Print '09 - Day 2

The Kodak booth caused quite a preshow brouhaha because they weren't going to display any physical equipment at the show. Their booth was quite Zen-like in its black simplicity:Althought it's their first version of a solutions vs boxes type booth, unfortunately many Kodak booth visitors, it seems, could not figure out what they were supposed to do to get the info they came to the show to get.

Interestingly the most innovative booth award may be given to EskoArtworks who, not only were not showing any equipment, but whose booth was so virtual it was invisible. I.e. they are not exhibiting at Print '09 at all, despite the show's heavy packaging focus.

At every GraphExpo/Print show there is a Chinese presence. However, this year it appears much stronger and better organized – although still quite poorly visited.
At least show attendance is up with the number of attendees probably equaling the number of sales people.

Print '09 - Day 1

Today was the first full exposition day of Print '09 in Chicago.
(Click on images to enlarge)

Entrance to McCormick Place:Main entry hall:Despite the excellent efforts of the Print '09 organizers, the economy has certainly taken its toll on attendees. The Agfa booth made use of cardboard cutouts to boost booth attendance:Xerox's excellent presentation on green issues for the printer, like many of the presentations at the various vendor booths, had somewhat limited attendance:And this photo shows the general lack of attendees on the afternoon of opening day:Hopefully attendance will improve over the next few days.

RE:Print - "Print '09 Pundit: Evolving the Printshop"

"Click image to enlarge"

What a fake invoice can teach about color perception and graphic design best practices

Below is a fake invoice that was sent out in the hopes that the receiver - likely a secretary in a large business - would pay, since it appears legitimate and is for a relatively small amount.

Click on images to enlarge
Note that all the commands to pay use colors that have a strong tonal contrast with their background – white against dark blue, black against light blue or white. However, the disclaimer that reveals that this is not an actual invoice but a solicitation to accept an advertising offer is printed using color contrast rather than tonal contrast – yellow lettering against a blue background.
The designer of this "invoice" has effectively leveraged an aspect of human vision that puts a priority on tonal contrast rather than color contrast. By making the tone of the yellow disclaimer virtually identical to the screen tint of the blue background – the text effectively disappears, or at best becomes very hard to see/read.
Less sophisticated designers usually, and wrongly, believe that color contrast is a way to make text stand out from its background, i.e. they typically believe that the color contrast of yellow against a blue background should make text stand out and be more readable.
Interestingly, the give-away, in this example, is that a slight misregistration of the yellow text against the light blue background has increased the contrast of the letter edges slightly and made the disclaimer, just barely, more visible/readable.

RE:Print - "Marketing Services Provider"

"Click image to enlarge"

Creating crazy custom halftone screens

In a previous post (HERE) I described how to make a custom halftone dot shape. In this post I'll show you how to apply a pattern to an entire image to halftone it. In this case the halftone pattern will be very coarse so as to give the final result a strong graphic look. Click on the images below to enlarge them and eliminate any moiré caused by your monitor display.

First select an image to work with. The best images for this treatment are ones that fairly contrasty and have simple, easy to recognize, image content like this one:Then create the pattern you want to use to halftone the image using a vector illustration application like Adobe Illustrator. For this example I've created a concentric circles graphic.Note that the black and white line thickness of the pattern are about equal. As usual, you will need to experiment to get the right combination of image and pattern resolution to achieve a good effect – there are no rules.

In Photoshop, open the image you want to halftone. Then open the pattern that you've created and copy and paste it into a layer above your image. Make sure the image is in greyscale mode. Create a new layer below the pattern, fill it with white and then merge the pattern with the white layer. At this point you will have two layers; one layer with the original image and above it one layer containing the pattern.
Apply a Gaussian Blur to the pattern. In the below image the original pattern is on the left side and the Gaussian Blur applied pattern is on the right:What you are trying to do is maintain the integrity of the pattern while creating a "threshold array" of about 256 levels of grey.

Next, if the pattern needs to align with any image content then position the pattern accordingly. In this case I've centered the circular pattern over the woman's eye. Then set the pattern layer to "Hard Mix" - the result will look something like this:
At this stage, if the results are too contrasty or flat, select the image layer and use the "Curves" menu to adjust the original image's contrast to get the effect you like:
Finally, when you are happy with the result, merge the two layers. Then convert the image to "Bitmap Mode" (using "50% Threshold") to make sure there are no grey levels left that might get screened by a RIP. Your result will look somewhat like this:...and ready to place in a page layout.

You can use any pattern your imagination comes up with.
For example, this one uses wavy lines:While this one uses a hexagon pattern instead of concentric circles:

Quality printing versus production efficiency

Quality, in terms of meeting customer expectations, and production efficiency are often seen as incompatible. It is either/or, you can’t have both. However, the fact is that quality is achieved by improvement of the process. Improvement of the process increases the uniformity of production, reduces mistakes, increases production effectiveness, and reduces waste of effort, time, and materials. Reduction of waste and inefficiencies, in turn, transfers work and machine hours from the manufacture of defective materials – with their associated reworks – into the manufacture of additional good products. In effect, production capacity is increased. The benefits of better quality through improvement of the print manufacturing process are therefore not just better quality, and the long-range improvement of competitive market position that goes along with it, but greater productivity and better profitability as well. Enhanced employee morale is another gain as increased pride in their work and a greater sense of security result from seeing their efforts improve the success and competitive position of the company.

Wisdom from Yogi Berra - the greatest Zen Master baseball has ever produced

Some Yogiisms to keep in mind as we approach Print 09:

"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."

"You've got to be very careful. If you don't know where you are going you might not get there."

"Take it with a grin of salt."

"We made too many wrong mistakes."

"I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?"

- Yogi Berra (Born: May 12, 1925)