Graphic Design Theory - Print Design

1. Introduction: Do you love the smell of pages of books and touch the cover of magazines to feel the texture of varnishes and other special embellishments? Do you like to work on designs that end up as tactile physical products? If that's the case, you are going to love this course. Print design is a subset of the broader field of graphic design, focusing on producing designs printed onto tangible surfaces and products? In this course, we will be covering everything you need to know about printing techniques and processes, color management, binding methods, paper types and sizes, resolution, and so much more. We will also dive deep into all the specialized areas within this field, like logo design, packaging design, editorial design, environmental design, posters, brochures, business cards, stationery, and books. We will analyze hundreds of print design projects to give you a solid understanding of the important rules and terms you need to be familiar with as a print designer. Together with the exciting class project that I hope you will complete at the end of the course, you also have the analysis worksheet and the term glossary to help you practice everything that you've learned. I hope you are just as excited as I am to get started and dive into the sea of knowledge and beautiful graphic design examples. 2. Basic terms: Print design is a subset of the broader field of graphic design and the easiest way to explain how it differs from other types of graphic design areas is that in general or in most cases we print design, you would get a tangible product at the end of a project, whether it's a book, business card, or even a cap with a print on it. Print design projects vary in size and complexity. You might be designing a tiny sticker, but you can also work on the full branding of an airline and all the designs that will eventually end up on actual airplanes. Now of course, there are a lot of overlap between digital or web design and graphic design because you might be working on projects for clients where you are required to do a bit of both. But whether you are planning to be specialized in print design or whether this is just something that you also want to have in your skill set. There are a lot of aspects and important things to know how you can effectively prepare your work for print. And that is exactly what we will be covering in this topic. So let's start with the most essential one. What does four-color printed mean? Well, it means using cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks. And black is referred to as the key color that we are using, k in the abbreviation. And CMYK is also referred to as a color mode, similarly to the RGB or red, green, blue that most screen and devices use. And color management is a topic that we will be going into in much more detail later on. But that essentially means is the process in which you can guarantee that the colors that you are seeing on your screen, we'll end up looking as close as possible in the final printed product. As a print designer, it is crucial to be aware of the limitations of this color mode and ways that you can achieve richer colors whenever it's necessary. Again, this is something that we will go into much more detail later on. But there is one other term that's worth remembering, and it is color separation, which is the process of turning a full color digital photograph or image and separating it into the four color components that we already talked about. So in this case, we can see the actual image here at the bottom. And once this color separation happens, it will allow the final print to be built up from these components. Again, we will be discussing all the different types of printing processes in more detail. But in this particular case, we are looking at an offset printer in detail view where we can see the roster or the little dots of these four different colors which are using for different plates printed on top of each other on paper to make it look similar to the original color image that we've seen on our screen. There is also another term that printers would often refer to, and it's part of the PRE press process. It's RIP or RIP, which stands for raster image processor. And it is essentially the process where all the digital images, including Vector Graphics, converted into the final format that the actual printing machines will be able to work with. And in case you are wondering, the roster in RIP is coming from the rasterization process where all the vector details, including type, turned into rasters, which are essentially these little dots that we will see in the final print. The quality of the print has a lot to do with the original resolution and the resolution used during the printing process. But this is again something that we have to discuss in more detail in the next video. Since we already established that in print design, we are working towards getting a tangible product in the end. Similarly to how important it is to get the colors right, it is also important to get a professional looking print. And one of the obvious signs of a low quality or cheap print project is when you don't even have bleed on a brochure or a poster. What does a correct bleed used in a graphic design project mean? Essentially what it means is that the product in the end won't have any visible white edges, is the printed image completely covers the piece of paper. And the way you can achieve this is by using a slightly larger piece of paper or a sheet and print a slightly larger format that what you want to end up as the final product. And then once the print is ready, you are trimming or cutting off that excess part to achieve the actual size that was needed. And the reason why it is called the bleed is because in this case, the image is a bleeding off the edge of the paper. So here's another quick example where we have a business card already set up with the bleed. We can see that the logo doesn't need any bleed. While this shape at the bottom to assure that is going to be printed all the way to the edges is already increased in size slightly. And once those additional details are trimmed, we will get the final trimmed business card, which we're guaranteed to have no white gaps around here. And they will make sure that the red color is bleeding off the edges of the paper. I'm sorry if things starts to sound a little bit more surgical having a red bleed and cutting in one sentence to better understand how to set up bleed in your documents and how it relates to all the other areas. Here's a simple explanation where we can see that the final print size, which we also refer to as trim size, is usually indicated with a black outline. So that is going to be the edge of the final product after the bleed that gets cut off. And immediately around the train we have the bleed usually represented with this red rectangle. And the most common signs that we would use for this area is three millimeters on all edges are 1 eighth of an inch. However, in some parts of the world, I think in Australia, it would normally be five millimeters, but the size of the bleed is always best to check with your printer. And it is going to be either you or the printer who is going to include the crop marks which will indicate where the bleed edge is going to be trimmed. It's important that these crop marks should never overlap the actual trim area otherwise then they will end up showing in the final print these perfectly fine for them to overlap the bleed edge because that is just an access print. We don't actually need it in the end. And they normally also overlap another area which is just outside of their bleed, which is called slug. And this can be either on one edge or on all the edges, again, outside the bleed. And usually this is indicated with the blue line. This is an area where you can add additional printing information including registration marks, color consistency charts, and additional instructions for the printer when necessary. And last but not least, there's another area where it's talking about them. That is the margins, which is represented usually with purple line inside of your dream. And that is of course, a non-printing details. So it is an invisible guide that helps you to align the content and assure a minimum distance from the edge of the page on all sides. And sometimes the margins can be different on each of the sides. And they are mainly important when it comes to text. So you wouldn't want to end up having texts too close to the edges of the page. You can think of both margins and bleed as a safety precaution in order to compensate for the occasional inaccuracy is that you will get in a final print. So it can easily happen that the trim is slightly shifted, but as long as there was bleed and also a generous amount of margin, you can be certain that none of the text will be chopped off. And you will also have no white borders around the edges. 3. Basic terms in action: Now jumping into InDesign, I just wanted to show you these couple of terms in action. And also we will look at a couple of other definitions here. So first of all, when I zoom closer to one of the corner points, we can see that the black edge, which as you remember is the edge and then the red edge is the bleed. If I press W on my keyboard that can quickly preview how the final product is going to look like without that access bleed. And we can also see the margins. So the purple lines, which is used to align the text, especially visible when we have justifying text or right aligned text. Now in terms of the importance of the bleed, we can see a better example with an actual image. As you can see, this image is not aligned to the edge but moved slightly beyond it. And that's what guarantees that in the final print, we will have the colors bleeding of the edge from this image. And most of the time, it won't be an issue and you can easily sacrifice some details from the edges of an image. You can see, for instance, here at the bottom in this layout, I actually have even more detail for the image than three millimeters. So it extends even beyond the bleed edge. But that doesn't really make any difference. However, if you want in InDesign, you can obviously always align the image frame to fit perfectly to the bleed edge. But bleed is not only used for images or background colors, it can also be used for simple design elements, like this line here at the bottom, which is used in combination with the page number. So once again, we can see the final print will look like this, but to make sure that this white line shows up properly and print it again has to be also included in the bleed section. In case you are wondering in InDesign, whenever you start a new document, you will always be able to set up all of the settings, including the margins, the bleed, and slug details here on the right side. And as long as you have this preview option on here at the bottom, you will also be able to see these updating live. So when I start increasing the bleed, for instance, we can immediately see showing up here in the background. And in case you already started the document and you forgot to set up the bleed. You can always go to the File menu. And then from document setup, you will be able to find the same options here. Now there's a couple of quick and simple terms I wanted to show you here as well. You may have seen the abbreviation NFP or in some print design projects. That means for position only, which essentially means that it is only a placeholder image. It might not end up in the final print product and in case of texts, whenever the actual copy is not available yet, but the designer has to put together a layout. We usually refer to the placeholder copy as Lorem Ipsum, which is a made-up language. It's similar to Latin, but it doesn't actually mean anything. And that's exactly what you can see here in this design as well. And it's something that you can find in the type menu in InDesign, fill with placeholder text will always be able to generate text that will fill in a selected frame. The good thing about working with placeholder images and texts is that you can refine the styling and formatting. And when it comes to receiving the final content, you will just have to simply swap things around, but the formatting and settings will be able to stay the same. Greek king is another term that you might come across in print design. And especially in InDesign, it's a setting that you can adjust. Essentially what it means is that when you zoom out this particular distance, if the texts gets too small to display properly, it turns into these simplified blocks that we can see in all of these examples here. And notice how they will go back into showing the actual copy. As soon as I zoom closer or if I zoom further out, we will see more of the creaking showing up. And this is something that you can customize in the preferences. You will find some Greek king options under interface around the hand tool settings. So depending on the performance of your machine, you might need to use some Greek king, even when you are just moving around or navigating within the document using the hand tool. But more importantly, under Display performance, you will find the Greek type below option. Normally, I set this up to around four or five points. But just to demonstrate how it works, I increase it here to ten points. So just to show you if I set it down to five points. Now when I go back and zoom out, it's not going to appear unless I zoom in really far out. In InDesign, this is actually happens quite often that you would have to look at your document from a distance when you have several pages in the magazine and brochure or catalog, you might want to look at multiple pages at once. There's another term that you may come across and it's worth remembering. So just by looking at this example, you can see this one is a three up print, which essentially means that there will be three versions of the same design printed on a single piece of paper or a sheet. This technique is used mainly to save cost and time during the printing process. So now you will know what the printer means when they refer to a two up, three, or four up template that they are planning to use. And last but not least, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the print on demand model, which is becoming very popular these days, since it is quite different from the techniques that we will be going through in the rest of the videos. So essentially what print on demand, or p or d means is that the consumer places an order and the printed product is only getting manufactured upon their request. And drop shipping is something that print on demand is usually combined with. Which means that the supplier is not only doing the manufacturing and printing, but also the delivery or shipping of the final product to the customer. Essentially, what this means for a print designer is that you can have your products online, whether it's your own store or a print on-demand site. And you can make money without worrying about the aspects of manufacturing and shipping. A couple of popular POD sites where you can sell your own work as well, includes thoughtful, red bubble, and society six, we will go through these sites in more detail and also how you can run a print on-demand business. Once we get to the particular areas within print design, like a stationery design. Now hopefully this quick introduction to the world of print design wasn't too overwhelming. Don't worry, everything will start to make more sense. The more we talk about the various aspects of print design in the rest of this topic. And even though we will be covering quite a lot of additional terms in case you ever come across a printing term that we haven't covered in this course? Most likely you will be able to find it on this site called print V key. However, I don't recommend checking it out right now because you will be just frightened by seeing how many different terms there are. Stick with me and I will make sure that you are eased into learning about print design. 4. Resolution: Every print designer has to be familiar with image resolution because this is one of the most important limiting factors when it comes to deciding the size and the quality of a print. And essentially what it means is that how much detail an image can hold. When we refer to higher resolution images, it means that there is more detail in them compared to low resolution images. It's important to differentiate already in the beginning that when it comes to digital images, we divide them into two main categories. Pixel or raster images and photographs would also fall in this category. And vector graphics, which most of the time would be illustration or type. Now generally in graphic design projects, you will be using a combination of pixel images and vector graphics. But the weakest link in terms of resolution and print quality will always be pixel roster, or sometimes also referred to as bitmap images, to better understand the difference between pixels and rosters. Here is a very close-up look of a photograph showing an eye and magnifying a raster image. This much will reveal the actual building blocks, the pixels or rosters, which looking this closely makes it look like it's a mosaic was zooming way back. We will start to see this as a continuous immediately without any pixelation. The good thing about pixels, especially when you have a lot of them, is that you can capture a really complex visual information. And it also allows a lot of subtlety that you might not be able to recreate with vectors. The biggest advantage of vectors is that the resolution independent, meaning that they can be any size you want them to be without losing any quality. And to demonstrate this to you. Here we are in Illustrator with a simple illustration, and no matter how much I zoom into it, we will never see pixelation. So these curves that are used as the building blocks in a vector graphic compared to a pixel image are all made up small anchor points. So everything is mathematically described instead of relying on that roster that we've seen earlier, or the columns and rows of pixels. And if I move one of these anchor points around, all that has to be registered or recorded is the actual new location of this anchor point. And that's simply just these two coordinates that we can see here. And the computer will very easily be able to connect two anchor points with a linear straight line. But it can also connect anchor points like these two with a curve. And to be able to describe the curve itself, all that is necessary is this handle that I am dragging around and it's relative distance from the original anchor point. This method of visualizing vector graphics and shapes in general is what we refer to as Bezier curves. It's named after the mathematician who invented this method. Another important advantage of vector graphics, apart from them being resolution independent, is that the file size is also smaller compared to raster images. But what's clearly a downside with them is that it's very hard to make things look photorealistic. And that is why we are still relying on both pixels and vectors in our work. So as you can see, they both have their strengths and weaknesses and their use in graphic design project. Now there's a couple of ways that you can measure resolution. And you may have heard of some of these units like DPI, as we can see it in this example, 300 DPI would be like a standard. We will be considering a high resolution image or a high-resolution print. And DPI stands for dots per inch, which refers to the number of dots of ink on the printed image. But when it comes to the design phase, so even before we end up creating something that's ready for print, we will normally measure roster of pixel images in PPI or pixels per inch. And what's great about this comparison is how it shows that resolution on its own doesn't really matter. What matters is the amount of pixels in combination with resolution. So when you have a lot of pixel information recorded in your digital image, you will be able to print and keep high resolution image even in a large format like a 0, we can see the size of this in millimeters here. So this is a fairly large size poster compared to that when you have less pixels to work with, you can still have a high-quality print, but you will only be able to use a much smaller print size. Pixel per inch. Again, just simply means how much of those pixels of the image will be printed on an inch distance. And the higher the resolution, the more compressed those pixels will get on the printed image, which will result in a higher quality print. 5. Image size feature: The best way to understand the relationship between the amount of pixels, the resolution, and the print size is to use the Image Size feature within Photoshop. So in this case, we can see that this is the original amount of pixels that we are working with. So around 3 thousand pixels width and 4 thousand pixels height, which is roughly around 12 million pixels or megapixels. And I don't want to confuse you, but in case you want to be specific. And megapixel is actually slightly more than a million pixels. It is actually two on the power of 20 pixels, which is 1,048,576 pixels. But to keep things simple, one megapixel you can think of as 1 million pixels. I took this photo with an iPhone, which has 12 megapixels roughly. And that's why we get this image size. But notice how the pixel dimensions automatically pair with the resolution, which is by default set to 300 PPI or pixels per inch. But what if I change? And to be able to see the print size, all I have to do is to switch the pixels to either inches or one of these other measurement units. But let's just go with inches first. So we can see that it can be printed in the high resolution standard, 300 ppi with the size of roughly ten by 13 inches. And that in case you are wondering, is between an A4 and then A3 paper size. So even though it's a twelv megapixel image, it still won't give us a huge size when it comes to printing it with 300 ppi. But what's also very important to understand, and this is actually very rarely discussed, is that the quality requirements of a print also depends on the viewing distance. So strictly speaking, 300 PPI or DPI is something that you require when you are producing a print that is going to be held by people like brochures, magazines, books, business cards, so on and so forth. But compared to that, a large banner where people will be just walking by or maybe even seeing it from much further away when they are displayed on top of a building or by the side of a motorway, the required printing resolution will be much, much lower than 300 ppi. And here is a great comparison where we can see the viewing distance on the left and the required resolution for it on the right. And you can see that even when a print is displayed one meter away from the viewer, it already can drop down to a 180 PPI, which is almost half of the original requirement. But as you are getting further away from the viewer, like five meter away, that already results in the requirement going down all the way to 35 PPI, which is around ten times lower than what we started with. Now I don't think you would ever have to design something that will be displayed 200 meters away from people apart from if you are doing exhibition design and it's a huge exhibition hall. But in those cases, the resolution could even be all the way down to one PPI. Now of course, that is a fairly extreme scenario, but don't forget that the minimum required resolution always depends on the viewing distance in case you ever need it. There is also a formula to calculate the minimum resolution based on the viewing distance. But to make sure that the relationship between print size and resolution makes sense. Coming back to our previous example in Photoshop, when I turn off re-sampling, meaning that we are not planning to change the size of the image. So we're not introducing new pixels at all. If I now start lowering the resolution at the same time, as you can see, the print size is increasing. So what this means is that we're just distributing the original pixel information and it will be printed less densely on the paper. And for instance, if I go down to a 150 ppi resolution, that will give us exactly twice the size of a print compared to when we were about to print this with 300 ppi. And of course, similarly, if we were to go above 300 PPI, which most of the time wouldn't be necessary. But just for the sake of argument, if I go higher and we checked again, the size either in centimeters or inches, of course, is going to keep dropping. Because once again, all we're doing is condensing all that original pixel dimensions into a smaller space. Now besides PPI and DPI, you may have also heard of SPI and LPI. Out of each, SPI mainly refers to scanners and how high resolution they can scan images. And it stands for the samples taken in one linear inch by LPI or lines per inch is used mainly in commercial printing, which described the distance between the printed lines of dots. To keep things simple, as a graphic designer, you mainly have to worry about PPI or pixels per inch because that's something that you will be working with in most of the design applications. 6. Aliasing: Now another term which you most likely will come across is aliasing, which is most noticeable on type. When the resolution is too low, we will start to see these hard edges on the curve, details on type, which is also referred to as stair-stepping. And the method of anti-aliasing is what can help us to improve this by averaging the colors on the edges and smoothing them out. Here is another close-up look which shows this stair-stepping perfectly even looks like a stair in this case. And the result of anti-aliasing and how it can smooth it out even at this close-up view. When you are working with type in Photoshop, for instance, you will see that anti-aliasing is automatically applied, but of course it's something that you can take off if I select this text here and change the type of anti-aliasing from the default sharp to none. We can see the result immediately. And even from a distance, this will be noticeable. But if I zoom a little bit closer, we can probably see it even better. So this is without and vid anti-aliasing without and with. You probably noticed that there is actually no aliasing going on, on the horizontal lines. And in some cases, it would also not show on the vertical lines. And that is because these details can perfectly align themselves to the pixel grid. So for them, there is no need for anti-aliasing. And I can just show you this if I zoom closer, eventually, we will start to see the pixel grid and we can tell that this sharp horizontal edge doesn't need any smoothing. It already looks perfect the way it is. And last but not least, I just want to mention that there is a very interesting new area in digital imaging where artificial intelligence is used or utilized to increase the resolution of raster images. And Photoshop has its own neural filter called super zoom, which is powered by the Adobe Sensei artificial intelligence. And with this, you can increase the size of an image, I think, up to nine times as large as it is originally, while at the same time you can enhance image details, remove JPEG artifacts, introduced noise reduction and sharpening, and even enhance specifically phase details. And to give you an example, even a four times increase in size would mean this much difference between the original image and the one that went through the neural filter. And to see the details, I'm just going to zoom a little bit closer. So around 100% view or actual pixel size view, which showed the original image quality. And if we jump to the resized version with the same zoom ratio, this is what we will see. This technology essentially is guessing the information that is missing in the original and tries to make up new pixels. Out of all the AI tools used for resizing images. The most effective one, in my opinion, is let's enhance for which the link you can find on the board. Here you can see a comparison of the original image on the left, the result of neural filter we've seen in Photoshop in the middle. And the result of the, let's enhance AI. On the right, you can see how much better the clarity is on that version and how much details were recovered or added to areas like the eyes and the lips. I predict that these type of technologies in a couple of years, we'll make roster images also feel resolution independent like vector graphics. But until then, keep checking the resolution of every image that you're using in your graphic design projects. 7. Offset printing: Out of all the available printing methods, the two that you should definitely be familiar with as a graphic designer are offset printing and digital printing. Now also printing is the more traditional one and is still being used widely, especially in commercial printing. So let's spend a bit of time understanding how it works. And I will try my best not to go into detail because you chose this course to become a graphic designer and print technician. Having said that, the things that we will be covering here will be extremely useful for you to understand and appreciate what happens in the end after you send your files to the printers. Before we talk about offset printing and other thing worth mentioning is that normally we would divide the whole printing process into three separate and distinct stages. First, it starts with pre press, which you can see here on the left side of this illustration. So anything that happens before the actual process is considered pre press, which includes the actual graphic design process itself, then proofing, trapping, color separation, the preparation of image carriers or plates, and also the planning. The second stage of the printing process is the press itself, which we will be covering in more detail in this video. And the third stage would be referred to as post press, which is all the additional tasks that we can see here in the rest of the illustration, mainly including bindery and other finishing operations. We will be covering these later on, but for now, let's just concentrate on the press stage. And in this illustration we can actually see an offset printer, which most commonly would consist of four of these towers or otherwise called press units. And each of these printing a particular color, normally the lay down or color sequence starts with black, followed by cyan, magenta, and yellow. However, this order can be changed according to the requirements. But in case of a print job where you need to print on both sides of the paper, the amount of press units might actually be double. So you would have four units to begin with and print on one side of the paper, then that would be a machine that flips the paper around. And then the rest of the other four units would be printing on the other side of the sheet. Now this illustration shows really well that each of these print units or towers would rely also on the ink reservoirs. This is similar to an inkjet printer that you have at home and which has those little annoying cartilages that constantly run out of ink. But of course, in case of an offset press, these ink pools are bigger as you can imagine. But probably what are most important for an offset press to work are the plates or image carriers, which are usually made of rubber, plastic or aluminum. And these are usually manufactured in PRE press. And the color separation process we discussed earlier is also directly connected to the computer to play it method or CTP, which is when each of the color components of CMYK are physically turned into these plates that are used in the offset press. Once the plates are ready and they are placed inside the press units. The next thing to understand is how they are actually used. There is always going to be a cylinder called the plate cylinder, which will have the plate wrapped around it. And this is going to receive voter and ink, which is then transferred onto the offset or blanket cylinder, named after the rubber blanket that is covered in. And from here, the ink that was traveling down, we'll finally reaches the paper that is going through the whole press. These are the cylinder here at the bottom called the impression cylinder. It's just there to push the paper against the offset cylinder. By the name offset printing is named after this offset cylinder and innovate. This is probably one of the most crucial components of our press unit because this is where the actual magic happens. This is where the ink hits the paper. Now, you may have heard another term, lithography, which also refers to offset printing. And essentially what it means is that these metal plates are used to transfer an image onto paper. But offset is also a type of plan or graphic printing method, which means that the printing and non-printing areas are on the same level. And the way that is achieved is with this blanket cylinder where the rubber will have printing and non-printing areas. Essentially, this method utilizes the property that water will not mix with oil. The printing areas where the ink shows up on the cylinder are all l philic or ink accepting and the non-printing areas are Inc repelling or allow phobic. And I think this is the perfect time to stop going any deeper. Because as you can see, it can quickly get to scientific and complicated. But there is one more important thing we have to discuss about offset printing, and that is the result of the ink dots that we get on the paper. This is what you will see if you take a close look at something that came off an offset press. And just like when we are looking at a pixel image close-up in Photoshop and starting to see the pixel grid in print, we will start to see the halftone grids. In case of the four-color print process, you would have four of these grids laid on top of each other. Black, cyan, magenta and yellow. Again, it is a little bit technical and something that the printers will have to worry about. But to avoid an unpleasant result in print, these grids are also usually rotate it so they are not aligned in the same way. And I guess you can imagine that in case they were perfectly aligned, all of the dots would fall exactly on top of each other. So that's something that you would want to avoid in order to make the colors feel like they are blending together when you are looking at the image from a distance. But there is an art to choosing the right rotation in order to avoid also something called malaria effect. And you will know that you've got the right rotation of these halftone grids. When you start to see these rosettes or Rosetta pattern in your final print, essentially, the dots will be forming these small circles and creating this special pattern. So Maria effect is what we are avoiding and Rosa pattern is what we are aiming for. I guess it's pretty obvious, but even type will have to be made of dots in offset printing. So when you take a close look at it, you will see those dots that it's made up of. And another obvious thing is that white doesn't have to be printed as just simply the paper left without any ink. And in case of colored images where there is more intensity of saturation and tones, we will get more of the inks from all the four plates by the brighter areas in the print will have less concentration of dots, the density of the ink dots is also referred to as coverage. If you're intrigued to find out more about offset printing, feel free to check out the melanoma board where you will find some additional terms and information. And also I recommend to watch the videos that are included, which will show the full process in more detail. 8. Digital printing: Besides also printing, the other most commonly used technique is digital printing, which is getting increasingly popular due to advancements in technology, 40 per cent of the print jobs were using offset printing and roughly around 20% was using digital printing. Even though currently also printing is still doing twice as much of the fringe jobs. Digital printing is on the rise. It's popularity is increasing each year and slowly but surely it is taking over the industry from the other analog printing techniques like offset printing. And most certainly it will never completely replace offset printing and other print methods. As a graphic designer, it's already very important to know which type of printing is better suited for a project that you are working on. So in this video, besides talking about digital printing, we will mainly concentrate on the pros and cons comparing it to offset printing. Now the most important difference is that digital printing doesn't require plates. So it is a type of non-impact printing method compared to the conventional or indirect printing methods like offset, where we have those image carriers or plates, the two main types or categories of digital printing machines, or the inkjet printers and the toner based printers, out of which the most common ones are the laser printers. By looking at a simplified diagram of an inkjet printer, you can see how much simpler it is compared to offset printing. So here the ink is pretty much going straight onto the paper instead of going through several revolutions on several cylinders when choosing between digital and offset printing, it usually comes down to which one is more cost effective. And this simplified graph shows it really well that in case you have smaller quantities, so anywhere below 500 to a thousand copies. In these cases, digital print will always be cheaper. While if you are starting to print in higher volumes than offset printing is going to be the more viable option. One of the main reasons why digital printing can be better for low volume printing, because it requires hardly any preparation, especially when it's compared to offset printing. The actual speed of printing usually is faster on an offset printer. But what makes turnaround faster with the digital print, especially for lower volume printing, is that it hardly requires any drying time. It is very easy to do pre runs, test runs, and proofs. Last but not least, another important advantage is that it's more environmental friendly because the process of digital printing requires less chemicals and it produces less waste as well. Since we are talking about the speed of printing, even though offset printers are still faster in general, there are some amazing digital printing machines like this in polar three Swiss Q, which can reach a maximum productivity level of a 180 square meter sprint in an hour. Variable data printing is another big advantage of digital printing, which means that you can easily print personalized items like these. Invitation cards by the names are all different in each of the pieces. A good example of variable data printing was the successful Share a Coke campaign by Coca-Cola, which have a huge variety of names on the labels. And in generating both increase in sales and consumer interaction with the brand and the product. But besides the several advantages of digital printing, there are also a couple of the gray areas, like you won't have the same amount of variety of stocks or paper types or so most of the time, pen tone colors won't be supported. And the finishing options which we will be covering later on in this course are also limited compared to offset printing. But don't worry, as a graphic designer, it is very rarely your task to decide which option is better for a print project. It is usually the task of a print estimator who will be able to calculate the cost for you and let you know whether you should go digital or offset. 9. Screen printing: Silkscreen printing, or most of the time referred to as screen printing, is another very popular printing method, most commonly used to print onto apparel products like t-shirts, jumpers, tote bags. But it is also often used in stationery products like on a gift cards and also for limited edition posters. The uniqueness of screen printing is that it relies on a stencil that is on the screen itself. And the screen is usually stretched onto a frame. And the way that the ink can pass through that stencil onto the printed image by squeezing it using a tool called squeegee. Now there are several stems link techniques, but probably the most commonly used one and the most professional one is the photo emulsion, or light-sensitive emulsion. And although it might sound a little bit complicated, but it actually only requires a couple of steps. So first, the design itself will need to be printed on this transparent acetate film. And this is actually not that complicated. Most desktop printers will be able to do this. But what you have to keep in mind is that you have to have a separate film for each of the colors. Similarly, how we needed separate plates in offset printing. This is exactly the case with these estate films. And each of these firms then have to be transferred onto the meshes. Which again means that for a four-color print, for instance, you will need for a separate meshes, and it is easy to see that the paint wants, the squeegee is used, will be able to pass through these brighter areas. So for instance, this mesh is used for the color of the hair, while this one is used for the skin tones. And once all the four colors and the form meshes were used, this is how the final print looks like. Here is another example of a two-color print. In this case, we have a red and blue, again using two separate meshes. And here is the result of these two colors printed on top of each other. An important factor that you have to decide that the very beginning of a screen printing project is the fineness of the mesh itself, which mainly depends on the complexity of the design and the type of material you are printing on. Here is a beautiful for color screen print that the fifth color is given by the color of the paper itself. By looking at this print by d, k, and g studios close up, we can appreciate some of the advantages of screen printing. One is that it can produce really vivid and rich colors, even on darker fabrics. And by having the colors layered on top of each other, you get this amazing tactile feel at the end. And important thing to keep in mind with screen printing is that since the paint is layered on top of each other as we already established, instead of being mixed from four inks like CMYK, subtle transitions in colors like gradients in this case, have to be created with the use of halftone patterns. So as a simple example, if you have a black and white gradient in Photoshop, what you can do is to go to the mode from the Image menu and first choose a gray scale, then go back again into the mode and choose bitmap, which will have to flatten the layers once you click Okay, this is where you will be able to choose the method which most of the time you would want to keep on halftones screen. And the resolution can be anything that you require, but I'm just going to keep it as it is. And then here, again, depending on what you want to achieve, you can find you in the settings. But in general, if you use 50 lines per inch for the frequency, 45 degrees for the angle, and ellipse for the shape, you will get a quiet, nice result. And as you can see when we zoom closer, it is a bitmap image, meaning it's made up of two colors, black and white. So there are no shades of gray. No anti-aliasing is just simply these two colors and innovate this already starting to look like a mesh. But of course to be able to get these beautiful prints, it requires a high level of skill, both setting up the designs on the computer, but also to make sure that all the colors are perfectly aligned in the final print. So compared to other printing methods, screen printing is definitely a slow and meticulous process, and it can be expensive for smaller print runs, a professional and specialized screen printing studio would use devices like this one, which has the six meshes for the six colors already set up on this rotary system. So these meshes can rotate around and the sheets of paper or the products that the print will end up on can be placed on these four stations. And even though screen printing can be considered more of a niche compared to offset and digital printing. As a graphic designer, it is still important to be aware of it, especially when you are preparing designs to be printed on fabric. 10. 3D printing: Out of all the printing methods, 3D printing sounds probably the most futuristic, and it is the one that you least likely will be involved in as a graphic designer. However, since it is becoming more and more widely used, I thought it's worse, still mentioning it in this course. So a 3D printer works very similarly to an inkjet printer, but in this case, instead of having the ink staying two-dimensional, so staying flat on the surface of the paper, the plastic material that is used instead of ink is built up layer by layer, resulting in a three-dimensional object in the end. So the nozzle has to move not only in the x and y directions or axes, but also in the z axes. So it's usually start printing at the bottom, which is the base of the object, and then it makes its way upwards. Here's a good example showing the stages of the printing process, starting with these pillars, which is forming the foundation of the print. And then we can see how it is getting built up layer by layer. Here's another cool snapshot of a 3D printing process, which also shows that nowadays you can also do multicolored 3D prints with finding gradients. So it is getting closer to the traditional four-color printing methods. 3d printed objects are widely used nowadays in health care. And it's an interesting fact that it was in 1999 when the first 3D printed Oregon was used for a transplant surgery. You can find lots of examples of 3D printed furniture and sculptures, of course. But there are also examples of 3D printed houses. Check out the link for this project called Taq law on the load board. If you would like to find out more about this. 11. Spot colors: We already discussed that in most digital and offset printing scenarios, we will be mainly relying on CMYK colors and the combination of these would result in the four-color print. However, to guarantee a very specific color to show up in your print and to make sure that it's going to be consistent wherever and whenever is going to be printed. Instead of relying on the mixing of the CMYK colors, you should be using spot colors instead. These are pre-mixed colors that you will have to specifically choose for your design. And one of the most common systems use worldwide is the Pantone matching system, or PMS. It's a huge library of colors that can be accessed and used in any print job. But it's important to keep in mind that adding spot colors will most likely increase the cost of the print run. It is usually a graphic designer's job to match the colors on the screen and select which swatch they are closest to you from these Pantone books. But of course, you can also work the other way around. The client might have already chosen or been using a specific spot color. So that means when you're working on your design, you just have to make sure that you select that swatch. So here's a quick example. Let's say I need to use a particular spot color for this frame around this little fox. All I have to do is to go to the swatches panel and under the color books, I will be able to find all the Pen tool options. These are all the different types of books. Let's say we need the solid coated category for which I have the book in my hand. And I'm just going to type in the code for one of these swatches. So it's three to 52, which is this beautiful turquoise color. I can just select it. It's already added into my swatches panel and we can see how it looks in the illustration. It's worth mentioning that it is easy to spot a Pantone color in your swatches panel because there is going to be a little dot on the thumbnail. By double-clicking on a Pantone color swatch, you will see that the color mode is actually book color, relying on the LAB values. And it is a completely different color model compared to CMYK or RGB. But in case you want to switch to either of these, you can check what's the closest to the original spot color. But remember, mixing colors will never going to result in the same richness and accuracy that a spot color can achieve if you are not convinced. Here are a few examples, comparisons of a Pantone color printed on the left and the same color attempted to be printed with the four colors CMYK and the close-up look of colored text using process color compared to spot color. Again, we can see the huge difference in clarity. And although it is a little bit exaggerated, but still it shows well the difference between printing with two Pantone colors compared to using the CMYK colors on the left. There are also special categories of pantone colors, like the metallic coated or pedestals and neons, which are all considered premium spot colors. And these can be used for special effect or to make the print more unique or luxurious. And we will be covering all of these in more detail together with other special printing techniques in the next couple of videos. 12. Metallic materials: We already established that there are three main stages of the printing process. And we mainly talk about the actual press stage when the printing is happening. But for most printed products that far from being the end of the story. Because what happens in Postgres is most of the time crucial to make the product work or to make it stand out. The two main categories of tasks that are carried out in the post-purchase stage at a binary, the addition of embellishments, binary mainly refers to the bookbinding, but it also includes the folding, which refers to the folding of a large printed sheet into a smaller book club or brochure. And although most of the time binary is the last step in the whole printing process, it is important to planet precisely already at the very beginning because you will need to know those specifications and you will need to be able to work with your printer to make sure that you get the result you're after. Now here you can see an example of the two most commonly used binding methods, the perfect bound and saddle stitching. But this is a much larger topics so we will go into more detail later on. But for now, I would like to mainly focus on the types of embellishments in the next couple of videos, starting with metallic inks and boards. But as you can see, we will be also covering for stamping spot varnish coatings, UV and film laminations, and also my favorite and boasting and the busing. Let's start with the metallic inks and boards. Why would you want to use this in your graphic design projects? You may have heard this term before. Make it shiny. It's something that clients love to say and there is no better way to make a printed product shiny than to use metallic inks or metallic material that you are printing on, which we usually refer to as metallic boards. So remember we talked about spot colors and the Pantone matching system. And for metallic inks they have two separate books. So there's a lot of variety and options that you can choose from. And the way these things work is that they are formulated with tiny metallic flakes inside the ink itself. And because they are lighter in weight compared to the ink, when they reach the printed surface, they are actually going to rise to the surface, making the ink look really shiny. So even though when you use metallic inks, it almost looks like you are printing with gold. Of course, there's only a small portion of metallic material inside the camp. And to keep these inks affordable, aluminum flakes are used to create the effect of silver and bronze flakes are used to create the effect of gold. Here is another close-up look that shows silver, gold, and Rose called inks in particular. And besides the shininess, we're also makes this feel more luxurious is that they also feel more tactile. Again, it's thanks to those little flakes that are inside the ink which produces this fine texture. Now it's important to mention that metallic inks are best used with coated paper because in case it's used on uncoated stock or rough surfaces, those tiny metallic flakes won't be able to rise to the surface of the ink as much because they will be stuck in the material that they are printed on. So you just end up losing most of the metallic effect when you talk to printers, there's a term that they like to use when we work with metallic inks. It's called leafing. That actually refers to is how these little metallic flakes would group together or hold onto each other and rise to the surface of the ink. Here is a beautiful example of a business card, which looks extremely luxurious because it is printed on a gold metallic plate using gold ink for the type and the decorations. And it's also combined with the busing, which is the pressing into the surface that we will be covering later on. Printing on metallic boards, of course, is going to be always costly. But without a doubt, the final product will feel always a luxurious and it will stand out. Imagine being handed a business card that feels like it's made of gold and it actually is heavy because of the metallic board that it's printed on. So anytime your client desires to really showcase or highlight exclusivity, premium quality, and high value in general, both metallic inks and boards or the combination of these two can give you the winning formula. Just make sure to check first whether your client will be able to afford and pay for the print run. And last but not least, here is a crazy example which probably maxes out the amount of gold that you can use in a print product. So first of all, we have pan tone gold ink used for the details on the main logo. Then the whole casing itself is made of gold metallic boards. And finally, gold foil stamping combined with ambushing is used on all of these decorations and also on the type. And the reason why they went all out and included every type of gold possible in print because it was a limited edition range for this risky. Now since we mentioned and seen an example of foil stamping here, we are going to discuss that in more detail in the next video. 13. Foil stamping: Foil stamping, or also known as hot foil stamping, can create a really intense effect for your final print. And once again, similar to metallic materials, it will also help to make it stand out. The name hot foil stamping actually perfectly explains how the whole procedure works. So first of all, you have a stamp that is pressing the foil onto the paper or the media that you're working with. And to make sure that the full use is going to stick onto your material and that it is also cut out in the right shape and it goes into the right details. We also have a heated dye attached to the stamp. There are four main categories or types of foils that you can use. Metallic foils are very popular and we can see a couple of examples of these use here on the right. And similarly to metallic inks, you will have lots of options to choose from, like gold, silver, copper, and bronze, another widely used category or the holographic foils. Again, you have lots of different options and looks that you can choose from. And the easiest way to describe the effect is that they look like a rainbow or something very similar to what you would see on the back of a DVD or Blu-ray disc. Or if you are old enough to remember a compact disk or CD. Here is a beautiful example of holographic foil applied on the casing of a book. And to emphasize or enhance the effect of the foil, it is actually printed across the whole case, so we see it on the back, on the spine, and also on the front. The clever thing about this design is that it really entices the viewer or the reader to turn the case around and really appreciate the holographic effect of the foil. Another category are the Perl foils, which are transparent or translucent foils with Perla sunshine. The good thing about these is that they can mix with whatever color was used on the print itself, since they are slightly see-through. And then finally, you have also the pigment foils, which can be used, for instance, when you are printing on dark or black material. And you need to add white text or decorations. But of course wouldn't be possible by relying on ink. So now that you're familiar with foil sampling and the different types that you can use in your project. The next big category of embellishments we have to talk about are coatings. And that's what we're going to cover in the next video. 14. Coatings: There's a huge variety of coatings that you can apply to your print projects. And besides making them feel and look more premium quality and stand out from other designs, they are also often used to resist fingerprints and other issues or impurities during handling of the products. The only downside to most types of coatings is that they will prevent being able to write on the surface or the material of the product. But as you can see in some of these examples here, you can be extremely creative how you use coatings in your projects. Aqueous coating is something that is always applied on the whole surface of a product. It's a clear, fast drying, water-based coating, which is mainly used for the protection of a printed product, whether it is a brochure or packaging, since it is water-based, it is more environmental friendly than the other types of coatings like spot varnish. And it also provides one of the highest level of resistance against scratches and fingerprint marks when it is used on smaller pieces like a brochure, it is also useful for maintaining the shape of the product since it prevents the paper from wrinkling and curling. Now, a varnish is a liquid type of coating, and depending on the type, it can generate all kinds of effects from glossy mat, sat into even neutral. The most common type is the spot UV varnish that is also applied in a liquid form and then exposed to ultraviolet light or UV light, it immediately dries. And the reason why it is called spot varnish is because most of the time it is applied on smaller details, not the entire surface of a design. In case of this business card, it is used to highlight all the typographic details, but the actual material itself is not covered by it, but in case it would be used on the entire surface, we would call it a flood varnish. Now most of the times put one niche looks better on darker materials, even on black surfaces. However, it can also be used on brighter even white surfaces, which will result in a much more subtle effect. And that's a good thing because in this case, it is printed or edit on top of the topography. And in case of a business card, we definitely want to make sure that people will be able to steal, read this text without getting distracted from an embellishment. Now here's a brilliant example where spot UV is used on a black surface. So this is black text on a black material and we wouldn't be able to read it or see it unless it is highlighted with the varnish. And this is a perfect example of that general rule that less is more in graphic design. So instead of using an embellishment to make something stand out that was already prominent in the design. It is used in a more minimalistic way. But by combining this with a very vivid and saturated pen tool and ink on that word build. It also creates an amazing and powerful contrast. Don't forget whatever type of coatings or even embellishments you are using in general, you should always think of creative uses and what purpose the embellishment serves. And ever you can avoid being overindulgence and apply restraint in how you're working with these type of effects. And last but not least, I just wanted to also mention the types of laminations that you can use in your projects. Again, the main purpose of these is to protect the printed piece, especially making it water resistant. However, remember that it is going to make your print run more expensive and also might take longer because lamination usually is a fairly slow process. 15. Embossing: Embossing and Depot saying is creating a three-dimensional effect in your prints by raising or lowering certain details. And generally the procedure of this is similar to foil stamping. Once again, we apply pressure using a dye, which is usually a metal, and press the paper or the material you are using for your print onto a counter die. So you will always have a positive and negative shapes. And these pressed together will result in the scalp or the three-dimensional form that you are creating in case you are interested for embossing the counter dy would be the male part because that's the one that's positive or protruding. The metal piece would be the female die. And in case of the bossing, when you are pressing details into the print, the female and male parts would be switched around when embossing or the bowstring is used in combination with other embellishments like for stamping, we would call it a registered embolus because it has to have a perfect match with the other detail that was added while in case it is used on its own. And even without having any ink on the material, we would refer to it as blind embolus or blind the boss. And this is again a perfect example of how you can introduce subtlety even when you are using embellishments. Another interesting technique that you can use is called multilevel ambushing, where the surface that stands out from the paper is not completely flat, but has a shape to it. And this can make embossing field even more three-dimensional. So compared to a flat or round embossing or the busing, this is how a multi-level and both would look like and this is how it would look like used for the busing. And in case you are dy would be even more complex. We would refer to it as a sculpted and bossing or the busing. Here is an example of a highly detailed sculpted dy. In this case, it is used as a blind end boss for something like this, the dye is usually made of brass. Now since these have to usually be hand sculpted by someone, is going to make your print very expensive. Another important thing to keep in mind, especially when you are planning to use sculptured dyes, is that you should always find a good balance between the complexity of the dye and the complexity of the printed design. So in general, for a complex and detailed print, you should use a simpler and boss or the boss technique. And in case of a very detailed and complex and bossing or D busing, you should probably go for the blind option like in this case. So there is actually no printed detail at all. In general, ambushing and D busing might seem like it leaves a big indent on the paper. It is actually a tiny transformation. And the maximum depth that we normally use is 25 microns, which is only 25 thousandths of an inch, depending on the angles of the bevels around the edges. You can also get slightly different results. As you can see, for instance, all of these letters were using embossing with the same amount of depth, but the angle of the bevels are increasing from 30 degrees, 60 degrees. So that means we are going from a more abrupt change in the depth to something that has more of a slope. And here's just for comparison's sake, a couple of close-up looks at the types of bubbles that you can use. So you can have the normal bevel that we can see here on the top. Then we have the chisel or roof and bus for which we already seen an example on this night topography. And that's something that we would either call round or dome embolus can create this very nice, soft and curved look. And last but not least, like with everything in graphic design, you can be very creative in the way that you are using this method. You can even combine embossing and D bossing within the same print. And they don't even have to use the same profile, like in this example. One of them could be multilevel while the other one could be flat. For instance. Now that we've covered all important types of embellishments, in the next video, I'm going to show you how to set up your files, including the embellishment details, ready for print. 16. Setting up files for print: I'm sure seeing all these cool techniques and the facts by now you are itching to find out how to set them up in your design files. And that's exactly what I'm going to show you now in Adobe Illustrator, even though this workflow can also be repeated in InDesign or even Photoshop. Illustrator is usually the best tool for having all these embellishments accurately and precisely set up and saved into separate PDF files. And yes, that is one of the most important steps that you will have your actual print saved as a PDF file. But in case of any other effects or embellishments, he would have to have separate PDF files, including information only for the desired effect. So in case of this business card, what I would like to achieve is to first of all, have a metallic ink used for these sections here. So these two blobs, I would like to make it look gold. And also this little detail here. Besides that, I would like to have the text in the logo embossed and for all of the floral details that we have here. So these three darker branches, I would like to use spot UV varnish. Now for the metallic spot color that we will be using doesn't require a separate file. It can be stored and saved into the same PDF that will have the rest of the design for the embossing and the spot UV varnish, we will have to have two separate PDF files generated. But let's just start with that spot color. So I'm going to use the library's option in the swatches panel. From here, I will select Color Books. And in this case, I am going to use the pen tone metallic coated category. And here we can type in the code of the color that we're looking for referenced from the Pantone color book. And in this case it's 8943. So there we have the swatch. We just click on it and immediately it's going to be added to our swatches. So it's showing up right here, but it is not yet applied to the design itself. So the next step is to select everything where we would like to apply this color. And in this case, I'm going to use the magic one tool with which I can click on one of these shapes. And since they are all very similar in color, it will select everything by default. But if I double-click on the magic wand, I can reduce the tolerance of this tool down to maybe seven. Then we can try clicking away first to de-select everything, and then click on the same object once again. And as you can see, now, with this lower tolerance in managed to select, highlight only the items on which I wanted to use this metallic swatch. Now that they are all selected, I can just simply click on our Pantone swatch and immediately it is applied to them. Now I can also see that there is a little bit of gap here on the edge. But that is not an issue because that part is already on the bleed and the actual trim area ends here. So all of these details will be cropped. In the end. You might be thinking that it is a shame and a vase of using a spot color on an area that will be cropped off in the end. But unfortunately, that is the only way we can achieve that. The spot color will be printed all the way to the edge. Now, the good news is that we have to do only one additional step for this five to be ready for print. And that is to outline all the text. And it is important to mention that you should always save your working file with editable text. So that would be your project file that you can come back to them, make changes, updating the name and all the rest of the information for other employees, for instance. And what I would recommend for an extra safety precaution is to actually, at this point before converting all the texts to outlines, save your file as a duplicate, which you can do with the Save a Copy option in Illustrator. And I'm just going to type in outlined in the file name as well. So it's still an Illustrator file and save click. Okay, and then I'm going to go to the file open feature and select the outline Illustrator file, where I can now feel at ease knowing that I still have the original editable text version. But here I can use the command or control a keyboard shortcut to select everything and then go to the Type menu and choose Create Outlines. Or you can remember the shortcut Command or Control Shift O. So this is going to convert everything into shapes. The text is not editable anymore. And if I use the outline view, which is Command or Control Y, I can see that everything is turned into shapes. And if I use the direct selection tool, I can even select these anchor points and start moving them around. But I'm going to press Command Y to go back to the normal view and see both of my art boards. And now it is time to save this as a PDF. First, I'm just going to save the changes. So it's definitely outline now as the name indicates, and then go back to File, Save As, and then change the format to PDF. Now since we will need both sides of the business card, I'm going to keep the all option selected. But most importantly, in the filename, I want to make sure it's specified that this is the artwork and I normally type this in with capital letters. So it really stands out and I can immediately spot which one is rich or what's the purpose of this PDF? So once it's there, I can click on Save. And then here instead of the illustrator default option, I would normally go for the PDF X1 2001, which is a highly compatible format and most printers would be able to work with. Now, since this is a business card, you would normally want to also include trim marks and bleeds settings. However, this might be something that the printer will be able to take care of. You just have to tell them the size of the bleed that you worked with. So in this case I'm not actually going to include anything. Just simply click on Save PDF. Now just to double-check that the spot color was saved correctly, I always like to open the PDF back into Illustrator. So I'm going to select the artwork PDF file, click on Open, and I'm going to choose all. I would like to see both of the art boards and click, Okay. And then we can see the same exact design. But most importantly within the swatches, we can see that our spot color was indeed saved into the PDF. 17. Preparing artwork for special printing techniques: Now jumping back to our outline Illustrator file, I'm going to create the PDF for the embossing. As we agreed, this will be applied on the texts in the logo and just bear in mind whenever you are printing on both sides and using a technique like embossing or the busing, it will also show up on the other side of the card. And that is why intentionally I left this space empty. So it's not going to be an issue for it to show up here. However, remember that the text is going to be reversed. So just to demonstrate this to you, if I select the copy and I paste it here on the other side and set it to black so we can see it. It will actually look like this. So even though it is not overlapping, the texts on this side of the business card is still not ideal because it reads like a completely different word. So instead of lower M, it reads marrow. Now because of this realization at this one you might want to reconsider and instead of using the busing or embossing, you might want to use another type of embellishment that is not going to interfere with the other side of the card. So maybe instead we can use foil stamping. I'm just going to delete this from here. Move back to the other page. And I'm actually going to once again select this text and change it to black. That's actually something that you should always do because the files that you prepare for embellishments should only have black or white details on them, no color information at all. Now, since there are no other details that I would like to use for this particular type of effect. I'm going to delete everything else. So why having the text selected, I can go to the Select menu and choose inverse that will select everything else on that art board and then press Delete or Backspace on the keyboard. I can delete everything on the other side of the card, even though I only want to use the effect on one side of the card is still recommended to save both sides in your PDFs exactly the same way as you had it in the artwork file. That just again, to make sure that they will be perfectly registered and aligned to each other. So at this point, I always just double-check that my text is outlined in which it should be as we've already done it before. And then I am going to save this as a PDF, once again, File Save As choosing Adobe PDF using all the art boards and changing the name in this case for foil stamp, as we agreed, instead of using embossing, this is the technique that we decided on. So I'm going to click on Save. Once again, I'm using the PDF on a 2001 preset and I don't actually have to do anything else, so I can just hit Save PDF. So when you open this PDF in Acrobat, this is all you should be seeing inside that file. And then since we also want it to use spot UV varnish on the floral decorations. I'm going to, again start from the outline file. And here I'm going to use the magic wand tool to select these branches and go to Select, choose Inverse, delete everything. Then using Command or Control a to select the branches again and set that color to black. So now that we have this one set up, we can again go to File menu, Save As just like before, choose PDF and in the filename, and I'm going to make sure it says spot, UV, save all the artboards in this case is very important because we have the details on both sides of the card. Again, using the same preset, we can just hit Save PDF. And so this is one side and there is the other side. So to summarize, these are the three PDFs that you will be providing to your printer. The artwork with all the colors, including the spot color, the foil stamp showing where you would like to apply it, and the split UV with the details on both sides of the card. It's always worth double-checking with your printer, the specifications, and how you would like the business card to be made. But in general, if you follow these steps carefully, you shouldn't have any issues getting an awesome final product. 18. Bindery: Before we can wrap up talking about the post-purchase stage of the printing process. I wanted to spend a little bit more time talking about binary and the binding methods. So as you can see on this board, there are quite a lot of different ways of binding pages together. But before we can go through each of them and the differences between them, there is one term that you should be familiar with and that is the signature. Now this is how 16 page signature would look like. And you might recall that we've talked about multiple ops in case of printing the same design multiple times on a single sheet to save costs. The same exact thing happens when you are printing magazines or books, any multi-page documents to save costs, again, we would have multiple pages laid out on the same sheet. And a very common setup would be this 16 page layout or signature where the sheet would be printed on both sides. So this would be the front and that would be the reverse if you flip the sheath around. And what happens with these signatures after they come out of the press is that they get folded and trimmed by using a layout like this makes it much easier to have them arranged already in the correct order, ready for binding. This illustration shows really well that within a book you would have multiple signatures. So when you look closer at them, this is how they looked, folded. And in this case, just like in the previous example, is the standard 16 page signature format. And just so you can easily imagine, there is a registration mark here which shows that the reverse of page one would be page two, which obviously makes sense because that's what you want to see when you are turning the pages. And then again, if you imagine another cross here on page three, the reverse of that would be paid for and so on and so forth. That depending on the length of the document, you will be able to use certain kinds of bindings. So for instance, with teaching subtle stitching or stapling, you can efficiently bind together anything up to 36 pages. And if you exceed that, it might get harder to hold all the pages together. So this method definitely has a limitation and that's fine. It's used for short-term magazines, booklets, or brochures. Loop stitching is a very similar method, but in this case, you would have a semicircular detail that is coming out of the spine. And this is useful in case the document needs to be placed into a binder. Now you can also use viral or spiral binding, but holes are punched evenly along the side of all the pages and then the continuous spiral or wire will hold the pages together. Here's a close-up look showing that the spirals can match the design of your document and they can easily become a feature. And similarly to this, if you are using thread sewn binding, it is again something that is exposed and visible from the outside, which can result in this more handcrafted or artisan look. Now when it comes to longer documents like books, you most likely would use either one of the following binding methods to hold the pages or signatures together. First of all, you have the EVA binding, which stands for ethylene vinyl acetate, which is the type of glue that is used in this case. Compared to this, the PUR, glue holds stronger, which stands for a poly eutherian reactive. And this type of binding we would normally referred to as lay flat because it allows books to be able to spread out completely and lay flat on a desk or other reading surfaces. Here we can see an example of PUR binding and notice how the book cover or the case at the spine is not glued onto the pages so they can move separately. And that's again something that helps to keep the book lying flat. But in case you want to find out more about book covers and how to design them. Let's actually a separate video which we will be covering later in this course. So what you would see in most cases with books is that signatures are held together either by perfect binding or sewn together, and then everything is encased in an either hard or soft cover. The cover usually is completely separately prepare since it's made of a different material and depending on the look and feel that you are after, the most common casing options are the round case, where you would see this round shape around the spine and the flat or square case, which once again is self-explanatory. Now you may come across also tape binding, where the sheets are bound together with an external strip of tape or cloth. Now this type of binding is not as common anymore because the perfect binding method is more durable besides the look and feel of a binding that are other factors that you have to consider when choosing the right one for your project, which includes, as we already discussed, durability, cost, page count, and opening behavior. So keep these all in mind and try to plan for the correct binding early on. Because as you can see, even the number of pages is affected by the binary methods and the signatures required for your project. 19. Paper size: Similarly to how important it is to choose the right binding method, you have to also understand how to pick the right type of paper for your projects. It sounds like such an elementary or basic and simple question. Believe me, they are actually quite a lot of things to take into consideration without trying to overwhelm you. I'm just going to concentrate on the most important aspects, like the size, the shape, and the weight of the paper. But besides these three main attributes, a few of the others include smoothness, which can range from actual, which is the hardest, to ultra smooth. And the technique to increase the smoothness of paper is called calendering in case you're interested, the formation of the paper is another attribute which refers to the distribution of fibers within the sheet. The shade is fairly obvious, It's the papers color. And even between white papers, you will see slight difference whether they are warmer or cooler tones. The opacity is another obvious one. Some papers translucent and you can see through them while others are completely opaque, not letting through any light. This is an important attribute also to keep in mind when you are printing on both sides of the paper. In cored out is the capacity of the paper to keep the ink on the surface instead of letting it sink into its material. Brightness is the attribute that decides how much light is reflected by the paper. And don't confuse this with the shade, which just simply sets the color. But you can have, for instance, a darker shade that is actually brighter than another paper which has the same exact shade. So once again, brightness is the reflective quality of a paper. Last but not least, is the side-to-side consistency is what decides how similar are the two sides of the paper to each other. And usually more expensive and better quality paper would have higher site-to-site consistency. And in case you're wondering there's even terms used for the two sides of the paper. That's the buyer and the felt side. And the via is the one that comes into contact with the virus in the paper making machine. Now that we've discussed these other attributes, let's concentrate on the size of the paper. There are several types of ISO standards that you should be familiar with. But out of all of these, the a series is probably the most commonly used one. And the way all of these standard sciences work is that you always take the largest one as the starting point, which in case of the a series would be the a 0 size. And by dividing that to half, you would get the next size, which is A1. Once again, dividing that in half would give you a two, which we can see up here. Dividing that into half, you get a three. Dividing that into half again is a four. And then so on and so forth. You can go all the way up to a ten. However, that is very rarely used because it would be a one by 1.5 inch size or 26 by 37 millimeters. The great thing about these ISO standards is that they work really well in combination as well. So for instance, and a series print would fit perfectly well in a CSeries envelope. And we can see an example here. So either having an A4 page folded once or an A5 page can be easily placed into a C5 envelope because it is slightly larger in size. When you compare the a, b, and c series to each other. A series is actually the smallest. Then CSeries is the next. And strangely B-series is the largest one. Another important thing to keep in mind is that an a is 0 size paper is actually exactly one square meter in area. And because of that A4, which is probably the most commonly used size in the series, is exactly one 16's of square meters in area. Now this is what's closest to a letter sized paper, which is a common us paper size. And besides this, the other two most commonly used in the US would be the legal and the tabloid size is. Now the main difference between the ISO standards and these US sizes is that why the ISO standards are using always the same exact aspect ratio in case of the US sizes, as you can see, the aspect ratio changes all the time. So in a way, it can be slightly trickier to work with this, but it just really depends on what you are used to and what is available where you are based. 20. Paper sheen: As you probably know, paper is made out of wood fibers that are soaked into water to soften them. The resulting pulp is then sprayed onto a mesh to remove most of the water. And then he did rollers are used to dry them out and to smooth their surface. Then, depending on the sheen of the paper, we would categorize them between coated and uncoated and uncoated paper, as its name already implies, is the type that is kept in its raw state. So just as it dries and comes off the paper making machine, while it's coated paper, white clay is used to fill the tiny gaps or crevices on the surface. And then depending on the desired effect, whether you want to get mat, silk or gloss finish, different types of high pressure rollers would be used. Since with coated paper you have this secondary or additional stage of using the rollers. It generally means that coated paper becomes more dense and thinner compared to uncoated paper made out of the same weight of pulp. In this example, you can see a great comparison of the same Pantone swatches for coated uncoated paper. And it's worth remembering that the C in the code of our Pantone swatch stands for quoted by the U, stands for uncoated. Now quoted stocks in general are better at holding detail and making images feel slightly sharper. And that's mainly because of the ink sitting on the surface of the paper instead of it's sinking deeper. By the advantage of uncoated stock says that they are more reader-friendly because that surface is mad compared to the glossy and reflective surface of coated stocks. So in case of texts having publications, especially books, it is always a better choice to go with uncoated paper. One other advantage of coated paper, however, that you should keep in mind is that they are usually more resistant. So there's usually a better choice for things like menus in restaurants or maps. When you compare the different types of finishes and lay them next to each other like this, you will be able to see that the more coating applied, the glossier the paper gets. So in this case, starting with 0 per cent coating, going up to 25 per cent with Matt than gloss would be around 50 per cent. Uv gloss would be the 100 per cent or maximum amount of coating. Now here on the left side you can also see a couple of examples that texture is introduced to the paper, which is not to be confused with smoothness because it is actually a type of effect that is added to the paper with a method similar to embossing. And of course, there's a huge variety of effects to choose from, depending on what kind of tactile and visual experience you want to achieve in your product. 21. Paper weight: Another very important aspect of choosing the right paper stock for your project is to decide on the paper weight. And why is that? Well, mainly because it can impact the production and distribution costs and even affect the type of binding that you can work with. Now there are two main ways of measuring paperweight. And most of the time these both would be displayed like in this case, we can see first the £80, which is the American or US standard for measuring the weight of paper. And besides that, we can see the weight in grams per square meters, which is generally used everywhere outside of the United States. Here you can see a great comparison of the different types of paper weight used in the most common paper goods, starting with tissue or toilet paper, going all the way up to the thickest business cards, the gram age or grams per square meter of most common graphic design projects would fall between a hundred and twenty, two hundred and ten. So this would be used for brochures, flyers, posters, magazines, and so on and so forth. Now in case you are wondering how the two different types of units are measured, the weight of paper in pounds is determined by measuring 500 sheets of paper, which we refer to as a ream. The damage is determined by the weight of one square meter of a particular type of paper. And because of these two different ways of measuring weight, we can see that we have two different types of papers. So in this case, the series drawing paper and this egg, various watercolor paper that has the same weight in pounds as you can see, £80, both of them, but they will have a different grid image. So why the drawing paper is only a 130 grams per square meter. This watercolor paper is actually a 170 grams per square meter. But because these measurements and units can be confusing, you can find brilliant online tools like this one for which the link is included on the metal anode board, which can really help you estimate the final weight of a product like a book or magazine, but also additional aspects of a print run. So for instance, if we select A4 as our size and set the image to maybe a 110, keeping the sheet at one, it already tells us exactly what the size is going to be. By increasing the number of sheets, we can see how the total weight is going up and then further down we can add additional weight. It could be anything from embellishments to binding. So let's just add something there as well. Then if we click on print run, that would mean how many copies of this we will be producing less. Just set that up to 3 thousand for example. And immediately we get the total weight of this whole project, which is going to be important when it comes to storing and shipping it. And by now, you can probably see how complex decision it can be to choose the right paper for your projects. But don't worry, you don't have to become an expert of this. And because you can always rely on printers to help you out choosing the right materials for your print run. 22. Commonly used file formats: Similarly to be aware of the differences in paper types, it's also important to note the differences between the file formats that we normally would use in a print design project. Now, it might be a bit tricky to categorize the file formats, but essentially they would be falling into three main groups. First is the working or project files that allows you to go back and make changes to a design. So for Photoshop, it would be the PSD or Photoshop document. For Illustrator, it will be ai, and for InDesign, it will be at the IND, the file format or InDesign document. The next category are the assets that you would use in a design project. And these would be predominantly image file formats, including both pixel or raster and vector images. But that can be also text files or Excel files in case of a catalog, for example. And last but not least, the final category would be the print ready files. And most of the time these would be PDFs or EPS files. Now I'm not going to spend too much time comparing these to each other because you can just use this chart from the melanoma board for that. So instead I'm just going to highlight a few important things or tips that you should keep in mind when it comes to image file formats, you have to be aware of compression and the loss in quality. That is especially important when you work with JPEG images. And it is something that you can best understand when you're using the export as feature in Photoshop. So in this case, we can see a detail from a design on the left and the right side. And at the moment, I am using the same settings, but I'm just going to switch to JPEG for both of these. And I'm going to change the quality. So here on the right size, I'm going to set it to very poor. While on the left side I'll make sure it is set to the highest quality option, which is great. If I zoom in even closer, you will be able to see the artifacts even better. So I'm sure you can spot all of these messy pixels here on the right side. So that is due to the JPEG compression, and this is what we would call a compression artifacts. The advantage of using lower-quality jpegs is that their file size will be lower. So while this one here on the left side is around 350 kilobytes, the one on the right with the lowest quality setting, only around 50 kilobytes. So considerably smaller, most image file formats, including JPEG, also supports embedding color profiles. And this is something that you should always make sure to include for a correctly color managed workflow. And color management is actually our next topic that we will be covering in more detail. Now, besides JPEG, another very commonly used image file format would be P and G, which has the advantage compared to JPEG that it can also hold transparency detail. So this is something that you can again disable or keep it turned on here on the top right corner. And the bit depth of PNG files by default is 24 bits, but you can always reduce the file size if you choose the 8-bit version. Png and bit depth is a way of measuring the amount of colors that you can use in a file format. So 8-bit, for instance, means two on the power of eight, which is 256 colors, compared to that the other format, 24-bit, would actually mean eight bit for each of the color channels, R, G, and B. And that also applies to JPEG images. But there is also another file format, gif, which can also include animation. But the main limitation of this file format is that it cannot go beyond eight bit depth. So the maximum amount of colors is 256. To better see what that means, instead of using the Export As command, I'm going to choose Export Save for Web, where for the GIF file format, we also get the color table. And here we can actually reduce the amount of colors. If I go down maybe to four colors in case of this design, it wouldn't make much difference because it uses already a very limited color palette. But by using less colors in the file, of course, you will have a smaller file size. And file size in general doesn't make much difference in print projects, it's more important for web and mobile design. 23. Additional file types and their benefits: Now in case you're wondering where can you find the other type of file formats. You will find these under File, Save, As in most of the design applications. And in the latest version of Photoshop, for instance, it will only show you a very limited list at first. And you can only see the additional five formats if you choose to save a copy option. So once you do this, you will see a much larger list. And here you can actually find all the formats that you would normally be able to save from the Export As or Save for Web features, but accompanied by a lot of additional specialized file formats, which most of the time you won't require in your work. Another common way we can categorize image file formats is whether they are roster or vector-based. So JPEG, PNG, GIF files are all raster based, while the most common vector file formats would be EPS and SVG, out of these two, EPS is mainly used in print, while SVG is a vector file format that is designed to be used on the web, and it's an abbreviation for Scalable Vector Graphics. Now, there's one other important file format that is worth mentioning. And even though as a graphic designer, you most of the time won't be required to work with this, but it's still good to be aware of. And it is the Camera Raw format. Now this is something that most photographers will be familiar with. The name row comes from the fact that this is the unprocessed information that the camera records. And this simple comparison shows really well how it can be different or better than a JPEG image. So if you have your cameras set to record jpegs, that means that the camera will automatically compress and process the information and turn it into a flat image. Compared to that row file will record and keep all these layers of raw data will allow you to access all of those layers later on when you are developing the images. And this is why a Camera Raw file, it will always be much larger in size compared to a J peg, but it's going to give you a lot more freedom when it comes to editing images. And the biggest difference you will notice in the tonal range, which is the range between the darkest and lightest details in an image. So in case of a raw file, you would have a much wider tonal range, allowing more details to be captured in the brightest areas and also in the darkest areas of the image. In case of a JPEG file, these brightest or dark as details will be completely washed out or burned out, they will become completely right or completely black, which means that there won't be any useful color information recorded. So when you're trying to make adjustments, you are going to start introducing a lot more noise into your images compared to developing a real photograph. And in case you're wondering, the best way to display the tonal range of an image is by using a histogram which lists the number of pixels in each tonal region from the darkest blacks to the brightest whites. Reading a histogram is actually very easy. When you look at these three examples at the bottom, you can see an underexposed image would have most of the values closer to the left by an overexposed image would have most of the details in the histogram on the right side. And if you see a peak on the far right edge, that means you will have clipping in the brightest details, and the same can happen with the dark has details. Once again, if you see a peak there, that's also not a good thing. And in general, the easiest type of images to work with and that will provide the most information are these neutral exposures where you have most of the details in the mid tones range. And just so you can see and appreciate the difference that you can achieve by developing a row photo. Here is the original one, and here is the refined and developed version. And you can really see the amount of details we managed to recover in both the darker and brighter areas, once again, at before. And this is after. In terms of fire management or how you should organize them for your graphic design projects, you can find more information in the process of design topic. 24. Commonly used Color Spaces: The ultimate goal of color management is to match the colors that you can see on your screen to the colors on the final printed product. In an ideal color management workflow, you would have all the devices that take part in the design and printing process to speak the same language, which will result in predictable and accurate color results. One of the most important components of a color managed workflow is the use of ICC color profiles. As we can see, everything starts off with the designer having a color profile created for the monitor that they are using. Later on we will talk about the calibration of the monitor as well because that's also important. But then for the rest of the process, there is always going to be a color profile attached to the designers files. So no matter where they show up, the original color information should be carried along, avoiding any unwanted transitions and shifts in the colors at color profile is essentially the description of the color space, gamut and behavior of a calibrated device. Printers will have both. They're offset and digital presses calibrated. And they will be able to supply you the graphic designer with that ICC color profile. Icc actually stands for International Color Consortium, was established in 1993 and is the internationally accepted cross-platform architecture and system for color management. In the color topic, we already talked about the differences between RGB and CMYK color modes and mentioned that the main difference between the two is how the colors are combined. So while in CMYK that we use for print, we are working in a subtractive color model, which means black is the most intensive color in case of RGB or on screen, if we are using the additive model where white is the most intense color. While with CMYK, when you're combining colors, they are getting darker. It's the opposite with RGB. As you are combining the colors, they are getting brighter. But the main reason why you will see a shift in the colors from RGB to CMYK is not because they describe colors in a different way, is because they have a different color gamut. So each color space, and in this case we can see four of them here on the top-right will have their own color gamut, which is essentially the subset of colors that can be represented by that color space. As you can see, sRGB represented with the green triangle, has the smallest area covered, which means that it offers the smallest color gamut compared to the standard CMYK color space is slightly larger, and it is this polygon that we can see here with a pink outline. So even though these two color gamut overlap, there is still quite a lot of difference between them, especially as you are getting into these more vivid and saturated colors. These cannot be translated into CMYK correctly, but sRGB color space is actually more designed for Vab by Adobe. Rgb, which is a much wider color gamut, is the standard that we would use for print design. Now you can see it here in the diagram that it is a much larger triangle than SRGB, meaning it covers a lot more colors. And the largest color gamut in this chart is the pro photo RGB, which is mainly used in professional photography workflows. You may have noticed that when you are using the color picker in Photoshop, sometimes when you select a color, you get a warning here on the right. Now this actually means out of gamut for printing. So we can see that the color that I selected is described in many different ways, including RGB and CMYK and also LAB which we will discuss shortly. But in order to see the closest color to this that can actually be printed with the four colors CMYK, we can just click on this little warning and the color picker immediately jumps to the actual color that was described with the CMYK values. So once again, if I click somewhere up here, we can see that these are the values for the 301000. And if I click on the warning icon, even though the color sample shifted quite a lot, the CMYK values didn't change. And that is because essentially all of these very vibrant colors cannot be represented with ink. And that of course, not only applies to the green hues, you would have the same issue with most of the other use. For example, if I come up somewhere, let's say here, again, moving to the top right corner where we have the most intense colors, I can click on the warning. And once again, we will have a huge shift which shows the nearest possible color that can be achieved in printing. Once again, from here, all the way down there. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula or feature that will save you from dealing with this difference between RGB and CMYK. But by following a Color Manage workflow, you can be best equipped and work and see the right colors throughout the whole process that eventually will be possible to be printed. 25. LAB color space and synchronizing Color Settings: We already mentioned that ICC profiles are important for this, but we also have to have color calibration and proofing, which I'm going to cover in the next video. But before we do that, just one final thing I wanted to mention, and that is the LAB color mood or Lab Color Mode, which you might have heard of. Or maybe just wondering how that is different from RGB and CMYK. So the advantage of this color mode is that it's completely device independent and it is the closest representation of human vision. To better understand how it works, It's best to imagine this color model as a sphere. So it's a three-dimensional representation of all the colors that can be described. Where L stands for luminosity or lightness, which is measured on a scale of 0 to a 100, which is from black to white. And this can be imagined as the vertical axis or z axis in this color coordinate system. While the other two axes are a and b, on which a ranges from green to red. Red being the positive value, and green being the negative. And the b axis goes from blue to yellow, again, blue being the negative and yellow being the positive value. Now, jumping back to Photoshop, I have one of my photographs open and you can see within the channels panel, when we look at RGB, color mode is going to consist of these three color channels, red, green, and blue. And each of these are eight-bit gray scale images with 256 variations of tonal values referring to the intensity of each of these individual colors. In case of the blue channel, the reason why we see the flower being completely black because there's no blue component in it at all. Instead, it is made of green and red, resulting in this yellow color. In the end, if you concentrate on the grass, you can see that it is brightest on the green channel, bile. It is much darker on the red and the blue channel. Now let's see what happens if I switch to LAB color mode. First of all, I just go back to the composite RGB channel and then switching to the LAB color option from Image Mode, you will see that there is nothing actually changing on the image. I can just undo this change, go back and forth. And as you can see, even though the channels are changing on the right, nothing is going to be affected in the image itself. But when we look at these channels, we can see that we have the l or lightness channel and then the a and the B channels. You might recall that the B channel was actually the difference between blue and yellow colors. And that is why we are seeing brighter details here for this channel, because of all the yellow flowers in the image. The main reason I mentioned the lab color mode because there are a lot of professionals who would work in this instead of using RGB. And even though it is definitely worth exploring it and being aware of its advantages using RGB color mode instead, as long as you pay attention to color management, you can still work in RGB, especially when it comes to editing images. Now even though you are using RGB images in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign in the end, when you are creating PDFs, most of these applications would automatically convert these colors to CMYK for printing. Before we discuss the rest of the components of color manage workflow, I just wanted to show you one more important thing unique to set up in the Adobe applications. And that is something you can find in the Color Settings option. This is something you can find in the Edit menu in most of the Adobe Design applications. And in this case, we are in Photoshop. And you can see that my settings for color management policies are to preserve embedded color profiles for all of the color models. This is definitely a good policy to use. And one thing that I have different from the default settings is that I use Adobe RGB instead of sRGB for the RGB working space. But notice that there is a little warning here saying that my Creative Cloud applications are not synchronized to each other. So this is actually something you can do from another application, Adobe Bridge, which you can quickly access from most of the Adobe applications, just go to the File menu and choose browse in bridge. And then once the application opens up, just go to the Edit menu again and choose Color Settings. And here you will be able to find all the settings used by the other Adobe applications. And notice that there's one here on the top called Custom. Now that is because I did not save my settings from Photoshop. So it's just says costume here on the top. But as soon as I click Save, I'm just going to call it Martin, and then save it. I could add some comments on it as well, but click Okay. And Okay again, now scrolling down, I will be able to see the settings. And if I click apply, it's now going to be synchronized between all the Adobe applications. So for instance, if I come to Illustrator and check the color settings option, I will be able to see exactly the same settings applied thanks to that synchronization that we achieved using Bridge. 26. Calibration and proofing: Besides having the right color settings in the Adobe applications and obviously using ICC profiles throughout your workflow to get accurate colors that will match from screen to print, you also have to deal with calibration and proofing. As a graphic designer, the most important thing is to have your monitor or monitor's calibrated. This can be achieved with the calorimeter device, like the data color spider X Pro, which would come with its own calibration software that you would be using to calibrate your screens. The calibration process when you do it first takes up to around ten to 15 minutes. And then we'd most of these devices, it is advised to repeat the procedure and update your color profile once or twice every year. It is definitely recommended to re-calibrate your screens every time you move them to a new location, or in case the lighting condition or lighting setup changes radically in your working environment. It doesn't matter whether you have an expensive professional monitor or a cheaper one. You should still have it calibrated because there's always going to be differences between on calibrated monitors. And these differences usually come down to the components used in monitors, including the backlight color filter, the LLC layer, the glare type and polarizer, but also mass production variation contributes to these shifts. So differences in the colors. So even between two monitors that are exactly the same model using the same settings, you might see a fair amount of difference in how they represent colors unless they are calibrated. Obviously, besides the devices that we use to calibrate monitors, there's also other calibration, all devices like this pen tone capture, which can accurately scan and match any color from any surface, fabric or material. The great thing about it is that it will give you the equivalent or the closest Pantone color to whatever color you scanned. Now when we reach the point where we can start comparing what we've seen on the screen and what ends up in print, we would reach the proofing stage of the PRE press process. And proofing can be done either with soft or hard proofs. Soft proofing means essentially that you are simulating at printers colors on your computer screen. So for instance, in Photoshop, we can go to the View menu and choose Proof Colors or press Command or Control Y on the keyboard. And in this case, by default, the proof setup is set to show or simulate the Working CMYK colors. And you can also see it in the document tab that even though we are in RGB color mode, we are currently simulating CMYK colors. So this is a type of soft proofing and I can use the shortcut just to switch back and forth and see that subtle shift in the colors. So CMYK, as we already discussed this earlier, the colors will be slightly more washed out. So that's RGB. That's the soft proved CMYK. But in case your printer provides you with a specific ICC profile that they use for printing, you should be able to install that on your computer. And then from the proof setup custom, you will be able to find that ICC profile from the list them here. And so for instance, I have one that I'm just going to show you quickly. If I select this, I can also decide to simulate the paper color. And this way, I will be able to again compare to the original RGB colors and back to the soft proof. Now when it actually comes to printing out something that you would check and compare to what you've seen on the screen. We would call this a hard proof. And in case it's something that you ordered from the printers and they send it to you. It would be considered a press test or a strike off or trial proof, but this can be costly because it already requires the plates to be manufactured and also the use of unnecessary ink and paper that was specified for the project. Having said that, oppress test is the closest estimation of what you would get in the final product. But most printers will also be able to provide you a cheaper option, which we would normally refer to as the PDF proof, which is also a type of soft proof or digital proof that you can check on your own computer. And professional printing environments. Light boxes usually are used to check the heart proofs, but it is recommended even for graphic designers, to improve the lighting conditions in your working environment, whether you are working in a studio or working at home, and both for checking a hard proof or soft proof on your computer. What you definitely want to avoid is direct sunlight on your screen and ideally have dark neutral gray walls and no white or colored furniture, especially having nothing around you with reflective materials. Now in case you are a freelance designer working from home. Don't worry if you can't achieve all of this in the beginning. But both having a calibration device and good viewing conditions can improve and make your work more professional. 27. Overprinting: In the final stage of your design projects, when you are getting things ready for print, there are a few things to be aware of that can cause issues in the final printed product. Most of these terms that we will cover in this video and the next one you should be familiar with as a designer. However, luckily, most of these things are actually the printers task to check and fix or recommend ways of fixing it. And also most of the Adobe Design applications would automatically provide solutions for these issues by default. So I don't want you to stress out too much about these things, but by knowing what these terms mean, you will be much more confident discussing any potential issues with your printers. So one of the first terms you should be familiar with is overprinting, which refers to two inks being printed on top of each other and generally the ink on top being transparent. So in this example, if you concentrate on the top or outside the details of this starfish, It's actually the exact same color. But when there is no overprinting use, the inks won't mix. And this is what we would refer to as knockout, which is the opposite of overprinting. While here on the right side where overprinting is enabled, we can see that the inks are already blending into each other. It's almost like using Multiply blend mode between layers in Photoshop. Remember in print, when you're mixing inks together, they are always going to result in darker colors. This comparison shows it really well. If you have a yellow character that you are planning to print on a blue background. In case of overprinting, this is what's going to happen. So the yellow color will be blended into the blue background. While in case of the knockout, you wouldn't start flooding the paper with blue color instead would keep the character's position empty. And only once the blue color is printed, that empty space or GAAP would be filled with the other ink, in this case yellow. This of course, would result in the exact color that you were originally planning to use and not a mixture or a blend of the two inks. But does this mean we should always use the knockout technique instead of overprinting? Well, not necessarily if the plates are all perfectly aligned and are in registration, you shouldn't have any issues with using the knockout technique. However, even with a slight miss registration between the plates might cause unwanted white gaps showing up in case you are using the knockout technique. Now, a solution to fix these white gaps without using overprinting would be trapping, which I'm going to explain in more detail later on. But for now, I just would like you to concentrate on the first column and the last one. So when you are using knockout, we can see how these two plates, the cyan and magenta, would be combined with perfect registration. And as I mentioned before, when you have miss registration, by with overprinting, you would take one of the inks and have it completely flood the area and then print the detail with the other ink on top of that. This way it doesn't matter whether you have good or bad registration. The result will never show those white gaps. But of course, the colors of the two ink will mix. And that's just something that you have to be aware of. And this is actually something that you can simulate in most of the Adobe applications. So here we are in InDesign, and I have first of all, this yellow text on the magenta circle in the Window menu on the output, you will be able to find this panel called attributes, which you will need in order to apply overprinting on selected objects. So in this case I have the text selected and when I choose overprint fill, at first you won't see any difference. But once you go into the View menu, you can choose overprint, preview, and immediately it will see the two inks mixing. So this is when you're forcing the design not to use the knockout technique, which would be the default behavior in most of the Adobe applications. 28. Trapping: Remember, we'd mentioned trapping as a way of avoiding overprinting, but also still avoiding issues when there is a slight miss registration between the plates. And what trapping means in a nutshell is that you are adding a slight overlap between the two adjacent colors, which would be so small that it would be almost impossible to see in the final print, but it would be enough to compensate for any miss registration and it will guarantee not to see any white gaps. So while here on the left side, we see the white gap without the trapping, with trapping applied, we won't have that issue. Here's another example again, when we are not using trapping and on the right side we can see what happens when there is bad registration. And the same thing below. We can see that there is that slight overlap between the two colors, which will make sure that even with bad registration, we won't see any white gaps in the print. And in case you don't believe me, here is an actual example of a print where due to miss registration and the lack of trapping, we can start to see those white gaps all around the image, even here on the right side, and even around the leaf, and further up here on the right as well. So back in InDesign, let me show you how you can apply trapping manually. It's a quick and simple technique and I'm going to show you with text and this shape as well. So for this technique to work, first of all, you have to make sure that your text is outlined, which you can do from the Type menu Create Outlines option. And then generally, what you want to do is to add the same color as a stroke that you're using for the field. In this case, I'm going to select yellow and set it to 0.3 millimeters or 0.85 points. Let me do the same thing for the shape. Once again, I select the same color for the stroke and set the size to 0.3 millimeters. Next, I am going to choose the overprint Stroke option for both the shape and the text. And when these two options are selected and the overprint preview is on, you will be able to see the actual result of the print where that slight overlap will be completely invisible since our backdrop is completely black. The black ink, in a way, neutralizes the overlapping details. But in case I change the color to something different like dark blue, we will be able to zoom closer and see the overlap and the blending of the inks simulated in this special overprint preview. One thing to keep in mind is that you should always use trapping whenever you are combining a Pantone spot color, CMYK colors. The reason for that, of course, is because I Pantone color would also always be printed as a separate plate, which introduces yet another risk factor in that slight miss registration that we've seen earlier. Last but not least, when it comes to overlaying things on top of each other, It's worth mentioning through things. What is a knockout group and what is the transparency flattener doing? So first, a knockout group is something that you can use in most of the Adobe applications. And it's a different way of handling transparency compared to the default behavior. So I have three circles, both here on the left side and on the right side. And each of them are using 50% opacity. Now we can see as these circles are overlapping each other, they are increasing in opacity. So the color is becoming more opaque. In case I want to make sure that these shapes are actually consistently showing 50 per cent opacity and they are not blending into each other. In that case, they should be grouped together, which you can do by pressing Command or Control G on the keyboard, and then by clicking on the Opacity option here on the top, you can select this feature called Knockout Group. So once I select that and click away, now we can see that the three shapes are showing a uniform 50% opacity. This is a technique with which you can alter the way transparency behaves when you are combining multiple transparent objects. But there is also another thing that you have to always make sure whenever you are using transparent objects in your design is that when you are saving your final PDF, you need to assure that the quality of these transparent details are going to be high resolution enough. So let me show you how to do this by going to the File menu in Illustrator, we can choose Save As and then select PDF option. Once I hit Save in the settings, you first need to make sure that you select the PDF X1, a 2001 preset, which will set the compatibility back to Acrobat for. And this means that under the advanced settings you will be able to choose the quality of the transparency flattener option. So by default it is set too high resolution, but you can always go into customizing this and choose the settings that you prefer or whatever the printer is suggesting. So essentially, what transparency flattening is about is that all the transparent details are rasterized. Now in case your printer can support anything above Acrobat five standards, that means you don't have to worry about transparency flattening because all of these newer versions of Acrobat will be able to preserve transparent details even on vector objects. So there's no rasterization needed. 29. Text color: A general misunderstanding amongst graphic designers is that you can use whatever color you wish for your text. However, this is almost true. There's a couple of important things you have to pay attention to. First of all, you have to remember that everything that goes to print will be recreated by using the CMYK inks. And in traditional printing, each of these will be setup a separate plates which will all individually generate the necessary amount of little dots. Now, for instance, in here, we can see that there was a slight misalignment between these plates. And that's why we can see the dots shifted slightly, but it is a great way to understand how the four plates are printed on top of each other. And the reason why this is important is because you can imagine if you are not using one of the plates at a 100%, your texts can easily end up being fuzzy or blurry, especially on smaller texts like body copy. So when you're choosing color for your tax, no matter whether it's heading, title, or body copy, make sure that at least one of the CMYK values is set to 100 per cent. And in most cases that would be the K value, which stands for black or the key color. And we can see how nicely that turned out in print. On the other hand, if you are not using at least one of the plates on a 100%, then you will end up producing this fuzzy or blurry taxing print, even if there is no misalignment between the plates. So we're here in Illustrator and I have my color palette on the right. And for this texts, for instance, I would like to use a color like this. Or maybe we can use the eyedropper and pick up one of these other colors. Now you can see that these values are needed to recreate that color in print. But since none of these are at a 100%, you are risking, again creating fuzzy tax in print. But of course, if the selected text is a big title, so it's large enough, it will be less likely causing trouble. And similar to this, There's another thing that a lot of designers get wrong. And they start using rich black on body copy. That's again something you would want to avoid because like in the previous example or in this one, you can see if you have multiple plates printing the same text, especially on small texts, even the slightest misalignment between the plates will result in that fuzziness that I mentioned earlier. So don't get me wrong. Using rich black is a great thing to really create full intense black in print, but it's not something I would use on my body copy. Just in case you're not familiar with rich black. Let me show you the difference here in Illustrator, we have this object and all the other objects here using just normal black, or sometimes referred to true black, which is simply made up of 100% black ink and nothing from the other three colors. While reach back can be something like this, where you introduce additional ink on top of the black. So here we have 40 per cent cyan, magenta and yellow together with the 100% black. And you might think that this shape and the other details here look the same. You will be surprised when I move them on top of each other that you can actually tell the difference between them. Now this is by default not something you will see in Illustrator, but there is an option called appearance of black, which once you said to be displayed accurately. So instead of display or black says rich black, you have the all blacks accurately turned on. You will be able to see these even on screen. So a one just actually make a difference in print. There are several different variations on rich black, so you can make it a bit warmer or cooler, depending how you balanced the cyan, magenta and yellow together with the black. But there's also one important thing you shouldn't forget not to go over 300 per cent with the total ink coverage. Because if you exceed that maximum ink coverage, that is a chance that not all of that ink will be absorbed properly by the paper. So you will end up having, again, blurry details or even stains. This is actually a feature you can find in InDesign. If you go to the Window menu on the output separations preview, you can choose to view the ink limit, but you can see that by default it is set to 300 per cent. But depending on the type of paper that you use, for instance, coated paper, you should actually go down to 280 per cent. Any areas highlighted in red in the design can potentially cause problems. Also, don't forget that you can test your designs for colorblindness, both in Photoshop and Illustrator by going into the View menu and under Proof Setup, choose which type of colorblindness you want to simulate. I'm going to use proton OPIA in this case. And then simply using the keyboard shortcut Command or Control Y, I can toggle between the simulated colorblindness view and the normal view. So here we can see that this green and magenta combination is definitely not going to work well. So people with that particular type of colorblindness might not even see the word bootcamp showing up here. So while being in this proof colors setup, I can jump in here and maybe move this around a bit and find more contrast than jumping back. I can see the actual colors. If it looks good in both of these views, then it will most likely work in the other colorblindness option as well. And as long as there is enough contrast, again, they're on the text and important elements. Then you can carry on working with that selected color palette. 30. Preflight: The ultimate aim for a graphic designer working on a project is to get the designs print ready. This is a term that we use for those PDF files that we save at the end of a project and that is ready for printing and doesn't need any corrections or adjustments. So your job as a graphic designer is to supply the best possible file to the printer. And in this video, I'm going to walk you through the most common issues you might need to fix at this very final stage just before sending your file off to the printers. So to understand the most common issues that come up at this stage, we can take a look at these statistics where we can see that the top five issues are things that we already talked about in this course. First is that the fonts were not embedded in the PDF. Now, this could be easily fixed by outlining any text in your designs or in case you want to keep the text editable in the PDF, you have to make sure that all the fonts are embedded. And this is something that you can do with most of the Adobe PDF presets, including the ISO standard PDF X1 a 2001, where under the advanced tab, you will be able to find the fonts section. And by default, it is set to a 100%, which means all the fonts will be completely embedded. And in general, you wouldn't want to change this setting, but it's always worth double-checking video printer, whether they prefer if you are applying the tax, or whether you just make sure that all the fonts are embedded in the PDF. Next issue that most printers have trouble with is that there are low resolution images in the final PDF. And this is something that you can easily filter out in InDesign by using the preflight feature. The preferred menu is something you can find here at the bottom. And in this case with this document, I have 22 errors. So if I double-click on this, I will open the panel and within that, I can see exactly where are these issues in the document. So they are all style overrides, meaning that I have changed some of the formatting on the text where they were originally using a specific style. This can mean inconsistencies in the document, so that's why it can be included in the preflight settings. However, if I switch to the basic pre-flight profile, the document will show no errors. The basic profile essentially as good for finding any missing images, are missing fonts, but it doesn't look for low resolution images, for instance. So if we jump back to this other document which has only this single spread, Let's see how we can check whether all the images are high resolution enough or not for print. So what you would normally have to do is to define a new profile. You come to the panel menu, select this option. You click on the Plus sign here to create a new pre-flight option. And I'm just going to call this resolution check. And then under the images and objects, I'm going to go into the image resolution option and turn it on. And in these settings, we can also specify exactly what's the minimum resolution required for various types of images. So for color images, we can say that the minimum we want this 300 for grayscale images, I would use the same. And for bitmap images, the minimum resolution is normally higher because they look more pixelated on 300 PPI or anything on the 800 ppi. I'm just going to hit Save and then, Okay, and now if we switch to this new profile resolution, check that we just created. Immediately, we can see that there's actually one issue here. And if I click on this number, it will take me to that image and even selected in the document and within the links panel, the image should also be highlighted. And once you click on the Show Hide Link information, you will be able to see both the actual and effective resolution. Out of these two, the important one is actually the effective PPI, or effective resolution, which is based on the size of the image in your composition. So in this case, when I start changing the size of this image by holding down Command and Shift keys to re-size and keep the proportions the same. You will see as soon as I make the image smaller, the effective resolution is increasing. So I can go back down below 300 ppi. But when I make the image smaller, I can reach 306 PPI in this case. And immediately you can see that the error from the preflight panel is now gone. Once again, if I make this larger, again, Effective PPI dropping below 300, the error in the preflight panel reappears. Now in case you'd like to have the links panel open while you're working in InDesign, there is actually a very useful setting that I would recommend to do, which you can access from the panel options. And within there, you can turn off the effective PPI to be visible as a separate column within the links panel. So once I click Okay, now you will see that just next to the page numbers, I will get the effective resolution. So even just by very quickly glimpsing at this, we'll be able to spot if there's anything on the 300 PPI. And if I see something here, I can just click on the number, once again, have the image selected, and then scale it down within the design until we get the minimum resolution required. Now going back one step and having the error showing up here in the preflight panel, just wanted to mention that even though it is showing an error, it will still allow you to export a PDF without telling you again that there is an issue unless you are missing images or missing fonts for a document, I highly recommend using the preflight panel and customizing a profile for the specific requirements that you are working with and let it aid you in the process of fixing all the issues before you are sending your file to the printers. The next three issues can be fixed by using again, the correct settings when you are exporting your PDF. So we need to make sure that there are no RGB images used. The bleed settings are included in the PDF and that also transparency is handled the correct way. So jumping back to InDesign, the first thing you should always check is whether you are using the preset that the printer is asking for. Then go to the marks and bleeds settings, turn on the use document bleed settings and in case the printer asked for it, you can also include the trim or crop marks. If there's additional instructions, you add it to the slug area. You can also include that. So this takes care of the bleed problem. Moving on to the next step, you will see that by default, everything will be converted to CMYK. Now again, if the printer has a specific profile that they asked you to use, you can again find that from here as long as they sent it to you and you installed it on your computer. And by the way, it is also a good idea to just double-check the ink manager, whether you have only the four colors CMYK, or whether you have additional spot colors here in case you find some spot colors and you are not planning to use them, it would have to go back to the swatches panel and delete them. And that way InDesign will automatically replace those colors used in the document with CMYK. Last but not least, under the advanced settings, as long as you are using the PDF X1, a 2001 preset. You will also be able to choose the type of transparency flattener option for which I would always recommend to use the high resolution feature. We already discussed this in a previous video. I just wanted to remind you that in case the compatibility setting can be higher than Acrobat for, then you won't have to worry about the transparency flattening because these newer versions of PDFs 1.5 to rasterize transparency details. 31. Additional things to check before printing: So as long as you use the preflight option and you pay attention to the settings when you are exporting your PDF. Most of these issues listed here will already be resolved. Now of course, there are other aspects of the design that can go wrong and that's actually not something that the printers will warn you about. Most commonly it's spelling mistakes or typos for which you can use spell check, which you can find in all the Adobe applications. So just go to the Edit menu, spelling, check spelling. But besides using this feature, it's always also advised to have a professional proofreader go through the copy who can not only warn you about spelling mistakes, but also grammatic errors and also stylistic mistakes in the copy in case of multi-page documents, magazines, and books. Another thing that you should also pay attention to is the so-called gutter jump or run across are crossover that refers to any design element that crosses over from one page to the other. This of course, can only happen when you're using facing pages or spreads. And in case of this publication, I don't have anything to worry about because none of the elements are crossing over to the other page. And also I'm using a fair amount of margin, which once again makes sure that the text will still be legible even if this is a long document. Now when you have lots of pages in your publication, the margin might need to be increased to avoid creep, which refers to the texts being lost in the center where the binding is. And here's an example where you can see this happening. So where you have texts that was supposed to be legible is going to be unrecognizable because of the lost characters in the center. And generally these are the guidelines that you should follow to avoid any issues with gotta jump. So image a shows how everything would look on your screen in InDesign, and B shows how it would turn out in print was definitely not a good idea, is to place characters or texts exactly in the center, having the gutter literally running through it. In case you need to have texts running across the two pages, make sure that the gutter is between words. And maybe you can even increase that space slightly more to make sure that they don't read like one word in the end once the binding is done, another thing you want to avoid is to have a face exactly again in the center because that can look really bad in the final result, especially if there is a subtle shift between the two pages. So in case you have to use an image that runs across both pages, you should have always less important details aligned to the gutter, which won't cause any issues in the final result once the binding is added. So of course, there's quite a lot of things that you as the graphic designer has to pay attention to. But it's important to also mention that there can be also issues happening in print that is not your fault. It can be either the technicians fault who was doing the print run or the machines used for the printing. And that is why it's so important to do a test run or a hard proof that you receive from the printer where you can check the quality of the print and you can split things like bed registration. So that could look like this in case of an image and it comes down to the plates not properly aligned to each other. Although this is something you would rarely come across because most printers would already fixed this before they send you the proof. But it's still good to keep an eye out for it. And also when you take a close look at texts, especially Body Copy. So smaller letters check whether they are perfectly clear or not. In case they are slightly blurry, it could be caused by slurring or doubling. Slurring can happen both in vertical or horizontal direction. And compared to a good print, this is what it would look like for both of these types of slurring and doubling is similar to how the off registration looks, but it could also happen with a single plate. So you can have black color on the text, but with a small double, almost shadow like contour. And finally, another thing you can pay attention to, our bullseyes or Hickey's in print. These are small imperfections that show up in the print that you can easily spot on this single color backgrounds, especially on black background. But they can also occur on images where they might be less noticeable, but can be even more distracting. So all of these are quality problems and issues with the print or the proof that you've seen. And you should definitely flag this and report back to your printer that you need them corrected. Just remember, don't play the blaming game. Instead, work with your printer as a team. It can be a great collaboration if you mutually respect each other's work. And in case you feel like you can't get along with a particular printer, you should just simply find someone else who you can feel like you can talk to and discuss everything in detail and generally feel comfortable working with. 32. Types of logos: Logo design is one of the most commonly discussed topics in graphic design. And that is mainly because most people, either designers or not, are quite opinionated about the brands they like and the ones they don't. And the logo, in a way is the visual essence of a brand or a company. That's why as a graphic designer, if you ever designing a logo for a company, you are actually taking on a highly responsible job because you will be defining this crucial visual communication tool for the client. And even though the logo itself is only part of a company's visual identity, brand identity is still is the most important element of it because it is the one that will be seen by people the most. So first of all, how can we categorize the types of logos that we see? For this, there is seven main categories that we can talk about out-of-phase. The three most common ones are word marks, pictorial marks, and letter marks. A wordmark or otherwise also called logo type is at type base logo that most of the time just has the company's name. And maybe an additional tagline. Pictorial mark or brand mark or logo symbol is an icon or graphic base logo without any topography and let them marks or monogram logos are usually the initials of a company's name. So essentially they are logos consisting of letters without spelling out and actual name. Now the other four categories are also obviously very popular, and these are combinations of the first three that we already discussed, starting with a combination mark that is probably the easiest one to understand. It's a combination of either a letter mark, a word mark, and a pictorial mark. So it would have both topography and illustrative details. And abstract mark is very similar to a pictorial mark. But the main difference here is that it is an abstract shape, usually an abstract geometric form. So it's not a recognizable image compared to the pictorial mark. And M landmark is more like a bench which would have a container most of the time that holds together typography and additional illustrative details. These types of logos originate from the crests that were used by noble houses in the past, and eventually also by craftsmen. And last but not least, mascot logos are these unique types of logos where you would have a very recognizable character which became equivalent with the brand itself. Depending on the sector in which the brand is that you are designing a logo for can have a big impact on which of these categories will work best. So you can see with high fashion brands, it is mainly word marks or letter marks that I've used. And although there are a couple of combination marks, most of them will rely solely on typography. Since we are talking about typography, it's also interesting to mention that most brands, whether they are intact or fashion, in the last couple of years, been moving away from more decorated type faces, including serif and script to more simple sans-serif fonts. In case of Burberry, they not only changed the font, but also got rid of the pictorial detail in the logo. And in general, when you look at the left and the right side in each of these columns, the most prominent changes that all of these logos got much more legible. They can be seen and recognized from further away, even when used in small format. So for instance, even at this size, when you try to compare these logos, you will be able to tell that the ones on the right side are definitely much easier to read. Now another important thing about logos is that they are supposed to be original, unique, and something that stands out from the rest of the brands. And although this should be an aim that you should always keep in mind whenever you are designing logos, you have to also accept the fact that there is nothing new under the sun. And almost every type of combination has already been done one way or another. So just a few examples. I'm sure you're familiar with the Beats logo, but it's almost a direct rip off from this 1971 start brew logo. Even the proportions are very similar, but Beats wasn't the first one to copy this design. Even big fix had something very similar. And although it's upside down, priority parking logo is also very, very similar. Another good example is this pair of Logos, Son and Colombia. But probably recently the most controversial logo has to be Facebook companies new name and its logo matter that is extremely similar to many other logos like this one here above it. Whenever you are designing logos, just remember to do some research before you commit to a design. And if you find something very similar to the idea that you have, especially amongst the competitors of your client, then you should really go back to the drawing board and refine your concept or maybe come up with something different. Now that we've covered the basics in the next video, we will talk about useful tips when it comes to designing logos and also a few trends that you should be familiar with. 33. Logo design techniques: A good practice for designing a logo is to always start in a black and white. So don't introduce colors in the beginning. And you should always start doing sketches after you collected some references and inspiration. And these sketches can be initially more loose and then you can select the stronger ones and you can refine those further until you get to a point where both you and the client are happy. And then you can turn your sketch into a vector design, preferably using Adobe Illustrator. Now the reason why logo should always be vector base because they need to be able to scale from the size of a sticker or a business card all the way up to the size of an airplane. A good way to test whether your logo works in small sizes simply by zooming out and looking at it from a distance. So for instance, this logo right here, which has a lot of details when scale down, will be very hard to recognize what's actually going on. Having a lot of details in a logo is not only going to affect the visibility and recognizability of it, but it's also going to make it harder for people to remember it. Now for a memorable they'll go, you want to have meaning associated with the design or even better, multiple meanings. And these can be hidden meanings like with Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign identity, where all of these things highlighted in red are the things that we would refer to as deep propositions. Their visual details are referring to certain things without making it too obvious. And in case of the elements, the actual building blocks that you would use in a logo design would be referred to as surface propositions like this blue circle or the red and white lines. And propositional density is a term that we use, especially for logo design, to measure and compare the amount of these deep and surface propositions to each other. The best logos usually have a high propositional density, meaning that they have more the propositions and then surface propositions. So more hidden meanings than actual elements used. And that leads us to the most important tip that I can give you whenever you are designing logos, keep it simple, even when you're looking at the logo of Starbucks, we still is considered quite a complex design. You can tell how with time it evolved and got simpler. And you would see a similar trend with most famous brands that their logo just got simpler and simpler with time. By the way, propositional density is something that we talk a little bit more in detail in the hierarchy topic in this course. Here's also an interesting list showing the world's top 100 companies and their logos ranked by their brand value. So the first five are Coca-Cola, Apple, IBM, and Google and Microsoft. And even though out of these five, for our tech companies, the rest of the list includes brands from pretty much all sectors. So, so interesting that 21% of the logos would use circular shapes. Circle is perceived as the perfect and most balanced geometric shape. So that's a reason why a lot of brands would use it. 45 per cent of these brands use sans-serif type. And that's something that we already discussed, is clear and easier to read even from a distance. And also interestingly, 34% of these brands use the color red. And that makes sense because red is probably the most powerful color. And it's actually something that I go into much more detail in the color topic within this course. Again, if you are interested to learn more about this, make sure you check out that part of the course. Animated logos like the ones that you can see here, are also very commonly used nowadays. And they can range from simple dynamic effects to whole short video presentations. And turning a logo into an animation, again, is always easier when you have a simpler design to be able to create these types of animations and turn a static logo into something more dynamic. You would need motion design skill and experience, and most likely to be able to work in After Effects or something similar to that. This area definitely goes beyond the scope of what a print designer is expected to do. And motion design is actually something that we go into much more detail, the web and digital design topic in this course. So again, if this is something you would like to get into, make sure to check out that topic when it comes to different versions of the logo, the most essential that you should always consider and design are these four versions. So having a full color version on white and black background, and then a monochrome version also on white and black background. Having these variations defined is already going to give some flexibility how the identity can be used. But many brands are actually now use variable logos or dynamic logos, which means that they can be adapted, the format, and the environment that they are used in. So we can see a few examples here where I'm slightly more complex. Logo can get further simplified depending on the size and contexts that it would appear in. But besides functional variability, There's also stylistic variability that some brands would apply. Like with Apple, that are actually a lot of variations, but you would still recognize the brand, thanks to, again, the simplicity of the original form. But when you look for variable logo examples, you will find lots of creative solutions where the logo could even become like a little building block that again, can change depending on the format is used. Now I mentioned in the beginning when we started talking about logos is that they are part of the identity design of a brand. So even though it is the most important element, is still just part of a collection of elements that the company creates to portray the right image to the consumers. A brand identity would include every form in which the brand is going to be represented, whether it's printed or digital. But in case of print design specifically, you can think of business cards and stationery is packaging, apparel, posters, flyers, brochures, so on and so forth. Now we will discuss many of these, like business cards, stationery is, and posters in separate videos. But before we move on, it's important to also talk about brand guides, which is something that I'm going to discuss in more detail in the next video. And after that, we will also take a look at a crowdsourcing logo design contest, which will help you to see how many creative and different ways a logo design brief can be approached. 34. Business cards: Business cards can be considered part of the identity design, since most of the elements defined in a brand guide, including the company's logo, the color palette, topography will all be used on a card. However, it's such a standout and characteristic print product that is worth talking about it separately. It has a long tradition dating all the way back to the 15th century, were originally called visiting cards and then later on trade cards. But compared to this, the standard sizes that we use nowadays are much smaller. And the advancements in printing technologies allows much more creative freedom when designing them. The two most common format for which we can see a few examples here on the board, our landscape, like these two right here and portray for which we can also see a few examples. This discards out of all the print products tend to be printed on the heaviest or thickest paper. This is to make sure that they are durable and they can handle the wear and tear a besides the paper thickness for extra protection, lamination is almost always used either met or gloss. And in case a business card needs to stand out, all the techniques that we've talked about can be applied like foil stamping and bossing. We can see a nice example here. The brand name or the logo is unbiased and it actually shows up on the back, the reverse of the text. This is actually something I mentioned earlier on in another video that you just have to keep this in mind whenever you are using a print production by both the front and the back is going to be seen and used. But like always, it's not only about the special printing methods that can make a business card standout, It's mainly up to the designers creativity. And we can see even a completely minimalistic design can work really well. And in this case, it also seems like it's uncoated paper that was used to make it even more pure, simple and natural. And in case of a business card that actually can be an advantage because that will allow people to write on it. And if you've ever been to an export Exhibition where you met a lot of people and companies and you've got so many cars from them. You may have also tried to write down some notes on their cars just to remember something specific that they mentioned to you. So in case of an uncoated paper, that's much easier to do. And also in case of a minimalistic design like this, it almost invites you to take some notes here in this empty frame. Another thing worth keeping in mind with business cards is that on the front, you want to reduce the amount of elements and that can be a little bit more decorative. While the back of the card is where you have all the inflammation. And since this is going to be slightly busier, you can reduce the amount of decoration here. And generally it is also a good idea to keep one of the four corners pretty much empty. So that's a good proportion of negative space within a card. And what you also want to make sure is that you have enough margin so the tax doesn't get too close to the edge. I would say that this is almost a bit too close to the edges, but it still works. Now there's also a couple of terms that printers would say when it comes to printing business cards. These cards, for instance, would be a one per one, which means one color on the front, one color on the back, which is black. In this case, if you have nothing on one of the signs that would be 0. And in case you are using for color print on one side and only black on the other side. That would be for slash one full-color front, one color on the back. By the way, this is also a nice example of a portray format business card, which works really well with this vertical logo that can be scaled up because of this format, you can keep the information minimal on a business card. So just have the name, the job title or profession, and some contact detail. But in case you are including more information, you should still not exceed the standard seven elements, which would be the logo and the brand name or tagline, the full name of the person and job title, which in this case is actually missing contact details including address, email address, website, and social handles. And other obvious thing that most business cards would utilize is to have some kind of interaction between the front and the back of the card. So you would want to link the two sides to each other either by using the same colors, similar elements or similar topography. Or you can include elements like in this case, this blue paint strokes that would almost feels like continuing from one side to the other when someone is turning it back and forth in their hand. The standard size for business cards in the US would be 3.75 inches by 2.25 inches with 1 eighth of a bleed all around it. And for instance, in the UK, the standard size would be 85 millimeters or 3.35 inches by 55 millimeters or 2.17 inches. And again, the bleed size around all the edges would be three millimeters. And by comparing these two sizes, we can see that the US standard is larger, so it's a wider but also taller slightly. But whenever you are designing business cards for an international company, you might actually need to create multiple versions for the different sites around the world. Now, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately 7 billion business cards were printed every year around the world. And during the first year of the pandemic, It's estimated that the worldwide business card Production file around 70 per cent. It's a huge drop. Of course it's understandable because most people didn't meet in person. However, the sales in 2021 already came back to almost the original numbers from before the pandemic. And last but not least, I wanted to show an example of a print on demand company who does exceptionally good business cards. It's moo.com, which is available in several countries around the world. And the main reason I'm showing it is because it has a very good overview of the different types of business cards that you can get printed. So straightaway, we have these categories for the standard format business cards within which we can already make a distinction by introducing special materials like gold foil, raised, spot, gloss, even letterpress business card. But they also offer square business cards and even mini cards, which are tiny business cards. And this is the format they are using. So it's a 70 by 28 millimeters card. And you can see, as I mentioned, the paper rate, even for the original or default format that they're using is quite heavy. 350 grams per square meter by their lux addition would be 600 grams per square meter. This thick paper is actually really nice. This is what we also use on our business card. And in case you are planning to use a print on demand side like mu, you will always be able to find and download that these nice guidelines, but you can use on your computer. I would normally recommend using Illustrator or InDesign. And just like we covered in the special printing techniques section, whenever you want to use any of these special finishes, you would need to supply two separate files, one for the artwork itself and one for the special finish. 35. Brochure design: A brochure is a piece of paper that is folded to create multiple pages and it is distributed for advertisement and promotional purposes. They can be handed out in person, left outside for people to pick them up or send out directly by mail to customers. Now the two main categories of brochures that we normally talk of are the folded and unfolded ones. And here you can see a list of all the different ways of folding brochures. But when it comes to non folding brochures, these normally we would refer to as leaflets or flyers. This is a good format when you have less information that you need to present. And although the definitions, leaflets and flyers are not perfectly defined, normally, what I would refer to as a flyer is when only one side is printed and then both sides are printed. That's what I would call a leaflet. In case of folded brochures in general, There's also a couple of terms like leave behind, which would refer to those prints that you take two meetings and you give it to your clients. Direct mail brochures would be the ones that are sent via post point of sale. Brochures are the ones that are trying to get the attention of potential customers. And these are very often used in exhibitions, but also in stores. And pamphlet is another term worth remembering. So while in general, brochures are used for commercial purposes, a pamphlet would be used for educational or other non-commercial purpose. Now here on this board you can see also a couple of creative examples showing the variety of ideas that you can use to make your brochure stand out and make them more memorable. And remember most of the time with this type of print product, you want the customers to keep the brochures. So besides being informative, they should also be interesting or fun and maybe even playful in some cases. Take this creative example where an envelope fold it out, becomes the actual brochure or this brochure for a TEDx event where you can see through all the pages, through these dicots, circles all the way from the front of the cover. We can order this. See the last page, this red dot. And this is, for instance, how the first spread looks like with the dicot circle and the details that we can see behind. Just remember whenever you are introducing these type of creative cuts or folds, they should always have a purpose or reason and they should work well with the information and the design of the brochure. In this case, for instance, we can see how well the image was selected to work with that circle in the middle. And similarly, the theme of circles also works really well here on the left side with all those statistics, the University of the Arts, London brochures also are very creative. Here, these folded details look like speech bubbles that once opened turns into f flap on the side. But just like with the tab example, this setup with the flap actually carries on and shows up in the rest of the composition in the brochure. Another really nice example is the Design Museum brochure, where we can see all the pages having different colors. But by having each of the pages slightly differently, it makes it easy to access them and quickly jumped to a specific page. And inside, this is how spread would look like. But I also like here is that instead of using a color print, it's actually a single color print on colored paper. But even without relying on special dyes and trims on the pages, you can still be creative with a simple folded design like this one. But instead of having the pages fold out sideways, horizontally, having them fold out vertically will also allow this side to read vertically, which once again makes this brochure unique and more memorable. 36. Stationery design : Designing stationery products and especially gift cards, can be an overseen but highly lucrative area within print design. Just in the UK, for instance, in 2021, the total sales of gift cards exceeded £1.2 billion when we talk about stationery products, sometimes also referred to as office print products, besides greeting and invitation cards, it would also include art prints, notebooks, wrapping paper, calendars, journals, diaries, pens and pencil, and so much more on this board, there are a few artists I collected whose work I recommend for you to check out if this is an area that you're interested getting into, most importantly, make sure to check out her design well.com, which is my wife's side. She's also into designing stationery products and she has her own collections that are sold on various print on-demand sites based on her experience and most successful stationary designers, the key to success is originality, and that is why both traditional and digital illustrations and drawings or paintings work extremely well because they can be really unique and show a lot of character to find inspiration and be aware of the trends in stationery products is recommended to check out sites like Paper Chase, caroline Gardner, Rifle Paper cool, and of course print on demand sites like thoughtful, red bubble and society six, where you can also start selling your own designs. The best thing about these sizes that you don't have to invest any money into actual prints and storing them are delivering them. Everything is handled by these companies in return for the cuts that they get from each sale. But the great thing is that you as the designer can concentrate on the creative stuff coming up with the designs and those. So maybe develop your own ranges or collections. 37. Magazine cover design terms: Editorial design refers to designing for newspapers, magazines, books, and online publications. First, we will take a close look at all the terms and definitions you should be familiar with when it comes to magazines. And then we will move on to talk about books. The most prominent and probably most important detail on a magazine cover has to be the masthead, which is short for master had. And this is the title, design or name of the publication, which you find here on the top third of the cover. And most of the time, this is created with a custom font and kept consistent throughout all the issues that come out. Sometimes maybe the color changes or the position slightly, but generally the font and the style is going to be consistent. The phrase mass had actually ended up being used in web design as well. That again, it stands for the logo or the main brand image that's usually on the top left corner of the site. Now most of the time, the masthead takes up the whole width of the magazine cover. But if it's shorter than that, like with Computer Arts or GQ, then it's usually on the top left corner. Now, this is mainly because when you go to a news agent or a shop and the magazines are laid on top of each other, then this left third is the only visible part. So you should still be able to identify the name of the magazine just by seeing that section of the cover, the type of font, the color and size, and even the kerning of the masthead really helps you to establish the target audience, our target market for your magazine. And you can clearly see that with the example here on Empire, which is a bit more masculine and bold compared to stylists, for example, which is much more feminine. The next element that we normally have next to the masthead is called tagline, or it can also be referred to as cell line, strap line, or even Magazine back. This is usually a smart than VT way of defining what the magazine is about. Like GQ, its look sharp, lifts, smart, or Esquire. It's men at his best or read Computer Arts, inspiration, technique, great design. So as you can see, the tagline is usually a powerful, effective statement that can help to specify the subject matter or category of the magazine and other similar elements to tagline is called skyline or also referred to sometimes as banner or strip, which again is usually placed on the top or the bottom of the cover. And again, it's as wide as the magazines, so it takes up the whole width. And these two things can be very similar. But most of the time the skyline actually includes article titles or even names that are relevant to specific articles in the magazine. So it's almost like the extract of contents, like a mini table of contents in a sense. So just to be clear, which shortlist as an example, this, I would consider a skyline because of its position and because of the way it promotes the different categories or genres that is covering. But it also works as a tagline at the same time. Since we have this example, we can also see that there's usually a dateline, again, very close to the masthead. In this case, it's very tiny every Thursday because it's a weekly magazine. But if it was monthly, then again, it would specify that debt or quarterly, once again, and normally you would also get the issue number near this dateline. However, here we have a vertical placement on the left side. Here we can see it's issue 507 and also the actual date when it was published. Notice that we also have a URL, the website for this magazine that again is usually placed close to the mass tab, somewhere around there. Or also it can be close to the barcode, which usually is at the button. Now it's shortlist. We don't have a price because it's a free magazine. Instead of that, we have something that's called a pug. Now, this is indicating that it's a free magazine. And we specifically call these things pugs when they are on the corner or attached to the side of the cover, these elements should always use strong color and high contrast. So make sure that they stand out from the rest of the cover and they are there to promote the exciting news incentives or promotions. So the fact that this magazine is free is obviously an incentive for you to pick it up and read it. So in case of this magazine, I would consider this sticker to be doing the same exact thing, what we just described. But in these cases, instead of calling it a pug, I would call it a path. Or you can also use the term qualifier or flesh. And actually the sticker effect is very commonly used. So a bit of drop shadow and maybe stronger outlines or even like a star shaped like a burst is a very commonly used in magazine covers. The examples that I have on this board are very stylish and really nicely designed. But if you look for cheaper publications, you probably would find a lot of these puffs and pugs and flesh elements that just really wants you to pick up the magazine and really tries a heart cell. So you have to be careful not to overuse these type of things. Because just like everything in design less is more and a cleaner and neater look, usually looks more elegant and feels more professional. Now it is worth mentioning that you don't always need a container or bounding box around a puff. You can also just have texts like here, as small symbol, like in this case that asterisk. So this is again, something that really makes you want to pick up this magazine and really entices you to read about the things contained in the magazine. So instead of this relating to a specific article, this is more like a general sales pitch for this particular issue. 38. Magazine cover examples: Now even though in this cover besides the mass here, this is actually the largest tax. This is not the main cover line, the main covered line, That's something that directly is connected to the main image. So in this case, I would call all of this section here the lead story line or headline, sometimes also referred to as splash or as I mentioned before, main cover line. And within the headline, you can also have additional elements like the model credit, where we actually see the name of the person in domain image. And besides the main tax, which in this case is the music that matters, we would have this smaller text or subtexts, which normally we call anchorage text or strap line or most covers, you would also get additional supporting cover lines, like in this case is special report part here at the bottom left. And these relate to additional articles within the magazine that are not connected to the main image. These are usually best place to the edges, making sure that they don't cover up too much of the main image just to avoid the confusion and making sure that they are not mistaken to be connected to the main image. It's quite common with these supporting cover lines that you would get some buzzwords. And here it's a perfect example, this special report, but this could also be something like exclusive or plus or an even more stuff like that. Now when every cover, the most important and largest detail you would see is the main image. And this takes up usually the most part of the cover. So in this case we have Daniel Craig as James Bond. And notice that also there are some cool effects here with these shots that also in a way part of that main image. But most of the time, these images would have a person who is looking straight into the camera. That's a way to really get your attention. Because when we see someone looking at us, That's just really gets us drawn into, in this case, a magazine. And these pictures of people I've usually a medium shot like this one here. Or they can also be a close-up with a strong crop in this case. But some magazines would use main images in a more creative way, like with stylists, we have this main character jumping over the masthead, which is quite cool. But what if creates also is a massive negative space here in the middle. Now that's also quite common with these main images, that the background be quite empty or at least out of focus or not too busy to make sure that the main character or the main subject of the photo is highlighted. But because once again, in this example, the character is all the way on the top. It just opens up that white empty space in the middle. This is a unique and clever cover design, which really proves the point that once you understand the rules, you can break them. And that's when you can create very effective designs. It's worth mentioning that the main image doesn't necessarily have to be a photograph of a person. It can also be an illustration like this. And most of the time, by the way, it can overlap the math SAT as long as it keeps it still legible or recognizable. But it can also be even more complex illustration like here, where it really takes up the whole cover. Or it can be less complex and just simply use typography. So in case of this wired issue, the three logos closed out would be considered the main image. Besides the main image, you would sometimes also have secondary images like these, which are sometimes also referred to as thumbnail images. Even these at the bottom would be considered thumbnail or secondary images. On this cover, we can also see the barcode here on the right, which is required if the magazine is sold in news agent or show, but it is not necessary if the magazine is sent to a subscriber or obviously for a digital version. And last but not least, you can also have frames like the iconic yellow frame of the National Geographic or the red frame of Time Magazine, just like a frame painting or a photograph on a wall. These also help to make the magazine stand out when it's on the news agents stand. And it also helps to create a very clear visual margin. But it's sacrifices the size of the main image, all the additional information inside it. So everything has to be probably 10, 15% smaller than what it would be without the frame. And most of the elements that I went through in this video would be usually used consistently throughout the issues for a particular magazine, likely time apart from the masthead and the frame, that will be also placement of certain things like the dateline and the price, which would most of the time won't move between these shoes. So consistency really helps readers to quickly spot the latest issue of the magazine. But also they will learn where to find the relevant information once they have been reading that magazine for awhile. 39. Editorial design terms: So now that we covered magazine covers, we can move on to talk about what's inside that magazines and go through all the terms and definitions you should be familiar with. Before we do that, let's just stop for a moment to appreciate how bad these gotta jump is. Remember we talked about to avoid placing any important details or letters in the exact center of a facing page layout. Now, this is exactly why you should avoid doing that, especially when you are using these condensed, narrow characters, like in this case. So first and foremost, you have to always think about the full spread when you are designing something for a magazine. So instead of paying attention to individual pages, you always consider the full spread. So when a reader opens up the magazine, they will look at both pages roughly at the same time. So their eyes scans across very quickly. And even if the spread has an article on one side and an advert on the other side, that should still be some form of harmony or consistency between them. Now of course, when it comes to an actual article, the first proud of the article is the invitation for the reader to start reading that. And you have to really make a good job in combining those two parts of the spread. So there's three main factors with which you can grab someone's attention for your spread. The first one is the layout or the composition of the spread. The second is the image that you use are the main image. And then the third one is the headline. These three are obviously very related to each other. So your composition relies on a good placement of the image and the headline, or a good combination of them. But out of all the textual elements, the headline is definitely the most crucial one on your spread. It is quite common for headlines to use display type, which is not just a single font, but it's usually a custom designed font or hand lettering that really suits the theme of the article. The placement of the headline is usually on the top left side, but it can also be on the right. And some cases it can also be at the bottom or on the far left or far right. The reason why it's good to place it on the left side is because naturally we are starting to scan the spread from left to right, starting from the top left to the bottom right. That obviously can be different. When you have your magazine Arabic, you would probably have it mirrored and have things starting from the right. Headlines are usually really big. So in terms of the hierarchy within the composition, they should be really the dominant element, definitely larger and more robust compared to the other textual elements within the spread. Now in some cases, the headline itself can be using different formatting, like here, the first word is quite different even though it's using the same font family to the rest of the headline. But this still forms a single unit when it's put together. When you have a short texts that both the headline, we normally refer to that as the kicker. So again here, this would be the kicker, while below it, this is the headline. And in this example you can see that a font pairing can also work for a headline. So too, very contrasting different fonts combined together still forums, a good solid unit that can work as the headline. Now usually just below the headlines. So in this case, this section here is what we call the intro stand first or deck. And this is usually covering in a nutshell what you are going to read the balance within the article. So it really entices you to start reading, but it also acts as a bridge between the headline and the body copy. So here's another example of the kicker. The headline and below it, the intro, stand first or attack. Now, remember when I said the two sides of your spread should be considered as one unit. Even though here we have a very distinct left and right side, there's still a lot of repetition that helps to unite them together. And unit InDesign is very important. So here we obviously see the color is used on the left and the right side than the same font is repeated again. And also in general, the shapes here on the left side are quite blocky and squared, which again is repeated here on the right side. Now usually there's one element that comes straight after or attached to the intro. That's what we call the byline, is just simply by and then the author's name. 40. Elements of a magazine spread: Now these elements that we already covered are very common, but that's not to say that sometimes you might have to leave one of them out. Like in this design, I would say that this is the kicker. This is the headline. There's our byline, but there is no actual intro. We can consider this section here, the intro, but it feels more like part of the body copy. And since we are talking about body copy, that is the largest textual elements within your article. And here, the readability is crucial. So you have to pay attention to the line length to make sure it's comfortable to read the text. So too long lines or two short ones are not ideal. You probably want to set it to around 45 to 80 characters in each line. And that's already with the spaces included. Now when there is no intro, the first paragraph can be considered the lead. And notice how that is emphasized with the board formatting. So we wanted flying cars. That really leads you into reading the rest of the copy. Now another term that you might hear mentioned when it comes to the first paragraph or even the lead of an article is not graph or not graph, which is an editorial slang for a sentence that summarizes the rest of the article without giving out too much detail. So it's almost like the thesis of what you are going to read about. And some may argue that the lead and the graph is exactly the same thing. Some people would say it's different. But generally within your first paragraph in the body copy, you can include something that's, again, a little bit more elevated than the rest of the body copy. Now another important thing that you need to keep in mind when you work with body copy is that you should have a standardized baseline throughout the whole spread, which means that the lines, even if they are in different columns, should match the position so they should be aligned to each other. Here is another example, even though we have a gap here in this first column. So there's the gap between the paragraphs. We still have the alignment between the lines on the left side and on the right side. So that alignment is thanks to the baseline grid, this is a feature in InDesign that you can turn on within an individual tax frame or even for the whole document. Now, the next textual element in terms of hierarchy would be the subhead, which is usually within the body copy, columns or frames. And these help to break up large chunks or blocks of text. So here, exercise for example, diet, how fast these would be considered subheads, but that can be many levels of subheads. So even your 20s could be one. If the article then goes on and show us your thirties and forties, but that can even be third, fourth level of subheads like these, again, serves the same purpose, dividing or breaking up large chunk of texts, but again, creating smaller divisions within already a unit that was created by the second level of subpattern structure and hierarchy is extremely important with Magazine design because there's so many elements, so much information, you really need to guide your reader through the spread to make sure that they can find the relevant information. Because, believe me, most readers are not reading in the order that you want them to read. They jump around. But by having these subheads, for example, you really give them entry points into different areas where they can go. And they might actually read eventually the whole article, but maybe not in the order that it was set up to be red. Now another very important distinct textual elements within a spread is the pool code, which we can see two examples of in this spread. These are usually picked from the body copy and highlighted as essential reads from the story and something that really is exciting and interesting. Once again, these are to draw attention to the article. So sometimes you might flip through the magazine and you see a pool code that pulls you in to the article. They don't always have to be quotes, so it doesn't have to be that someone's sad. It can be just the summary or like an interesting fact. So it's really up to you as the designer to decide what should be highlighted in poor quotes. Here is another very elegant pool code placed within the center of the page. And here is another very eye-catching, strong and bold pull code within the spread. And of course, poor course doesn't always have to break up the structure of the body copy. They can actually be independence, so they can be on the side like here, a very sophisticated, subtle way of placing the pool code on the bottom left side. Now another important part for giving structure to the magazine within a spread would be the header and footer in the header, you would normally play something about the article, whether it's a recurring part of the magazine and that indicates that these current article falls in that category. Or it can be something more specific like let's say the celebrities name, who is covered within that article. This is especially useful if you have multiple sprints and you want to make sure the reader knows that they are still reading about the same thing. The footer normally holds a little bit more information. One of the crucial elements is the folio or page number, which normally you would want to place on both sides. But if you only place it on one side, it's better to use the right side within the spread, the footer can hold additional information like the URL website, or it can also be the date, and that can even be Notes and references placed here. Now in some instances, being playful with certain elements of your design can set the tone of the article or even the whole magazine. Shortlist is a really cool magazine here in the UK, and you can see how VT they are with URL. So in this case, the footer is almost completely covered up. There's no page number visible and also the URL icon read. However, this is an element that repeats on the other spreads and it doesn't always have to be fully visible. But once again, that is about breaking the rules when you know the rules. Another term that you might sometimes hear is running cattle running feet. Once again, this is an element that carries on throughout a couple of pages to indicate a chapter or section within the magazine. So here in this case, that I could consider a running head, because as we go along and go to the other page, we again have the same design there. 41. Images in magazine spreads: Whenever you place in images, there's two important things that you need to remember. First of all, is to have a caption for them and to credit the artists, whether it's a photographer or an illustrator. In some cases, you would see captions individually for each image, but the common practice would be also to combine them together and just simply refer to images as left, right, bottom. So in this text that we have everything written in one block of text to simplify the credits in case all the pictures were taken for an article by the same photographer. You can also include the name at the beginning within the byline section. So here for example, we have words, which is the article written by a person. And, but then immediately after that there's the credit for the photographer. It is quite common that other contributors are also named in the byline section. So here for instance, beside the author, we have the photographer again, but also the stylist on the right side. Now, there's many different ways of adding the captions. They can be boxes overlapping an image, or they can be written over the images. And in these cases usually it should be at the bottom where it's written not on the top because it can get confusing if you move captions around. It's again, good to have a system for them. But this is again a rule that you can break if it makes sense. In this example, we have the texts on the top left of that image. But that is mainly because the image on the far right corner of the spread where there's nothing else on top of it. So it is obvious that this caption refers to this image. And the reason why this text was placed there, because that was the best negative space within the image. So it would have been hard to read it anywhere else. And that is just another good example of understanding the rules doesn't mean that you always have to follow all of them. It's about being flexible and adapt the rules to the actual situation that you have in a spread. If there was another image on top of this, I would probably avoid adding the caption here on the top left corner. There's another term quite important to learn in print design. It's the bleed, which is usually important when you place images on your spread, whether they are smaller images or they're covering the whole spread, you would most likely want them to go all the way to the edge. So like this image here goes all the way to the edge on the top, or this image goes all the way edge on the right. And this is where you need to make sure that you have bleed. The bleed is usually additionally three millimeters outside of the final print size, which then gets trimmed. And whenever you set up the images in InDesign, you just have to make sure the actual boundary or the edge of the image goes all the way to the edge of the bleed so that three millimeters will be sacrificed to make sure that you get a perfectly printed edge. Of course, bleed is not just for the images, it's also for the rest of the spread. Like in this case, we have a very subtle blue color in the background, which means that you need bleed throughout the whole spread. And there's a big variety of images that you can use, whether they are illustrations, infographics, or photography, and it can even be a combination of these. However, once you pick a certain style, let's say a style of illustration, like in this case, That should carry along in the whole article. So it is common if there is an illustrator commission to work on an article, they would be covering all of the graphical elements necessary. Once again, this is about to assure the repetition and unity within your design, which definitely is one of the most important things to make it look professional now for images that run across a spread, so it covers both sides. We normally call them double truck or run around. And here is a good example for that. Or here's another one which you can see. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's an image in the background and then you put text on top of it that can be clever ways of integrating your type behind and in front and create a bit more perspective or depth within your spread. And that's again, a very important goal for you as a designer. Because if you can make a two-dimensional plane, which is the magazine spread into something that feels more three-dimensional. Your readers will be more drawn into entering that space that you created. And there's one more term about images worth mentioning. And that is photo package, which usually is referred to a cluster of images combined together into a column or even to a single row, or even when they are overlapped and stack on top of each other like here. Now when we refer to the safe zone within the design, we normally refer to everything within the margins. The margins are those invisible outside edges. That makes sure that texts doesn't get too close to the edge. Once again, that can be exceptions like the running head in this case, and the footer at the bottom with the folios. But apart from the outside margins, you have to also pay attention to the inner margins, which we normally refer to as the creep. And this is where you would have the binding or the spine of the magazine. So apart from keeping things away from the edges, it's probably even more important not to place anything important in this central section of the spread. And that applies to both the textual elements and also the imagery. So notice how here cleverly, the four characters within the illustration are placed on the left and the right sides, but no one is in the center. This is why planning is so important and the editor should always communicate with the illustrator who is commissioned to work on the same article. Now of course, you cannot always avoid to have no important detail around the spine or creep. So in this case, this double truck would have some details that falls into that spine section. But still, you can see that the designer paid attention not to have the text on the creep. It's both here on the left and the right side. It's still going to be legible once the final print comes out with this example again, because the image covers up the whole spread, it's impossible to avoid details ending up near the spine or within the creep. However, all the textual elements are still safe and far away from the creep. 42. Additional Editorial Design details and terms: Now, you might recall that I mentioned in the first part of this video that the main textural element within your spread is always going to be the body copy. This is where the readability is the most important aspect of your design. So you would end up usually using columns to divide up the text, making sure that your line length is not too long. And when it comes to creating columns, you would end up also having a gutter or LE, which is the negative space within the columns. The size for this really depends on the text size and the line length as well. But essentially what you want to assure is there's enough visual difference between the two sides. So your readers won't end up jumping from one side to the other accidentally. In some cases, you can push the limits a bit and use a very narrow columns like this. It's not really comfortable to read. Once again, it's a little bit too short of a line length. But because there's justification use, which creates a very sharp edge on the right instead of having a ragged lines. So in these cases, you might also be able to reduce the size of the gutter or alley between the columns. Remember, readability should be your number one priority and not the stylistic formatting of taxed. When it comes to dividing columns, you could also use a down rule, which would be a graphical element dividing the columns. So in this case, these are just simple lines, but you can also be a bit more subtle video downloads like here we have these vague dotted lines running down at the end of each column. So to the right side of each column. Now, there's another very common element within a magazine spread which has several different names. This is what I'm talking about when you have an additional little article reading the article, it's like a side story that relates to the article itself. There's many names for this, so it can be called panel, books out box copy, sidebar and also secondary coverage. There are slight differences between all of these, but essentially they all relate to these additional separated or isolated details which usually helps to tell a complete story besides the main body copy. Now these should be visually separated and different from the rest of the body copy and the rest of the magazine spread. So that's just to make sure that the reader will know exactly when to read, that they can decide to read it first before they end up reading the body copy or afterwards, It's completely up to them. But you as the designer, just have to make sure it's isolated. That can be by using a different font, a background color, and it can really vary in size. Sometimes it can even take up half of the page. However, the most common placement for these elements would be on the right edge of the spread. So this is an ideal placement for a sidebar. Panelists can also be more graphic instead of just relying on text like here we have more like a little infographic, but it still would be considered a panel. And although here on the left side, we don't have a distinct background color, this detail is still isolated enough by having those simple graphical elements here, creating a little frame and once again, helping or assuring that this is isolated enough to become a panel or box out. Since we are talking about frames, lines, of course, are also important elements within a magazine spread. They can help to guide the reader and direct their attention to certain details. Here we have a rule, for example, just underneath the headline or a here we have an eyeline, which we normally call when a line runs across the entire spread. This is another way to visually unify the two pages. And remember when I talked about depth here, there's a beautiful example of integrating the image that's in the background with that eyeline that seems to be behind the image. So even though most of the text is placed on top of it, There's still another element that feels like he's running behind the image. So that's a clever way of using masking techniques to establish more depth and perspective in the layout. And last but not least, we need to talk about whitespace or negative space, which is all the empty areas within your magazine spread. These are just as crucial as all the other elements that we already talked about. Because without a good balance between the negative and positive space, you would end up having cluttered and claustrophobic design. So even this massive drop cap we have here on the left defines quite a big negative space. And by the way, drop cap is another term that's used for defining these large first characters that can work again as a good entry point or a focal point in the design. And if you are interested to learn more about them, I have a separate video on the channel, how to use Photoshop and InDesign to create exciting and engaging drop caps. But coming back to negative space by having a lot of it really intensifies the rest of the elements and it gives a little more breathing space. So usually the more you use negative space, the more elegant and luxurious your magazine spread. We'll feel like even though with this photograph we have a color in the back because there's no actual details. I would also consider that negative space. 43. Book design - Cover terms: Let me cover it bindery earlier in this course, we already touched upon book design, but there are a lot of additional terms that we need to discuss. And we will also spend some time specifically talking about the purpose of a book cover and some best practices on how to design book covers that cell. Let's start with the basics and these are pretty much obvious terms. If you open a book and you lay it down, you will see the front cover on the right and the back cover on the left. In the middle, you will see the spine. And to keep things simple, all the pages inside we would refer to as inside pages. Now in terms of page numbering, it's worth keeping in mind that most of the time, the front cover with count as page number one, the inside of the front cover would be page number two, and the actual content normally only starts on page number three. However, there could be still forward table of contents and other things like that before the actual content starts. So in some cases, the first chapter of the book might easily start on the 20th page, for instance, another term you might hear is book block, which again refers to all the insight pages together without the cover, the opposite side of the spine, which you will see when you flip the book around and you take a look at the actual pages inside, we would refer to as for edge. So this is what we call for edge, and this is where the pages are connected. The inside margins together. I can see there that the creep or sheng ling and the same term is also used for magazines. And most of the time, printing companies would have charts to calculate the right size of creep or inner margins depending on the length of the book and the particular paper stock that's going to be used for printing. Looking at a book from above, we would refer to as the, the head of the book. And when you look at it from below, that would be the tail of a book, which we can see really nicely on these examples. The reason why these terms are also important because you might want to refer to them being printed in a particular color. Like in these cases, the actual color of the paper, of course, is not dark green. It is only visible from the outside and it's used as a stylistic feature. The spine itself can hold various information, while most of the time it would be the author and the title, and sometimes also the publisher's name or logo on the front cover, you would normally have the author's name, the title of the publication, some type of illustration or photograph, and then the tagline or a subtitle. And most of the time on the back you would have a book summary endorsement maybe by someone, and then also the barcode and the price. That are also two main categories depending on the type of cover that the book has. They can be either soft cover like these ones or otherwise known as paper bound, which essentially just means that you can bend the cover while compared to this, hardcover books are bound in stiff materials so you won't be able to easily bend them depending where you are based in the world. They might also be referred to as keys bound or hardback books. Now, depending on the relationship between the inner pages and the cover itself, you either have a self-governing or a plus cover book. Self-governed means that the cover itself is the same material or same stock as the inner pages. And plus cover means that the cover itself is made out of heavier stock or heavier material than the inner pages. Hardcover books very often also come v, the dust jacket or case wrap, which is usually a thinner and glossier material than the cover itself, which makes it easier to use various special printing techniques and embellishments used like first tamping spot UE varnish, and all the rest that we covered earlier on in the course. When you have a dust jacket, it can also host additional information. And usually this is something that you use to promote the book and make it easier to sell it. And although it really varies between books, but most of the time you would have a short biography of the author, either here on the interior back flap of the dust jacket or the interior front flap. But this area is usually kept for the summary of the story of the book, sometimes referred to as panel copy. 44. Book design - Additional terms: In terms of the inner or insight pages, There's also a couple of additional terms you should be familiar with. Like two pages together, which we can call spreads in magazines. In case of books, we would mainly refer to them as a leaf. And a page would be considered one of the faces of the leaf. The first page within a leaf would be referred to as a reversal. And the second one would be rectal. And in case of reading direction that goes from right to left instead of left to right, then these two obviously would swap and we would have worse on the right and rectal on the left. I don't want to confuse you. In most cases, it will be verso followed by rectal. Now when we were talking about binding methods, we already discussed what a signature is. But in case of books, there are actually a couple of specific terms worth remembering. This comparison shows it really well and explains what each of these mean. So there is folio and octagonal in the order of increasing page numbers. But what is common with all of these is that they all start with a single sheet of paper. So in case of a folio, that single sheet of paper would be printed on both sides. And there will be a single fold in the middle, which would result in four pages. Now you might recall the term leaf. In this case, we would get two leaves, side a and side B. And both of these would have the verso and recto sides in them. Moving up in terms of page numbers, when you have acquired through, the main difference in this case is that you would have two folds, and one of these folds is actually also cut or trimmed. So all the numbers with a quarter would be double what we've seen with Folio. So here we would have eight printed pages, which means that we have four leaves. And by moving to octagonal, again, all the numbers would double. So here it would be 16 pages and eight leaves, achieved by having three folds and two cuts. And I promised the last term I want to mention is a gathering, which are multiple folios inserted into each other and sewn together at their central fold before the actual binding of the book. And once all of the gatherings or signatures are stacked on top of each other in the right order. They are placed together with all the additional elements or components of the actual covered itself, which of course would depend on the binding method that was selected for the project. There are various standard sizes for books in the UK and for the rest of Europe, you would have the a and b format books, but there's also demi and royal. While in the US, the most popular sizes or their pocketbook size, the digest, the US trade, and the hardcover, which can range between six by nine inches to 8.5 by 11 inches. Deciding the page size or dimensions of a book is important, of course, because it will impact a lot of things like shipping, storing, but also it can influence the audience that you are targeting. Like for instance, people who travel a lot would prefer smaller size books. Now here's an interesting comparison which show us, depending on the size that you choose, what's the actual percentage of usable paper for knowledge? This is due to the unique aspect ratio of these books, but also more importantly, the size of the margins. And there is a huge difference between an A5 and then A4 book format. So why would a five, you only have 60% usable paper with A4? It's almost 80 per cent. That can make a huge difference for a long format book. And it can really change the amount of pages required for the project. But besides knowing all the technicalities of book design in terms of what will make people want to pick up a book and read it, the most crucial thing has to be the cover. And as a graphic designer, designing the cover is probably the most important task. Similarly to designing the logo out of all the other elements in a brand guide or identity design, a well-designed books should immediately communicate the genre of the book. It should also hint at the plot, potentially also establish a connection with the protagonists by using the correct colors and topography. It can also set a particular tone. And just like with other designs, having cleverly hidden meanings on a cover can also make people more interested in taking a closer look what's inside. Similarly to any other graphic design project, if you are designing the cover of a book, you should always come up with multiple variations in the early exploration stage. And this is an example of one of our pro member students, gene bowman, who created these sketches and presented them to the client. Here are also the three original concepts or sketches for the book cover we already seen earlier on, out of which one of them was selected and refined further with all the additional details that we can see here. 45. Poster design: Posters are the most common promotional products in print design, there are lots of different categories and types depending on the promotional subject. The main categories are movie posters, advertisement posters, awareness posters, and event posters. The most important thing about boosters is that they need to be eye-catching and engaging. You want people walking on the street to stop and look at your posterior for at least a couple of seconds until they find the relevant information they are looking for. Like when a movie is coming out, when and where an event is happening, why should they buy a product or service that is advertised or what is the main message in case of an awareness poster. Now, typically posters use a combination of typography and imagery or illustration. In some cases, one of these elements can be more dominant than others, like incase of these posters here, a few of them uses mainly typography. While in other examples, like some of these superhero movie posters, where is the image that takes center stage on this board? You will be able to find lots of examples thematically organised, and a part of these examples we analyze further in the other parts of this course. But there's a couple of general things you can notice looking at them from this distance is that most of the time pollsters would be portray format, although the aspect ratio can slightly vary, this is probably the most successful format in poster design. However, when it comes to advertise in magazines, for instance, they can take two pages or a full spread, and in this case, they would be more landscape format. And although these are ads within magazines, they still can be considered as posters because they are very similar in format. And in case of billboards which have the largest format prints for poster design, you will be working in this panoramic horizontal aspect ratio. And other common thing that you can see in most of these posteriors is that they utilize contrast, whether it comes down color or tonal contrast. And a few examples that really stand out would be this poster here or another poster right here, or another one in the Awareness category. Essentially posters that use black and white would be the highest in contrast. And remember, the main aim of a poster is to grab people's attention. So this is one of the methods that you can utilize, or whether it is by using contrast or other methods, a good way of testing your design and whether it's effective or not is to actually look at it from this distance. This is what we would normally call a thumbnail size. So even in this size, your poster should work. Of course, you won't be able to read the details, but you should be able to understand what the poster is about and have a general feel about it. You will see that some of these posters, even from this distance, are still successful in conveying the main message, either by using large topography, high contrast, or large imagery. But another important thing to keep in mind is that although you are trying to put as much information in a poster, you should never feel up all the available space completely. So make sure to let your design and breathe by including negative space or whitespace. And for this, we can again see some amazing examples of these illustrated versions of the original Star Wars Trilogy by all the mass or the bathtub posters for the Oscars in 2016 by 112 sub l. But even animation posters would commonly utilized negative space in the designs, which helps to give a much clearer and faster read of the composition, which is probably even more important for younger audience, where the attention span is even less than an adult's. A good technique whenever you are designing posters is to actually start in this small thumbnail size and come up with various ideas before you commit to one and refine it into the final detailed version. This interesting and fun series by Gobi carrier shows how some of the iconic movie posters can even be recognized by overly simplifying them into these extremely minimalist designs. Try to time yourself to see how quickly you can recognize all these posters. And in case you cannot figure out what they are, you can always check out the link here on the board. You will be able to find these Illustration and also other work by the artist. You may have seen these examples already, but this is also a great example of showing how certain composition is work really well for posters, in this case, for movie posters. So these are the very commonly seen cliches, like the silhouette of a person from behind, whether they are looking away or maybe looking back towards us, or seeing people from the side standing back-to-back, very commonly used for rom coms. The use of black, white, and red or orange for action movies mainly. And close up view of the main actors in a movie having big heads on the top and then beaches at the bottom. This is also interesting, that's very commonly used for drama category, again, which involves romance. And it shows that the seaside is a great metaphor for longing. Enrollments. 46. Packaging design: Packaging design is another specialized sector within print design, any product that you come across would have at least a primary packaging, which is the one that protects, preserves, and contain the contents, but also informs the customer. Most of the time, the graphic designers task is not to come up with the actual shape of the packaging, but what will be printed on the packaging? You mainly have to worry about the information aspect of packaging design. But to be able to work in this sector and to be able to successfully produce packaging products, you will have to learn a lot of specific terms out of which a few I'm going to cover in this video. Now probably one of the most important thing to understand which would apply to pretty much any type of packaging is the **** cutting, where the dye refers to these thin, razor sharp steel blades that are formed into a specific shape and design. You can think of them as oversized and sophisticated cookie cutters. And die cutting is the actual method of pressing these blades onto the substrate or paper, resulting in the final packaging steel in flat form. But during the dye cutting process, it's not all about cutting because depending on the type of blades used in the die, you can also apply scoring, which can create crease, fold or score lines. Essentially, these are the ones that are prepared to be folded or banded for the final packaging. And in case you are wondering, these are all saw blades but they have dull edge compared to the ones that are used for cutting. Perforations can also be used when you are cutting small holes into the paper or substrate, which prepares it for easy tearing. It can be used for things like these shelf read the packaging. The packaging cause usually multiple products inside and after it's been delivered to a store, it can be repurposed and used as a display unit that can go directly on shelves, similar to the other areas that we discussed in print design. Even though with packaging design, you are producing in the end, three-dimensional product, you still start in a two-dimensional view. This is what we would refer to as a key line drawing or a cutter guide, which would include the actual print or artwork. And then on top of it on a separate layer, various types of lines indicating the dyes, position, shape, and functions. For instance, full cut is usually referred to with a solid line folding or creasing would normally be dotted lines and perforations would be dashed lines. Now it's always worth double-checking with your printer what type of indications they prefer to use and set up your Illustrator file accordingly, or make sure that you include a legend like this at the bottom, which explains what are the types of lines that you're using are indicating just to avoid confusion because you definitely don't want fold lines to be confused with perforations. For instance, tooling is another term you might hear, which again refers to these cutting blocks or the dyes used in the manufacturing process. Again, as a graphic designer, you don't really have to worry about these most of the time, as long as you are using the correct cutter guides that will match perfectly these dyes. So I'm sure you guessed it as a graphic designer, it's very important to work precisely. It's extremely important in terms of packaging because once again, compared to most of the other designs recovered, which ends up being flat. Here, you are creating three-dimensional objects that need to be assembled during production or in fulfillment stage. And just as a side note, die cutting is actually not only use to produce packaging, it's also used to create stickers or even custom shaped business cards. And in case of stickers, it's worth mentioning the difference between a die cut sticker, which already comes cut out without any excess paper compared to kiss got stickers where you still have the original paper backing intact and die cutting wood only partially cut through the material to create this easy peel outline around the sticker design. When we talked about brochures, I showed a few examples where again, die cutting was necessary. And he has another great example where the front cover has this typography that's been cut out creating this very unique look. Again, for something like this, you would require a dye that needs to be manufactured. And of course, this would always increase the price of the project. But the good thing is, as long as you are using the same printer in case you have to print another version of the same brochure, which would use the same front cover for instance, that means you don't have to pay extra for another dye to be produced. Supply a separate file for the print itself. But the dye cutting process would remain the same. When you have multiple versions of the same packaging, for instance, different flavors in a range of products in packaging terms that will be referred to as variant adaptation in terms of composition, what you should keep in mind as a graphic designer is that most of the time these variance would be displayed next to each other on the shelves in stores. It's always good to keep them similar to each other enough for customers to recognize that it's the same type of product, but make sure that you use enough color contrast between them to ensure that no one is going to get confused between the flavors are the options that they have. So as we can see in this example, everything is pretty much set up the same way. So we have information on the left and the right side of this wrap around label, and it's exactly the same here on the other version. And usually besides the color, of course, you would want to also indicate the actual flavor, which in this case, and in most cases, goes here in the center where it's easy for the customers to spot for all kinds of products. You would have to include a lot of information on the packaging. But especially for food products, there are lots of nutrition facts that you must include. And of course for this, you can find the regulations and standards that you should follow. And besides this, you would also need a barcode, which in most cases would be called either an SKU or a UPC. So stock keeping unit or a unique product code. Again, that our online tools. So you might get these from your client in vector format that you need to include in your final packaging design. And we already mentioned cutter guidance, but I just wanted to show you a quick example here in Illustrator. A few things you should always keep in mind when you prepare these. So one thing that's probably obvious that all of the lines of the cutter guide has to be in vector format, even if you have some roster details in the artwork itself, the cutter guide has to be fully vector. Is always good to have the artwork placed on a separate layer and keep the cutter guides locked on a layer above it. Normally it should be set to pure black or a spot color that you specify to your printers. And it's also a good idea to set it to overprint so it does not look out of the graphics. One last thing worth mentioning is that in some cases you would have print on both sides of your packaging. For instance, in case of a box that the customers will receive can have some basic information on the outside, and it can include a lot more once they open the packaging. It can even have instructions inside what they're supposed to do with the product or how to assemble it. And these prints inside the packaging can be placed on the flaps as well and will likely make customers appreciate the actual effort that went into designing the packaging itself. As a packaging designer, one of the best compliments you can get is when you see people keeping a box of long after they used what was inside it. 47. Environmental design: Environmental Design is probably one of the most versatile and complex areas within print design, which again combines multiple disciplines, including economics, architectural, interior, industrial, and landscape design. Now of course, you don't have to be an architect or an interior designer to be able to work on environmental design projects. However, any knowledge of these professions will help you out. One of the biggest areas within environmental design is vey finding, which helps to visually connect people to places by improving their overall experience, making this space more memorable, interesting, informative, and easier to navigate. A big part of wayfinding signage, like this great example of a zoo wayfinding system. But it also includes murals both indoors and outdoors. And just like with everything in graphic design, you can be very creative in how you use murals. They can be used like in this example, where from a specific angle you will be able to see the numbers of the rooms. But when you get closer to them, they actually will end up looking like this. So it's a clever play on perspective or viewing angle. But even with the placement of murals, you can be creative and use, for instance, the floor space for navigation. The reason why we normally refer to wayfinding as a system is because all of the components that are used for navigation should relate to each other or feel like they are part of the same family. This helps people to get used to and quickly recognize the bits of information that they can see throughout specific space. So consistency in this type of design is extremely important. When you are designing signage, you should have a very clear guideline for every bit of information, size of each element, and their position should be always consistent. Tax should be always legible even from a distance. And icons should also be very easy to recognize. In wayfinding systems, colors also normally relate to something we refer to something that should always be a color guide or color-code that explains what each of these colors mean. But in case of well-designed signs, the colors would almost immediately make sense to everyone. So in general, people shouldn't have to rely on instructions on how to use a sine. Remember at the beginning of this video I mentioned ergonomics. That is actually something that is very important when it comes to the finding. Because almost every design that will end up in a space will have to work well with how people would behave in that environment. So for instance, if you know that people will be walking by something, the designers should always be close to that eye level or be clearly visible when driving by designing for events, conferences, trade shows, and exhibitions is also a big part of environmental design. And in this case, as a graphic designer, you would normally work on and produce display items. And here on this board you will find a few examples and their names like roller banners, get Zhi Bo's counter and banner stands, counter displays or point of sale displays. And just like with all the other types of graphic design compositions. With these, again, the most important thing is to grab people's attention. And once you have their attention quickly and effectively, display the information that they are looking for compared to wayfinding design here, the purpose of these display items is more about marketing, promoting, and selling products or services. And last but not least, infographics and data visualization is also something I would normally placed under environmental design. Even if these would end up in a magazine or a presentation slide, they still serve the main purpose, displaying information compared to display units where it was about selling things. Data visualization most of the time is used for educational purposes. And I think you've probably guessed that in this area, most of the designs would be created in Adobe Illustrator, sometimes maybe also using Adobe InDesign and for data visualization specifically, there's actually a very useful plugin which can be used in Illustrator that I'm going to show you in the next video. 48. Conclusion: Congratulations on completing this course of the graphic design theory series. I hope you found it useful and inspiring. Don't forget to go through the glossary of terms PDF, review everything we covered, and if you feel ready, take the quiz to test your knowledge. Come back anytime to the references on the millenial boards we used in this course to help you remember the things we talked about or define inspiration for your next design project, please let us know if you felt there was anything missing from this course or if you have any suggestions on how we can improve it, email us at info at the assignment designer.com, and we will get back to you as soon as possible. We really appreciate your input and help. Now, it's time for you to pick your next topic and dive into another graphic design theory course. Remember, there is no right or wrong order to complete this series. All the rules we cover are equally important and everything is related. But what is most important is getting a good understanding of these rules and applying them in your projects. I'm sure you will use what you've learned to create something amazing. And I cannot wait to see it.