I have been working at a magazine for 2 years and have been preflighting with Acrobat which I find confusing and a bite over my head. I was sold on going with flight check but stumbled upon an article that steered me tward FREE FLIGHT, which I am anxious to try out. I have a background in fine art and stone lithography and it just blows me away how may "graphic designers" dont know anything about setting up files. I gave them the benefit of the doubt the first year round but when they came back the second year with their files still a mess i just have to shake my head.

It makes me sad to see that the industry has gone so down hill that we dont know our trade anymore. I am please to find you, I sometimes have technical questions and will surely use you to help get the answers fast.

Hello,

You know I feel the same way. It's like the craftsmanship has declined and so many people coming in from Desktop Publishing that don't feel the tradesmanship of craft the way we do? But there are a few whippersnapper guys out there. I have one that is like this, has no printing or conventional prepress background. But he's smart as hell and real driven. He's come up with all kinds of tricks and has become really accurate.

So, I dubbed a new term on his performace review. I stated that he was exhibiting allot of craftsmanship through the new digital methods. I stated that he was becoming a "technocraftsman". He thought that was great. All that old technology and so much about our trade has changed. It's up to us that feel it to try and convey that pride and value somehow to bring out the best in these young operators and co-workers. These guys coming up can't help it if lead type was gone when they got here. I remember when I started how all the journeymen would trell me about lead type and such and such old school stuff. Like they were in a club that I couldn't get to..
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JoePostscript -- support administrator

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Wind Turbine Buyer's Guide


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On a positive note...
They do keep us employed.

Hi wildbill, Roget that. If there were less problems, would need less of us experts to address them. So bring on the problems, retard customers and their screwed up files!
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later dudes, xserv

i dig: xserve backup, xserve xraid, xserve cluster node, xserve hard drive, xserve hard drives, xserve os, xserve rack, xserve raid windows, xserve software, xserve web. Graphic Design Forums, Prepress Forums.

I have felt the same way too. Unfortunately, I'm one of the 'untrained' people, but I want to be so much better. I've been working in prepress departments for 7 years. I know my job, and I do it well. But so often, something comes up that I understand what is happening but I don't know how or why it works. Give me an ad, and I can build it, design it, send it, print it...whatever. But start talking about postscript files and CTP and I get lost.

Short of going to university for something like this, where would you suggest someone like me starts to learn all the little (or not so little) things beyond the actual building of the ad? Especially when the setup is different for every location you go to. I would love to learn more about all of it. (Although I'm not sure I want to be the "expert" in the company that every newspaper calls when they have problems).

Thanks,
Nicole

Sorry for the novel I'm about to write - but this is a hot button topic for me and I've just got to go off about it...

I have a BFA in Graphic Design. I've worked for almost 15 years now as a graphic designer, art director, and Macintosh support consultant. Mind you, I have no formal training as any kind of IT tech - but what I DO have is over 20 years of REAL WORLD, HANDS-ON experience with Macs in a print design environment.

I consider myself VERY fortunate to go to college when I did - when the Mac was REALLY taking off in the design and printing business. They were still expensive - so not everyone could afford one - or IF they could afford one, they could ONLY afford ONE. The Quadra 950 I believe was the fastest thing you could get at the time. And our school luckily had a fine arts lab full of them.

My design professor - who was new to the university - also was a genius who saw the necessity for designers to understand not only the design process, but the production process as well. At that time, we had NO FORMAL CLASSES in any of the Mac software. We had the lab available to us to use as we wanted - but we all learned it ourselves and helped each other. He wanted us to concentrate on the design process of course - and we were welcome to use whatever tools we wanted for production of those designs. The Mac was just another tool, like paint or pencils.

The "genius" part of this was when he worked with the graphic arts department across the street - which had a full print shop setup to teach graphics arts production - and allowed design students to take some of those base classes as electives in their design curriculum. A few of us jumped right on it. I learned how to scan, how to hand-set metal type in a chase, how to hand-lead and kern, screenprinting, all about rubylith and making plates, dylux proofs, all about paper stocks, basis weights, color... you get the idea. There was a TON of hands-on stuff I would probably never get/have to do myself as a designer - but understanding the process certainly made me a better and more valuable designer...because I knew how to build a file that could be printed.

Since then I've had the opportunity to work with and FOR people like you are describing - designers who are all about the design process (the artistic side) and care little and know little to nothing about how to get their creation to reality. I had a boss at my first job who was completely entranced by the addition of the Mac to their business. A middle-aged man who had a successful business for 10 years and was a fantastic designer and creative, abandon his talent and surrendered to the Mac. He was designing by the menu and not with his mind - and consequently, he would produce files that could not be printed, period. This is in the day when color copiers were relatively new and it cost $15-$20 for a single sided 11x17 print and took an hour to RIP. Here I am, the first year out of school, have far more Mac experience then he or anyone else in the office - and the other partner in the business is asking me off-record to check and fix every file his partner creates before it goes to prepress because a few of them cost several thousand dollars AT prepress to fix before. He would use 10-20 fonts in the same piece, export a Quark file as an EPS then import it into another Quark file as an image... it was like giving a cat a ball of string and expecting it to be neatly wound when it was done playing with it.

Anyway - I've also had the opportunity to review and hire interns - mostly junior and senior level design students from nearby universities and art schools. Mind you, I'm not saying this is true 100% of the time - but 98.9% of the time, the art school students are FAR inferior to university program students in their design abilities, but somewhat competent in their production capabilities. But not more so than the university students. Art School students typically in my experience go into it because they are creative and like art in some way, get crammed with a bunch of technical how-to info on using computers so they can be classified as a "designer" - and then end up in production jobs because they didn't have the time necessary to develop either set of skills. And don't get me wrong - that's not a negative reflection on our very valuable and skilled production staffs - I'm just pointing out the realities of the process and why that happens. And why designers with university degrees also have little understanding of the production process. On one hand you have the art schools focusing on production skills because they can get kids employed and hope their "artistic" abilities take care of themselves (which is exactly opposite of why I thought there were art schools to begin with BTW). On the other side, you have universities focusing so much on developing and refining the artistic side, the technical skills are secondary and they leave that up to employers to teach...hopefully.

And now, I actually work as a "media consultant" at a university in conjunction with their print center - and get to work with students on projects all of the time. And I can tell you, things aren't getting better. Here's why: they aren't teaching anything about production, or very VERY basic information at best.

Students today know that leading and kerning is an option/menu in InDesign - but they don't understand what it means and how it affects typography - something else I see little understanding of in general anymore. They certainly have no understanding of the printing process. Some get to take field trips in their senior year to a plant to see the process. I think they should start out in their sophomore year taking that tour so they can understand the process and how it is related to what they will be doing. Some professors say "that's not important - what's important is the creative method... it's someone else's job to figure out how to get it printed." And to a certain degree - that's true. I mean, think about it. Most people just want to drive their car and not understand how to fix it or even how to do preventative maintenance. But I still maintain that, in the print design business at least, you need to have some understanding of your place in the entire process. Which is, consequently, why I've had little trouble finding and maintaining jobs while younger designers get rotated in and out like an Arizona Cardinals quarterback.

I've made the recommendation at every intern/instructor review I've had that their program should include some sort of basic instruction on current AND past prepress techniques as well as typography. I've not seen anyone who's ever learned to kern properly by learning on a computer. There is a true art to it, and if anything, computers have made it too easy to do and get wrong time after time. That's a skill you need to learn by hand to really appreciate it. They also need to see what their file goes through before it goes to print. Direct-to-plate printing and digital presses (which we have) has only made designers even more insensitive to some of these skills and technical issues - because to them, it's just a big printer. Color isn't important. Type isn't important. Image quality becomes secondary.

In addition, EVERYONE thinks they can design because they have a computer and InDesign/Photoshop/Illustrator/Quark/etc.. (The REAL problem is the ones who think they can design and only use Publisher...but I digress. ) So it doesn't take much for design students to stand out from the crowd... but they seem to stop there and not go any further. Because I see senior design students day-after-day who do not understand the printing process when they come in here to get their projects printed.

They do not understand basic things like having the linked files from your InDesign document. I taught a senior design student yesterday how to use the package feature of InDesign to be able to have all her file elements with her to actually print her project. She then had to go back to the lab and hope that her linked files hadn't been deleted.

I taught another how to create a press-ready PDF from within InDesign. I had to explain to another why Illustrator isn't the best choice for designing a brochure or booklet.

So, in other words, it's STILL not being taught. Students are left to fend for themselves and learn these things (hopefully) through internships or AFTER they get into the job market! And I think part of the problem is that they are trying to teach them TOO MUCH. Design for print is not the same as Web or Interactive design. I've worked for a company that did all 3 - their background was interactive and web and they did not understand print (which is why I was there.) It's a different way of thinking and the results aren't always instantaneous. I don't think it's possible that you can teach a student to be a good designer in all 3 of those areas. I've seen only a handful of designers who competently tackle all 3 - and they get paid VERY well. But for most people - it's switching sides of the brain and they just can't do it - because of the technical understanding involved on the web/interactive side. It's more than just creative. So these universities and art schools are trying to shove these very different disciplines down their throats in 2-3 years and guess what happens? They come out very mediocre in all aspects.

And hand skills like comping and creating presentation boards... forget it. I had to teach an intern why they put cork on the back of those metal rulers - right after she cut herself with an exacto.

I also want to say to all of you that maybe didn't have formal training... SO WHAT! Some of the best mechanics I've ever had never had formal training. They watched their dad or got a job helping out in a shop and learned by doing...which is exactly how I became so competent on the Mac and, in every job I've ever held, have also had the duties of the hardware/software tech. And why other design firms would hire me to come in and setup/fix their stuff rather than an authorized Apple tech - most of which (in my experience) while very knowledgeable on how things are suppose to work, have very little experience how things ACTUALLY work in real world production environments.

Some of the best and nationally recognized designers also were not formally trained in design. Some were architects, photographers, etc..

Training helps - but aptitude to understand what it is your doing and awareness of how it works with everything else is just as important IMHO, if not more so. And I've not seen that taught at any university. Nicole - a university might teach you exactly how postscript works - but it will NEVER teach you how it acts or how YOU need it to work. If you need to be able to fix a RIP yourself instead of calling a technician in - then maybe you do want to learn more. But you have to draw the line somewhere. I can take apart a Mac with the best of them, change drives, memory, replace fans, logic boards, etc.. But I won't try repairing components or soldering - I don't have the technical training or background necessary to do that - so that's where my 'expertise' ends. You've got to decide for yourself how valuable having that knowledge would be to you and your employer - and THEN decide whether or not you really WANT to know THAT much about it.

Unfortunately - finding those kind of people is getting harder and harder to do. But those of us who have those skills are becoming more valuable with every graduating class. So employers - hang onto them once you've got them - and pay them what they are worth!

The end.

David,

You really articulate the way I think most people feel on this subject. It may have been thesis-length but you make us understand.

In the company I work for, understanding postscript, PPDs, ripping, CTP, etc. would be a very good benefit. We currently have one "IT" guy for our entire province. That's for I think about 60 newspapers. And very few people in any of those newspapers understands anything beyond Command-P to print. The company is so desperate to save money, they'd rather hire someone who designed the odd business card for their dad and flyer for their aunt, and just toss them in with no training. People with any sort of training are very rare here, and because they'll take people with no understanding of the newspaper business, the turnover rates are very high. Therefore, none of them stick around long enough to get the hands-on experience for the future.

I started as one of those people. I had taken Graphic Communications in high school, and it got me in the door at one newspaper. I've been doing this ever since, and absorbing every bit of information I can get. Can you recommend any way learn the next step of this process? I don't need to know everything, and it would probably be a waste to learn it all. But being able to at least troubleshoot what's wrong before running to our over-worked (and probably underpaid) IT guy, would be a huge advantage to all involved.

If I could convince this company to change it's ways, I would. And maybe, given enough time I WILL be able to. But for now, I'll settle with learning a little more than I know now, and putting that knowledge to good use.

Thanks,
Nicole

Joe-not till you feel wood type in your hands, and kern type with pieces of metal, know what a real leading is between rows of type, do you know what layout of type really is. I am hording some away, and someday I will sell it on e-bay for tons of money, or enough for a beer or two

It helps to be in an environment where you can watch over someone's shoulder and learn how to do some of those things - and I know that's sometimes hard to find anymore. Personally, I'm online every day, following all the major Macintosh troubleshooting and news sites, participating in various troubleshooting forums, in addition to working with the hardware and software in my daily job duties and troubleshooting for others. Just being able to absorb the information doesn't do you much good if you can't "practice" using what you've learned somewhere. So look for somewhere you can get that hands-on practice. It's just like reading an instruction manual on how to change the oil in your car... and you think, "that should be easy enough." And then when you actually do it, you find out about limited access to the oil filter, stuck drain plugs, busting knuckles trying to get a wrench to turn in tight confines of the engine compartment - and you start REALLY learning and understanding what you read - and it's not as simple as it's explained. That kind of situation is going to be different for everyone. Maybe your IT person would let you shadow them sometime when you're not working. Maybe you stay late one night, use the internet to find similar situations to the technical issues you are having, and try to figure it out yourself. You just kind of have to seek out those kinds of opportunities - especially if classroom training isn't an option.

As far as wood and metal type - my senior year in college, our professor and a few of us went to Indianapolis one weekend (about an hour from school), to some little abandon concrete building downtown that use to be a print shop of some sort. It was all boarded up - probably hadn't been a functioning business for 10 years at least. How he found the guy that owned it - I still don't know. But he had made arrangements to meet him there. He let us in, turned on a few lights, an it was like walking into the temple of cold metal type! Picture those movie seens where they walk into a cave and there is treasure just sitting in piles from wall to wall. Except, this place was dark, dirty, and filled with metal cabinets and cases upon cases, and 5 gallon buckets of cold metal type of every shape and size! I can't imagine the scrap value of all that metal in there - you could barely walk through the place. My friends and each just picked spots and started pulling out drawers to see what we could find. There were 5 gallon buckets full of 1 particular font in various point sizes. Drawers and drawers full of old 60's and 70's wood and metal block logos from old yellow pages ads... it was absolutely amazing - and being a poor college student, i think I bought whatever $20 would get me - which was all based on weight.

I see some of these little logo blocks at antique stores now (and repros) going for $5-$10 each! I don't know what that guy did with all of that type - but at those rates, I'm certain he had a few MILLION dollars worth of type in there.

The saying goes.....Anyone with a computer is a designer. LOL
I don't try to do secretary or receptionists job nor should they try to do mine!
They always download artwork off internet/websites and use it and expect quality...Jokes.

I also took graphic communications when I was in high school doing a time share program with the county's vocational school. Yes, I'll admit I thought I could be a designer just because I could put a few graphics and text together. I never experienced a problem with printing to our Ricoh Laser printer. It was once I started working at a print shop that I became aware of production. I was shocked at not knowing a thing. The current IT guy quit after like one month. I had to figure out everything the hardway - Quark and Adobe Forums. I spent hours on those forums at once. Now those hours I don't think of them as wasted time anymore.

I only been out of school for 4 years. I always wanted to work in design, but I ended up being dragged into pre-press always. I got laid off that company after it was sold but quickly got a job the following week. Their system of production was very different and I had to learn it. The pressmen hated me for like the first 3 months. They made me feel so imcompetent. Thank god the other two guys that worked with me said "Put them in their place". I now work very closely with the pressmen and can spot a problem in printing something just by looking at it. (They like me now, I think.)

I guess what I really want to say is that the hand-on knowledge in the real world has payed off for me. I am better payed than our designer who did go to college and think it such a shame. When I talk to friends of mines I tell them to go to school but try to find work in their related field. Knowing how things should work is a good but understanding how they actually work is even better.

I still think designers are afraid of asking a printer questions. They sometimes think they are bothering you. I try to tell them otherwise, but things don't change. What they don't realize is that if they ask me questions for a few minutes, this could take away from much more time I would spend in production fixing their files.
If you are a designer, and you have questions, ask the printer you are using. If they don't want to help you, find another printer. If you make the same mistake over and over, it adds up to many production hours of fixing. This sometimes could have been cured by 5 minutes on the phone, or an e-mail when they would get a chance.

Cleveland you are so right there. I just got off the phone with a designer that spent hours placing tabs on each page of there quark file. The tabs were all over the place and they said they did not have the time to fix it now they need there books. When I suggested that they create the tabs in the master page to save time I could hear there hand slap there forehead saying oh Sh**. I fixed the file in about 15 minutes she said she spent 5 or 6 hours trying to get them right. A phone call would have saved so much time and hair loos i'm sure.

A note to the Red Sox don't sigh A-Rod please

I have this happen almost daily. Files that are not correct, but yet, they still want to supply PDF files. If you are 100% sure that a file will print perfectly, then, go ahead, make a PDF. If you are 99% sure, then give me the native files. I love when they give me a PDF file that was only a proof, but they want to print from it. yes, a full color 16 page brochure will print great at 500k, with full color full page photos on every page. And yes, I don't need bleeds, we'll just cut each one by hand to make sure they work out OK.

It sounds like you work with the same designers that I do. My favorite is when you get a pdf in 2 page spreads and ofcourse they are not printer spreads. Do a save as crop in half and place each page in position then they are surprised when it takes more then 1 day to get them a proof. Sure give me 182 pages of spreads for a 364 pg job it's what keeps my job. The worst part is when they said they went to Kinkos to gat the pdf done.

I can't say I have heard of the Kinkos one from customers, but that wouldn't suprise me. Try this one - readers spreads for a binder book that punches. They did not shift the copy, and the bleed is not correct due to the readers spreads ( no bleed on one side of each page that would be considered correct). They first give me the PDF with no marks and no bleed-WRONG. Second PDF, after specifically telling them what to do, still wrong. At this point, after they didn't want to give me the original files, PDF file number three, WRONG. Yep, and then when I get the original files a week later on a rush job, the background colors that needed to bleed were all in Illustrator, as 120 different background files, one for each page. Of course, they didn't want to pay for the time it takes to fix this all by us. This then went back to the designer a week ago with full instructions on what needed to be fixed, and yes, it is still not back yet. I guess it is only a rush when it actually is in my hands.