I hope you find this as interesting as I did! This is a video of The Printing Ink Company making ink.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Oooh, Shiny! And Writeable, Too!
Lorraine Press is pleased to announce a new glossy coating we've developed in partnership with our trusted manufacturer of coatings.
A customer came to us with a pressing need. They wanted a glossy finish on their products, but they also needed to be able to write on it later or even send it through a water-based ink jet printer to add type or a barcode. Normal glossy coatings don't accept ink. The ink on top of the regular glossy coating smears and spreads, never drying, making the ink unreadable and the product unusable.
We turned to our partner in coatings for help. After a few trials and tests, we had a winner. They had developed a coating just as glossy that also fulfilled our customer's desires. This glossy coating has been created especially for accepting after-product water-based ink imprinting. This includes mailing machines adding addresses, ink jet printers adding type, or even a person using pencil, pen, or markers on it later.
Before this new and exciting development, if a customer wanted to imprint or address a glossy-coated printed piece, no coating could be put on the area to be imprinted or addressed of the postcard or magazine. So the finished product would be shiny, except for a rectangle left alone for the imprinting. It unappealingly stuck out like a sore thumb. Plus, to avoid coating that area, a dedicated coating blanket would have to be specially cut for that specific job, ratcheting up the cost of producing the job.
However, that's all in the past now.
If you have a project that could use a shiny coating and still be writable, let us know, and we can help. If you have any questions, you can contact your LP salesperson, or email your questions to info@lorrainepress.com.
A customer came to us with a pressing need. They wanted a glossy finish on their products, but they also needed to be able to write on it later or even send it through a water-based ink jet printer to add type or a barcode. Normal glossy coatings don't accept ink. The ink on top of the regular glossy coating smears and spreads, never drying, making the ink unreadable and the product unusable.
We turned to our partner in coatings for help. After a few trials and tests, we had a winner. They had developed a coating just as glossy that also fulfilled our customer's desires. This glossy coating has been created especially for accepting after-product water-based ink imprinting. This includes mailing machines adding addresses, ink jet printers adding type, or even a person using pencil, pen, or markers on it later.
Before this new and exciting development, if a customer wanted to imprint or address a glossy-coated printed piece, no coating could be put on the area to be imprinted or addressed of the postcard or magazine. So the finished product would be shiny, except for a rectangle left alone for the imprinting. It unappealingly stuck out like a sore thumb. Plus, to avoid coating that area, a dedicated coating blanket would have to be specially cut for that specific job, ratcheting up the cost of producing the job.
However, that's all in the past now.
If you have a project that could use a shiny coating and still be writable, let us know, and we can help. If you have any questions, you can contact your LP salesperson, or email your questions to info@lorrainepress.com.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Some Mailing Basics - Postcards
I have been receiving a lot of political mail as Election Day draws near. These mainly come in the form of what most people would probably call a postcard. They are printed on cover stock, usually in full color on both sides with an address area on the back and most are larger than a half-sheet of letter-sized paper.
However, these campaign mailers I've been receiving are not technically postcards. They are much too big. The United States Postal Service has strict definitions about what exactly can go through the mail as a postcard. The height of a postcard can be between 3.5 inches and 4.25 inches. The width of the postcard is a minimum of 5 inches and a maximum of 6 inches.
Do we really expect a politician running for office to fit a message in such a small space?
What is it then if it looks like a postcard but is bigger than 4.25 inches by 6 inches? The Post Office calls these letters. That's right. They are sent out at a letter rate. So if you want to send out an advertisement, using a postcard rate, you have to keep the final size of your design to 4.25 x 6 inches.
Don't worry if you, too, can't fit all you want to say on a small area; other sizes can mail just fine, they just are sent at the slightly more expensive letter rate. It's just a cost you need to take into consideration as you are designing your mailer.
Also, a common design move is to fill up a mailer with information on both sides, and leave a tiny corner on the back for the addressing. However, to qualify for the least expensive mailing rate, the area for the address on a postcard needs to fit certain specifications. Just about anything can mail, but if you are looking to save money, we highly recommend showing your design to the Post Office before it is finalized. Or email us a copy to info@lorrainepress.com and we'll take a look for you and let you know if and how the piece will go through the mail.
There are multitudes of variables when designing a piece for mailing. And we hope that if you run into any questions you'll email us or call. We'd love to help you produce a mailer or postcard that fits all postal requirements.
However, these campaign mailers I've been receiving are not technically postcards. They are much too big. The United States Postal Service has strict definitions about what exactly can go through the mail as a postcard. The height of a postcard can be between 3.5 inches and 4.25 inches. The width of the postcard is a minimum of 5 inches and a maximum of 6 inches.
Do we really expect a politician running for office to fit a message in such a small space?
What is it then if it looks like a postcard but is bigger than 4.25 inches by 6 inches? The Post Office calls these letters. That's right. They are sent out at a letter rate. So if you want to send out an advertisement, using a postcard rate, you have to keep the final size of your design to 4.25 x 6 inches.
Don't worry if you, too, can't fit all you want to say on a small area; other sizes can mail just fine, they just are sent at the slightly more expensive letter rate. It's just a cost you need to take into consideration as you are designing your mailer.
Also, a common design move is to fill up a mailer with information on both sides, and leave a tiny corner on the back for the addressing. However, to qualify for the least expensive mailing rate, the area for the address on a postcard needs to fit certain specifications. Just about anything can mail, but if you are looking to save money, we highly recommend showing your design to the Post Office before it is finalized. Or email us a copy to info@lorrainepress.com and we'll take a look for you and let you know if and how the piece will go through the mail.
There are multitudes of variables when designing a piece for mailing. And we hope that if you run into any questions you'll email us or call. We'd love to help you produce a mailer or postcard that fits all postal requirements.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Printing Tip of the Week
Here's a quick tip for InDesign users out there. We think that everyone should know what their InDesign preferences are set to when it comes to the "Appearance of Black." We recommend the following three settings: On Screen should be set to "Display All Blacks Accurately," Printing / Exporting should be set to "Output All Blacks Accurately," and the Overprinting of Black at 100% should in most cases be clicked on.
In CS 5, 4, and 3, on the Mac, these settings can be found by launching InDesign and before opening any document, click on the word "InDesign" (to the left of "File"), go down the menu to "Preferences" and then go down that menu to "Appearance of Black." A pop-up menu with the three options on it should appear.
In CS 5, 4, and 3 on the PC, these settings can be found by launching InDesign and before opening any document, click on "Edit" (to the right of "File"), go down the menu to "Preferences" and then go down that menu to "Appearance of Black." A pop-up menu with the three options on it should appear.
Our preferred settings are recommendations only. The most important thing is to know how these preferences are set, so when they need to be customized for that special project, you'll know how to manipulate your appearance of black in InDesign.
If you have any questions, please email us, info@lorrainepress.com
Friday, October 1, 2010
Showing Off Our Skills By Blending In
We love projects that allow us to show off a little. Unfortunately, if we do our jobs right, most of the time no one usually notices how skillful we really are.
Recently, Lorraine Press had the opportunity to print a beautiful catalog – well designed and full of colorful photography. Our customer chose an uncoated sheet for the cover, and a coated sheet for the inside text. This is normally not anything special, people choose that combination all the time, right?
But this catalog had an image crossover from the inside front cover to the first page of text. Part of the image would be printing on coated stock, the other part on uncoated stock. Anyone with printing experience right now is thinking, "That's never going to look the same!"
Well, instead of saying, "You really can't do that and expect similar results. You should change your design." to our customer, we said, "We haven't tried this before, let's see what we can do!"
We decided to adjust one side of the photo to match what the other side would look like on press. Our ability to do this depended largely on having calibrated proofs that are printed to look like what comes off our presses. If you choose on an uncoated stock, we have an uncoated paper profile on your proof so you will see what your project will look like on press. If you choose a coated paper, we have a coated profile. If you have a combination of papers, like in this example, your proofs will reflect that as well. We want no surprises for our customers when they come to the press check.
Due to some prepress skills and our excellent pressmen, the catalog printed beautifully. In the finished product, no one is going to ever notice the image transition from uncoated to coated. And that's the way we like it.
Recently, Lorraine Press had the opportunity to print a beautiful catalog – well designed and full of colorful photography. Our customer chose an uncoated sheet for the cover, and a coated sheet for the inside text. This is normally not anything special, people choose that combination all the time, right?
But this catalog had an image crossover from the inside front cover to the first page of text. Part of the image would be printing on coated stock, the other part on uncoated stock. Anyone with printing experience right now is thinking, "That's never going to look the same!"
Well, instead of saying, "You really can't do that and expect similar results. You should change your design." to our customer, we said, "We haven't tried this before, let's see what we can do!"
We decided to adjust one side of the photo to match what the other side would look like on press. Our ability to do this depended largely on having calibrated proofs that are printed to look like what comes off our presses. If you choose on an uncoated stock, we have an uncoated paper profile on your proof so you will see what your project will look like on press. If you choose a coated paper, we have a coated profile. If you have a combination of papers, like in this example, your proofs will reflect that as well. We want no surprises for our customers when they come to the press check.
Due to some prepress skills and our excellent pressmen, the catalog printed beautifully. In the finished product, no one is going to ever notice the image transition from uncoated to coated. And that's the way we like it.
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