The 2010 archive
These comments and polls appeared on the home page of Prepressure.com during 2010:
February 2010
The poll: a career in graphic arts
There are numerous movies in which the main character somehow goes back in time and gets the opportunity to restart his or her life. I asked forum visitors if, given the opportunity, they would once again go for a career in graphic arts or avoid it like the plague. Compare the poll results to those of early 2008, when I asked the same question.
Would you work in prepress again if you could do it all over?
- Of course! (43%, 65 Votes)
- No way! (34%, 51 Votes)
- Maybe... (23%, 35 Votes)
Total Voters: 151
Loading ...Every little bit helps
The January advertising earnings of this site have been donated to Médecins Sans Frontières, to support their efforts in Haiti.
Mac & Firefox are doing fine…
I had Photoshop open while staring at Google Analytics, so why not share some data just for fun? It is no surprise that Prepressure.com is popular with Mac users. A lot of them are working in prepress and design. It is however interesting that FireFox has pulled ahead of Internet Explorer! I am surprised that Chrome is doing so well. January is also the first month in which this site got to 5000 page views on some working days.
- OS & browser statistics for January 2010
… but Playboy isn’t
While waiting for my turn in the local barber shop, I read a few ‘articles’ from the Dutch version of Playboy. One of them seemed to be a reprint for which the pictures had been rescanned from an earlier copy. The woman in those pictures had an ugly zebra moire-pattern across her skin. It is amazing that Playboy seems to have dropped its standards so much that they accept such bad quality.
My barber caught me staring for an embarrassing amount of time at one of those pictures, so I deemed it better not to ask if I could borrow the copy to photograph the effect. You’ll have to buy a few issues yourself ‘out of professional interest’ 
PrepressPete is tweeting
JOY is having a back-up but not telling the sales idiot that you could recover the report that he once again ‘accidentally’ deleted .
Fun jokes from ‘Customers from hell’
The client horror stories that can be found at the ‘Customers from hell’ blog are mostly from web designers. There are however a number of print related fun stories on that site as well. Here are some of the highlights:
“We need a 4-color, 1 sheet picture menu. PICTURES ONLY, NO WORDS. It’s for the blind and hearing impaired”.
“Can you add an infinitesimal amount of red?”
After I sent a client a mockup with lorem ipsum as filler text: “It’s good but there is a weird language on the page. It will either need to be translated or removed”.
“We don’t like the font in the logo – could you use the one Microsoft use in their software…I think it’s called Arial. I think everyone likes that one – you see it everywhere”.
“Could we try a darker black?”
“Can you send that logo over in electron form, at the highest granularity you have”.
Prospective client: “$400 for a logo?! Why are you so expensive? My nephew has Photoshop—I can just get him to do it”.
Me: “Does your nephew have Microsoft Word?”
Prospective client: “Yes”.
Me: ” Then have him write you a novel while he’s at it”.
“Can you make the circles a little bit rounder?”
“Yes! I want all them, embossing, de-bossing, foil, gold ink, thick black card. I want it to be the most amazing and truely unique business card ever that people say WOW too”.
Client: “You see where you have a full stop at the end of the first sentence?”
Me: “Yes”.
Client: “Can you change it to a comma?”
Me: “Er, well I can, but you should put a full stop at the end of a sentence”.
Client: “Oh, that grammar stuff is very old fashioned”.
“Can you make it red, but not red, you know? And maybe try a primary color, like green”.
“That’s not Quark red. I want Quark red”.
Client: “You’re fired”.
Me: “Why?”
Client: “You printed it upside-down”.
Me: “You’re holding the board upside-down”.
Client [when briefing a designer]: “I am not going to tell you anything, because I don’t want to limit your creativity”.
“Can you make the font more dangerous?”
“Can you please put page numbers on the two-sided postcard? I’m not sure people will know how to get to the other side”.
“No, I said that everything should be in all caps. That’s how important the message is”.
“Please remove the bold styling from the table headers. It will save ink”.
Client: “I want a poster that’s bigger then a piece of printer paper”.
Me: “Well, a lot of people also get 11 by 17 posters made up”.
Client: “How big is that?”
Me: “11 inches by 17 inches”.
Client: “Yes, but how big is it?”
“The proof just has too much purple. Can you just pull out some of the purple ink? Like 2%?”
I sent a client the first draft of an 8pp brochure with Lorem Ipsum filling in for the text I hadn’t yet been supplied. The feedback I received the next day was something along the lines of: “I don’t think we should put the text in French. It might seem a bit elitist to people who can’t read it. Otherwise all looks fine…”
Client: “We’d like to have the background color a bit lighter.”
Me: “The background color is already white #ffffff.”
Client: “Is there anything lighter than that?”
Me: “We can’t print this; this image is really low resolution, even for a 72 dpi thing off the web. It’s literally 300 pixels and we are printing it on a 6×9 inch postcard.”
Boss: “It’s fine, just go with it.”
Me: “But we are a commercial printer—if our own ads look like crap, why should anyone hire us?”
Boss: “We just have opposing philosophies.”
“Could we print the brochure in RGB? You know, it would be cheaper if we use one color less…”
“All these drawings about dinosaurs… Why can’t we have photos?”
“I really like the gradient – going from red to yellow – but I don’t like orange. Can you make it go through another color?”
January 2010
The poll: Using XPS
Looking at recent stats of this site, I noticed a sharp increase in the popularity of my page on the XPS file format. XPS, in case you forgot, is the Microsoft alternative to PDF. Maybe the interest has to do with the success of Windows 7, which ships with tools for creating and viewing XPS files. Global Graphics, who worked with Microsoft to develop this standard, is hoping XPS will increasingly be used in the business world for sharing print-ready documents. That would mean people will also want to print such files on digital presses or maybe even using offset. In prepress, I have yet to encounter my first XPS file or meet someone who actually uses XPS instead of (or next to) PDF. The poll asked people if they had ever created or received XPS files. That was also discussed in this thread on the B4print forums.
How much time do you spend in front of a computer screen each day?
- 8 to 10 hours (32%, 169 Votes)
- > 10 hours (28%, 148 Votes)
- 6 to 8 hours (21%, 112 Votes)
- 4 to 6 hours (11%, 58 Votes)
- < 4 hours (8%, 40 Votes)
Total Voters: 524
Loading ...Posters at ‘Het huis van Alijn’
The print shop had vanished in this museum when I visited it during the Christmas break. Fortunately there was still a lot of printed matter from the 1920’s to be seen. It isn’t just the technology that was different in that age, but also the mindset. Take the card shown below, which was sold to tourists in those days. Lift the boys dress and you will not only see a series of pictures from the city of Ghent, Belgium but also his bum. I think you’d have trouble getting this printed and sold these days!
Check my page about Het huis van Alijn for some colorful examples of posters from the early 20th century.
30 years of prepress innovation
DJ at Prepresspilgrim.com posted an interesting look back at the 10 most important prepress innovations of the past 30 years. I am one of the people that he invited to vote but I won’t spoil the fun: go read his article!
What I find interesting is that some technologies didn’t make it to that list, even though they have been around for quite some time and been hyped by many. JDF is a prime example. It has up to now been a technology driven by a few big vendors, instead of being pushed forward by a quick adoption rate by printers and premedia companies. Variable data processing is another example. Sure it exists and companies are making money using the technology but this hasn’t yet become the game changer that many people thought it would be. There are other innovations that are simply kept a closely guarded secret. The VistaPrint secret sauce falls in that category. Anyway – go read DJ’s list and if you cannot get enough of it, browse through this site’s history of prepress.