Back in October I did a series of articles and tutorials on QR Codes that focused primarily on the business use of these little black and white blocks. But individuals can create and use QR codes as well.
How about putting one in your party invitations that will pull up a map to your party? Or make them an integral part of a high-tech scavenger hunt. Check out these and other QR Code Ideas for Personal Projects. Have other ideas? Share them in the comments.
EFI?s Auto-Count direct machine interface technology is now integrated with Heidelberg high-speed cutting equipment. Users now have real-time reporting and scheduling capabilities. Auto-Count is an industry-leading direct machine interface system that has been deployed on sheetfed and web presses, flexo presses, perfect binders, saddle stitchers and folders.
In partnership with Heidelberg, EFI developed an interface from Auto-Count to the Heidelberg POLAR XT guillotine cutting system solutions (using various model cutters, joggers and peripherals) that allows Auto-Count to capture data from the systems. This has not been widely implemented before and is now ready for customers on a broader scale.
Modern Litho-Print Co., a full-service provider in Jefferson City, Missouri, operates the complete EFI Monarch suite and utilizes Auto-Count throughout their plant. The company is one of the first to beta test this new integration. Jim Tomblinson, plant superintendent, says: ?Until now, the cutter was a black hole in our workflow since there was no way to schedule this equipment or capture data from it. With the new Auto-Count integration to our POLAR 137 XT, we?re able to obtain and track job information and operator productivity, and schedule the cutter in our overall workflow. This scheduling capability is especially useful for large jobs with multiple versions.?
?Interfacing and capturing data from postpress equipment is often talked about, but seldom put into action and working practice. Modern Litho?s vision to connect the POLAR cutting system with EFI Auto-Count brings data capturing for this segment to a new level,? says Rob Kuehl, director of product management, postpress OEM for Heidelberg USA, Inc.
?EFI Auto-Count has been delivering real-time production intelligence to print providers for years, and the new integration capability with Heidelberg further enables our customers to improve operations and increase profitability,? said Bob Howard, EFI Auto-Count product manager. ?Businesses will now truly have complete visibility into every step of the job process.?
See www.efi.com.
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We're in the middle of a drought and oppressively hot weather in my neck of the woods. In honor of the rainbow ?-- it's been too long since I've seen one -- let's look at Roy G. Biv. That may ring a bell with some of you. It's sometimes used in school to help kids remember the seven colors of the rainbow in order. Use rainbow colors to heat up or cool down your desktop publishing projects.
Can you pick the 7 traditional rainbow colors from this stack of colors?
Red is the hottest of the warm colors. If a bright red is too overwhelming, consider crimson or an orange-red like vermilion
Orange can range from hot to warm and it can be summer fruit (oranges and grapefruit) or autumn veggies (pumpkins).
Yellow is sunshine. Although we often color the sun in shades of yellow, yellow is visually less hot than red or orange.
Green can lean to the warm of yellow-green chartreuse or sway over to the green-blue side of turquoise.
Blue comes in a variety of cool, calming shades.
Indigo is the rainbow bridge between blue and purply violet. In the rainbow it's more purple than the indigo blue of your denim jeans.
Violet is a medium purple in the rainbow but there are actually a range of colors called violet with some more pink and others with a bit more blue. Pick the violet that speaks to you.
All kinds of holidays and special dates were crammed into December, including Christmas. On the desktop publishing front I've offered up two more special interest niches to explore: packaging design and periodicals. But that's not all (does that phrase remind you of late night infomercials?). If you're looking for something to carry you into the new year, consider what new skills and knowledge you're going to acquire for 2012 because this month I made this bold (is that overly dramatic?) statement: everyone needs to know desktop publishing. Find out why.
It's not just the end of a month, it's the end of a year. At the end of this post I've highlighted one new article, tutorial, or subject from each of the previous 11 months of 2011. I covered cold calling and Celtic fonts, the Readers' Choice winners, spelling issues, and QR codes just to name a few. It just scratches the surface of what we learned and talked about this year. What were your favorite topics?
Desktop Publishing Glossary Terms Added or Expanded This Month:
More Things I Blogged About in December:
2011 at About.com Desktop Publishing
A few of the highlights from January through November:
Use Cold Calling as a Freelance Designer Blackletter, Gaelic, Celtic and Other Fonts for St. Patrick's Day 2011 About.com Desktop Publishing Readers' Choice Awards Winners The Pastel and Christian Colors of Easter Under Fire -- Sort of -- the Em Dash Top 4 Things to Make With Desktop Publishing Software Spelling as a Design Issue How Long Should It Take to Design a Logo? Make Your Own Mug Shot Using QR Codes in Desktop Publishing Logo Games and QuizzesPlan for color and graphics with imposition knowledge
Knowing how commercial printers position your pages for printing can be an important planning factor when it comes to adding color and spreading graphics across a 2-page spread. As with any job, consult your printer early in the planning process to insure good results and to make sure that your job doesn't involve processes that your printer cannot handle. Reduce the cost of adding a third color to a job
Run black with blue on one side of the press sheet. Then run black with green on the other side. You may incur a slight extra charge for the color change but not as much as if you were mixing black, blue, and green all on one sheet and having to run each side through the press multiple times. Reduce the cost of four-color process printing
If planning a publication that mixes black and white with some four-color process illustrations -- plan all color so that it falls on one side of a press sheet or all within a single signature when the job consists of multiple signatures. Print better color from your desktop
Even for desktop printing, understanding imposition is important. Most inkjet papers are designed to produce best results on only one side. Need double sided documents? Plan your color for one side and black and white only for the second side. Insure smooth page-to-page transition of photos and graphics
When an image crosses the gutter (spreads across 2 pages) it may not align properly in the final assembled document. Plan graphics that cross the gutter for pages with a natural spread — i.e. no worry with exactly matching cut edges. For example, in our 16-page signature described above, a graphic crossing pages 10-11 would have a cut down the middle. Whereas, a graphic spread across pages 8-9 would have a fold, not a cut — less worry with proper alignment.
Next, visualize imposition with mock-ups and charts.
Typically, printing plates are attached to a cylinder in the press. Ink is applied to the plate's image area and transferred directly to the paper or to an intermediary cylinder and then to the paper. In screen printing, the screen is the equivalent of the printing plate. It can be created manually or photochemically and is usually a porous fabric or stainless steel mesh stretched over a frame.
If they are not restored, do the following: Restart Windows in MS-DOS mode
Type cd windows\system to go to the Windows System folder
Type dir fontext.dll to see if that file exists
If fontext.dll exists, rename it to fontext.old by typing: ren fontext.dll fontext.old
Get a new copy of fontext.dll from your original Windows disk or CD-ROM and extract it to the Windows\System folder
Restart Windows
If the commands in your Fonts folder are still missing, follow these steps: Restart Windows in MS-DOS mode
Type cd windows\fonts to go to the Windows Fonts folder
Type dir desktop.ini to see if that file exists
If desktop.ini exists, rename it to desktop.old by typing: ren desktop.ini desktop.old
Get a new copy of desktop.ini from your original Windows disk or CD-ROM and extract it to the Windows\Fonts folder
Restart Windows
If none of these procedures work or you hit a snag, post an inquiry to the About Windows forum asking for additional help.
All the FAQs: Career & Business | Software | Design & Layout | Graphics | Type & Fonts | Prepress & Printing
I'm an iPhone/iPad user so those are the apps I know about. But I know you aren't all about Apple. Fortunately I stumbled across this.
"Android devices may not be as trendy as iPhones, but they are very popular too. Developers enjoy creating apps for Android too and the market gets tons of free applications to chose from. If you are a designer with a phone or a tablet with the Android OS, you may be interested by the following cool (and free) apps."
From Designer Daily: 14 free Android apps for designers
Design, just like writing, is about communication. While most designers don't consider themselves writers, writing is a large part of what we do. After more than a decade writing about graphic design and desktop publishing I identify myself as a writer more often than as a designer. That wasn't always the case. Yet even in my earliest days of doing design work I was writing regularly. Like me, you probably wrote and rewrote your own brochure. You probably write letters or email to clients, job proposals, and perhaps a marketing newsletter and your own Web site. Designers need to be able to communicate in writing. I'm not the only designer writing about the need for writing.
Explore why Designers Need to Know How to Write.
Do you write? Do you write well? What kind of writing do you do in connection with your design or desktop publishing work?
