jobs daily. The newspaper workflow amounted to basic formula and always one press. The shop has four digital machines that can print books and posters, an antique paper cutter, a folder, a large off-set press, a platemaker, and a light table. The light table is so bright, I gotta wear shades. They have a website – it can be improved immensely. The easiest solution seems to be contacting the hosting company and learn how I can – without compromising the site’s architecture i.e. google adwords, forms, shopping cart, etc.

Once I understand how to attach the pre-existing backend to the new pages I have, I will expand the site’s content further with a history/info page, a products/services page and a ftp upload feature.

Another area I would like to improve on is the marketing of the special music paper the print shop produces. …developing…

Editing PDF forms

tomtattletut — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:55:17 +0000

I’ve seen many freelance opportunities lately for people who know how to create PDF forms used for surveys, registration and other info-gathering purposes. The same surveys found in web browsers can now easily be e-mailed, downloaded, or completed online through PDF forms.

Whether the industry created the trend or was a response to the trend – a few software companies have simplified the process of creating and distributing these forms. Companies such as Nitro and CutePDF allow users to edit once static PDFs into dynamic portable forms. Web-based features such as rollovers and buttons can be added to these PDF forms making them as feature rich as their online counterparts. However, some designers may be inclined to create and edit the form through hand-coding or shareware programs. Check out https://www.planetpdf.com for a great forum on the subject.

A wonderful design blog …

tomtattletut — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:47:58 +0000

I joined the Inland Empire Graphic Arts Professionals group recently and asked the group leader about his favorite online design resources. This is one of the best design resources I’ve seen.

http://www.davidairey.com/

Help! My site looks funny in different browsers …

tomtattletut — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 07:50:02 +0000

This is a problem as old as the internet. Since building my first website at Western Kentucky University in 1999, I recall being instructed to view the site in different browsers for functionality. The problem then – as it is now – was creating pages in html or in an html editor that could be translated for various browsers. Back then, Internet Explorer and Netscape were the major browsers so it wasn’t too difficult to maintain consistency between the two. Now, there are so many to choose from (see pie chart from Wikipedia below), and thus more room for error in creating a site that appears consistent on every browser and platform.

NOTE: Mozilla browsers include Firefox, Netscape, and Camino

IE clearly has the largest share, but web designers and developers will frustrate users on different platforms if they create explicity for the most popular browser out there. Below are a few resources that help diagnose and solve a website’s browser compatibility.

http://browsershots.org/
Free service that opens a webpage on dozens of webpage browsers to reveal any inconsistencies.

http://www.browsercam.com
This site checks javascripts, DHTML, forms and other dynamic functionality on any platform. They offer “a bank of testing machines remotely to test your website.”

http://www.message.uk.com/index.php?page=31

http://kb.siteground.com/article/

http://www.thesitewizard.com/webdesign/multiplebrowsers.shtml

These three links to articles offer good tips on how to troubleshoot your website in multiple browsers.

And … a great point from the Webmasterworld.com forum
“A general thing to do is – as you make a new page, at every significant change, view the page in FF and IE – don’t wait until a page is done. You may do this 10-50 times for each page you write. Another thing is to make it look right in FF, then tweak it to work in IE.”

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/12253.htm

Understanding the SEO phenomenon

tomtattletut — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 07:45:49 +0000

Since my work has gravitated more toward web design, the phrase “search engine optimization” has come up many times in web marketing articles and conversations I’ve had with other designers and co-workers. I had some experience working with SEO in my last position as I helped develop the company’s flagship site http://www.paliadventures.com In this case, I simply had to understand the concept and set deadlines for the company hired to apply SEO to our website, so I’m seeking to understand the tactic more here by pointing out some articles explaining this popular web-marketing tactic.

About.com defines SEO as, “a technique used to make your Web pages more useful for your customers while making them more transparent and understandable to search engines. SEO is an inexpensive way to help your Web site get more page views by creating Web pages that rank highly in search engine results.” This site also offers a helpful walkthrough
here.

What’s next in printing technology? From CTP to direct-to-plate …

tomtattletut — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:59:11 +0000

Direct-to-press is a technology that has interested me since I witnessed pre-press environments go from negatives and plates to the more popular direct-to-plate (aka computer-to-plate or CTP) workflow. The newest technology is direct-to-press where neither negatives or plates are used to begin a press run. Despite the economy, many newspapers with presses and print shops are eyeing direct-to-press technology as an investment to cut back on the chemical and materials used in a typical pre-press environment. Once many publishing ventures adopt this new technology, one wonders if the “pre-press” step will become a thing of the past. As a production staff gains the power to directly output their pages to a press cylinder, those employed in pre-press positions may find themselves more of a liaison between the production staff and the press itself.

A quick google search on direct-to-press technology resulted in a webpage from the World Intellectual Property Organization that offers an abstract on how this emerging technology functions.

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A direct-to-press imaging method comprises: (a) applying an imageable coating to a printing cylinder, wherein the imageable coating comprises a composition such as a thermally switchable polymer which changes affinity for a printing fluid upon exposure to imaging radiation such as infrared radiation delivered imagewise via a laser, and the imageable coating is substantially insoluble in the printing fluid; (b) imagewise exposing the imageable coating to actinic radiation to obtain an imaged coating; (c) printing a plurality of copies of an image from the imaged coating; and (d) reapplying the imageable coating as desired by repeating steps ( a) through (c) at least once without substantially removing the prior imaged coating before reapplying the imageable coating.

http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2003010600

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Click here to see my article on how one pre-press environment I worked in made the jump from the traditional use of a darkroom, negatives and plates to a direct-to-plate workflow.

Adobe CS4 and the future of Quark

tomtattletut — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 22:05:15 +0000

In my four years of working at a daily newspaper, I used both Quark and CS2 to handle the variety of incoming print jobs and graphic design projects. In 2008, I had a web design class using CS3′s DreamWeaver and Flash. It’s incredible to see how the Creative Suite has evolved and the different packages you can purchase based on your needs. There are some new titles in the upcoming CS4 – namely, Contribue, Soundbooth and Encore, probably not crucial to most web and print design environments, but worth exploring.

I recall being at a publishing conference a couple of years ago and hearing the “newspaper guru” mention how much of Europe had completely switched over to Adobe’s Creative Suite and InDesign became the standard for publishing software. That seemed to make sense to everyone except those of us who had always used Quark as the standard publishing software Since Adobe began bundling the (near industry-standard) Photoshop and Illustrator with InDesign I honestly didn’t see how Quark was going to be competitive. Quark is currently on version 8 (I started on 4.0). In a later post, I will explore the features and benefits of Quark 8.