A Beautiful Book

I have a confession to make. 

Any former English professors of mine can turn away their eyes for the next line or two. Even with my chronic reading habit and English background in school, I have never read Moby Dick. And even worse, (in some eyes) I have never even wanted to. Not even a little bit. I know what it is about, and I just haven't been motivated to pick it up. Ever. Well, until one day. . .

A few months ago I was perusing the website Fonts In Use, and came across an article about a small (short run) edition of Moby Dick. The article discusses the beautiful use of fonts and space in the layout of this edition of the book. The original Arion Press edition uses hand-set metal type and hand-made paper. It also includes many woodcut engravings, and the initial caps and titling was done in a font specifically created for this edition, named rather appropriately Leviathan. The article tells us that not surprisingly, this book won an award for being one of the "100 Most Beautiful Books of the Twentieth Century."

Well, needless to say, I suddenly wanted to read Moby Dick (well, not just the book, but this exact edition of the book). To whet your appetite, here's the first page image that Fonts In Use used with their article.

 Doesn't it just draw you in? I highly recommend you go over to the original article to see the other mouthwatering images of this beautiful book, so you can ooh and ah over them, too. Plus, Fonts In Use is just a fun website to visit. I particularly liked the article on the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.

Now I have high expectations, and I will only read Moby Dick if I get my hands on a copy of this edition. Luckily for us little people, the University of California Press has reprinted this edition in a paperback format. While not using handmade paper or metal, hand-set type, they did keep the layout intact, and the price is a lot more affordable. So maybe some day I will eventually read Moby Dick.

An Online Resource for Creatives

I've been browsing around the website http://www.creativepro.com/.

It has some great resources, reviews, tips, tutorials, blogs, and some all around good info in topics such as fonts, graphics, photography, print, and web or mobile.

For example, in one article I learned about a cool InDesign feature called Quick Apply. It's easy to turn on and off, and it allows you to keep your hands on the keyboard instead of searching through menus for those features that don't have keyboard shortcuts (or for features that have keyboard shortcuts, but you just can't remember which key combination it is) (Here's the link for the article.) I think I'll be trying this one out.

There are articles on more than just InDesign. I also found some reviews on products I'd heard of but didn't really know much about, some articles on kerning and type that were informative, and even some free Photoshop brush downloads that were tempting.

But, just a warning, you could get sucked into browsing the site for more time than you expected.

Important PIU Meeting This Week

On Thursday September 29, 2011, the Printing Industries of Utah will be holding a meeting concerning the new focus of the EPA on the Graphic Arts Industry of Utah.

The Utah Division of Air Quality is claiming that the entire printing industry in Utah is a major contributor of inversion and have determined that if only the printing industry decreased emissions, Utah would be inversion free. This meeting is to help everyone learn about this threat of increased regulation from the government, and also to discuss ideas on how to minimize our VOC contributions.

The meeting starts at noon, with lunch. It will be held at the LDS Printing Division, 1908 West Industrial Circle, Salt Lake City, Utah. You can sign up by calling Lola at 801-253-1329 or email to Lola Monsen(at)piofutah.com. (Just change the "(at)" to @ in your email) The cost is $10.00 for PIU members and $15.00 for everyone else.

2011 PIU Printer's Ride

On Wednesday, August 31st, the Printing Industries of Utah hosted their second annual Printer's Ride. Some folks from Lorraine Press attended, and here's their report.

Everyone first met up at the old paper mill at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon ready to ride. This is the site of the first paper mill in Utah that produced paper suitable for printing on. 

The second stop was at Intermountain Rigging and Heavyhaul. Here the group was shown equipment used to transport printing presses and other heavy equipment. The hydraulic lift in the photo below can hoist up to 400,000 tons!

Third on the ride was Rocky Mountain Recycling. Here the intrepid motorcyclists were given a tour and shown the large amounts of recyclables Rocky Mountain processes. In the picture below, you can see recycled paper and aluminum (plates and cans). The second picture below shows a carton of compressed Styrofoam. Each one of those blocks contains enough uncompressed Styrofoam to fill a train box car.

And then the fourth stop was at Graphic Ink. These talented people produce some of the inks that we at Lorraine Press put into our presses. Below, you'll see the Graphic Ink representative giving a tour, one of the mixing blades used to mix ink, and a mixer full of soon-to-be magenta ink.

The next set of photos shows some yellow ink being mixed in a mixing vat, and then being milled to further grind the particles in the ink substrate. 

Then the fifth stop was at Media One. This is the place where our local papers are printed. To help you get the scale of this place, here's a model of one of their presses. I don't know if you can tell from this photo, but there are to-scale little men on the black platform in the center of the model. This press takes up a lot of room.

The newspapers come off of this press cut, folded, and ready to go out. Talk about automation! The photo below shows some of their shop floor. And the one below that shows the ingenious system of carrying the finished newspapers across the shop. Pretty neat stuff.

And last, but not least, the riders took sustenance at the Bohemian Brewery and Grill. 

It was an interesting, informative, and fun ride. Everyone is invited to attend next year's Ride, so if you are interested, be sure to keep an eye out for next year's Printers Ride on the PIU events calendar.

Creating Exact Guides in Illustrator

When I design something, I like it to be by the numbers. What I mean by that is when I want a design element to be one inch from the edge of my piece, I want it to be at 1.000" and not at 1.0625" or 0.9375".

A sixteenth of an inch can matter a lot, especially when creating folding pieces or dielines of pieces that will cut out. So placing color breaks, images or lines exactly where I want them on a piece is important to me. (And it will be important to your printer down the line if there are tricky folds in your design piece.) Creating guides along an exact measurement will facilitate neat, workable projects. 

Guides created in InDesign automatically select and have a measurement in the toolbar above the page. From there it is easy to see where exactly your guide is and even easier to type in a number in the measurement box to get your guide precisely where you want it. 

But Illustrator has a default setting that discourages knowing where exactly the guide has landed.

Below, in Illustrator, I dragged a guide from the vertical ruler on the side, over to the 1 inch mark. But is that guide really at 1 inch? 

To be able to tell where (to a ten thousandth of an inch!) your Illustrator guide is, first you need to go to the View Menu, go down to Guides, and then to the Lock Guides. The default for this is ON (a checkmark). While this in and of itself is not inherently evil, it stops me from knowing where exactly my guides are. Highlight "Lock Guides" to turn it off for the moment.

Below is what you want this menu to look like to proceed:

You are also going to need the Transform palette open on your work space. Go to Window and then down to Transform to activate it if it isn't already on your screen. See below.

Now that Lock Guides is off,  and your Transform palette is open, use the selection tool (the black arrow, keyboard shortcut: v) and drag over the guide.

Once selected, the guide will turn a different color. On my computer, the unselected guide is cyan (above), the selected guide is blue (below). Also, the transform palette will go from gray inactive fields (above) to white active fields (below).

Since the previous pictures show the Transform palette at an extremely small size, below is a close up. Once the guide is selected, the Transform palette shows us that the guide is actually at 1.0069 inches. Highlight this number (see below) and type in a 1 and hit enter/return to nudge the guide over to 1.0000 inch.

That's all it takes. Once your guides are in place, you can turn "Lock Guides" back on. That way you can be certain that the guides are exactly where you want them and that nothing will accidentally shift them as you work on your vector art. Thus, you can sleep tonight knowing for certain that your guides in Illustrator are precise and "on the numbers."

Happiness Day at Lorraine Press

Some calendars marked Monday, August 8th, as Happiness Day. So we at Lorraine Press decided to celebrate! Now, the irony of celebrating Happiness Day on the same day that the Dow tanked wasn't lost on us. But as one very optimistic employee said, "Hey, none of us are retiring tomorrow, and plus, everything just went on sale!" So there was a bright side to Monday.

We celebrated our own happiness by having a banana split/ice cream social. Everyone was able to create their own individual momentary happiness with the caloric intake of their choosing.

We also decided to try to increase other people's happiness by holding a canned food drive to donate to the Utah Food Bank.

And lastly, we held a contest for everyone to vote for the "Happiest Lorraine Press Employee." After counting all the votes, there turned out to be two happiest employees. A tie between our cheery Secretary and our upbeat Prepress Supervisor. Congratulations to the both of them! They each won a pair of movie tickets.

We hope that your Monday had moments of happiness, too! If so, share them with us by commenting to this post.

How to Convert CMYK Values to the Closest Pantone Color

Here's a handy tip for finding the closest Pantone color for any color with a CMYK breakdown; well, other than hunching over your color sample with a Pantone color book, flipping through the possibilities. Or perhaps you don't have a physical sample, you only have a color on your monitor. Did you try holding the color book up to the monitor and guessing? Oh, you don't have a color book? Don't fret, once you discover what the CMYK breakdown of your mystery color is, the rest is easy! No color book necessary!

(This way is not the only way, but it's easy and, as an added bonus, free, if you already have Photoshop.)

So, first, launch Photoshop. And you have now completed the longest, most time consuming, step in this process. From here on out, it's quick! You don't even need to have a picture open. 

Move your mouse over to the foreground color swatch at the bottom of the tool panel which is usually along the far right of your screen.

Click on the foreground swatch, and the Color Picker will come up:

Type in your CMYK values in the appropriate C, M, Y, and K boxes in the Color Picker for the color in which you are interested in finding a Pantone match. In this case, this morning, it was a medium blue for which I wanted to find a close Pantone match. See the image below.

Then click on the Color Libraries button, highlighted in the image below.

A Color Libraries palette then comes up. See the image below. My Color Libraries palette was already set to the color book PANTONE Solid Coated, and it automatically selected (with a thin black box around the color) PANTONE 2915 C as the closest match in that color book. Voila, there's my answer. 

It's not perfect, but it's as close as it can get for that CMYK breakdown. (Note the color difference between the top and bottom swatches in the color sample box to see how far different the two colors are.) If your color book wasn't already set to  PANTONE solid coated, continue reading!

To select a different color book, or to set your menu to PANTONE solid coated, go to the drop down menu at the top of the Color Libraries box.

Click to select whatever color collection you are interested in having a closest match to your CMYK color. As you can see in the image below, there are myriad choices!

And that is it. Now you have the power to convert CMYK values to their closest matching Pantone colors quickly and easily, wowing your co-workers and clients!