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Volume 9, Issue 1 Design Notes: Afraid of Ghosts?
Design Notes: Afraid of Ghosts? It can be incredibly frustrating. A particular page design may look great in your mind’s eye, even better on-screen and absolutely phenomenal in the proof. But when it’s printed, despite the press crew’s best efforts, it’s another story altogether. The truth is that good design can’t occur in a vacuum; it needs to take into account the parameters imposed by the medium in which it is to be executed. There are things you can do with clay that you can’t do with marble, things you can do with oils that you can’t do with watercolors, and things you can do in a sheetfed environment that you can’t do on a web press. As Dirty Harry pointed out, “A man’s gotta know his limitations.” It’s small comfort to know that you’re not alone: Pick up virtually any web-printed magazine from any newsstand and you’ll see examples of mechanical ghosting. Inherent to web presses—and exacerbated by the design or layout of the printed form—mechanical ghosting occurs when a large amount of ink printed in one area affects the ink density of another area.
Here, the image has a square border made up of solids or heavy screens. Unfortunately, the sides of the border are not as dark as the top and bottom because the vertical sections require far more ink to be supplied by the rollers in the printing units than do the top and bottom sections. The long borders strip the ink from the rollers faster than the printing unit can replenish it—with the result that the needed density can’t be maintained.
Because there’s little we can do in the printing process to overcome mechanical ghosting, the best solution is usually to modify your page design or—at minimum—ensure that problematic designs will not run in-line with one another. Fortunately, once this problem is understood, it’s relatively easy to predict where mechanical ghosting might occur. Using lighter screens, avoiding square-shaped tint panels and boxy designs, moving any dividing line off the perpendicular and making use of smaller-sized designs also help minimize the problem. In-Line Compromise Like ghosting, this issue is inherent in the printing process and is greatly influenced by page layout and design. It occurs when two printed images are imposed directly “in line” with one another in the direction in which the paper travels through the press and both feature the same color, one with much greater intensity than the other. A classic example is the case of a full-page advertisement showing a bright red automobile on one page, and an advertisement with a prominent blue sky on the page running in-line with it. Because the press requires a huge amount of magenta ink to get the correct density for the red car, so much ink must be applied to the rollers of the printing unit that the smaller, less-dense magenta dots in the blue sky become denser than they should be. The result is a bright red car on one page and a purple—rather than blue—sky on the other page. This is a problem you’ll never see in a proof. It doesn’t show up until the job is on press, and at that point press crews are limited in their ability to solve it. Their only recourse is to compromise, reducing the amount of magenta ink to make the sky less purple and the car a less-vivid red. Unfortunately, they’re not in the best position to make this kind of decision. Once again, the design and layout of the magazine are the most influential factors in this problem. A careful review of United Litho’s “blue-gray imposition sheet” (or the Press Layout view in Proteus) can help you identify which pages fall in-line with known “trouble-makers” so you can anticipate and alleviate possible conflicts by rearranging pages if necessary. You can also ask your ULI account manager for guidance; if you know your page count, the AM can not only press-plan the job in Toolbox in advance and print out web sheets, which provide a very good visual representation of which pages will run in-line with one another, but can specifically check on any critical or problem pages and alert you to potential conflicts. Letter to the Editor: True Teamwork Something neat happened today ... one of the most extraordinary examples of teamwork I’ve ever been part of. Because the rules of Periodical mail can be complicated and confusing, the folks in Mail Services try to be an extra set of eyes for our customers. That’s why Sandy Kerst flagged a mail piece marked as a “Supplement to” that she thought didn’t qualify, and why I took the piece back to Linda Lunzer, the account manager, to talk about it. Linda asked whether the customer could simply change the postal endorsement to “Ride-Along Enclosed,” noting that they’d mailed a similar piece that way last year. (The USPS offers a special Ride-Along rate for polybagged standard-mail pieces enclosed with a Periodical host piece, as long as they don’t weigh more than 3.3 ounces.) Unfortunately, because this piece weighed about 3.45 ounces, the customer was looking at roughly $4,400 additional postage. Linda pulled the job information from the last time ULI produced this piece and we realized it had been run on a lighter paper—40 lb. rather than the 45 lb. stock currently called for. Two questions then needed immediate answers: How important was the 45 lb. stock to the customer? and Did we have a suitable 40 lb. stock on hand? The next stop was JoAnne Bland in scheduling, to find out whether or not the form was already on press and—if not—whether the job could be put on a temporary hold if necessary without too big an impact on the schedule. Fortunately, although the paper had already been staged at the press, the job was about 30 minutes from actually going on press—just about enough time to make this decision. I then went to see Melissa Fisher about paper. Melissa manages the paper warehouse, and she always has a buffer, “just in case.” True to form, she had the paper we needed on hand. We were on a roll! Because the customer was at a convention and we weren’t sure we’d be able to get in touch in time, I brought Sales and Marketing VP Wayne Peterson into the loop. Wayne said our relationship with the customer was such that we could make this decision for him if we couldn’t reach him, but suggested talking to the account executive, Dave Lageman, to make sure he was comfortable with the paper change. Back to Linda, who was way ahead of me. She had already spoken with Dave and the customer, both of whom were in favor of the switch. Melissa okayed the paper change, and JoAnne made sure the change was made on the floor. From noticing the problem to approving and implementing a change that saved a good customer $4,400, the entire process took less than 10 minutes! Obviously, we’ve got good systems and great people, and I’m proud to be part of this team. Hugh Tolson, Mail Services Manager
Overprint Previewing Stop! Stop what you’re doing right now, load Acrobat (and/or InDesign) and enable Overprint Preview. This setting is off by default, but will make Acrobat or InDesign display your files more accurately by honoring and displaying those objects that have overprinting enabled. This is important because someone may have unintentionally turned on the overprinting of an object, but there will be no visual cue that this selection was made or that anything might be wrong. The differences in color can be significant. If magenta text is placed on top of cyan and overprinted, you’ll get a very dark blue shade. Overprint Preview can be enabled by going to the Advanced menu in Acrobat and making sure it’s checked. A better option is to go to the application’s preferences and permanently turn it on there. Note that this option exists even in the free Acrobat Reader 7.0 for both Macintosh and Windows platforms. So how about a more interesting question ... how would overprinting get turned on in the first place? There are two explanations. One is that your application thinks you need it, and the other is that someone may have turned it on manually. To check the settings, you have to know where to look. In Quark, if you select some text or an object and go to Window > Show Trap Information, you’ll see what Quark wants to do. It’s always a good idea to click on any colored text in Quark to see if the application has decided to overprint it or not; Quark is notoriously bad at deciding what settings to apply. In seminars, I often show how Quark will occasionally choose to overprint white—the end result being the text not printing! It’s been like this for years; fortunately, this will come to an end in Quark 7. In Illustrator and InDesign, overprinting is selected by going to the Window menu and choosing “Attributes.” Because this selection is in its own menu, it can be difficult to remember. While you’re there, you might want to make sure that Non-printing is unchecked as well. Remember that Adobe’s Overprint Preview feature isn’t perfect. In fact, it won’t detect the Quark “overprinting white” situation discussed above. But it’s definitely an option worth keeping on. Crop mark offset When an advertiser sends in a PDF file, it may include crop marks to indicate the positioning of the file. However, we’ve recently noticed some PDFs that have the crop mark-offset at less than 9 points (.125”). Since this number is less than the amount of the bleed, the crop marks may actually show up on the printed page! Please remind your advertisers that if they plan to include crop marks, the offset should be more than 9 points. Your designer will love you for it, too. Get back to OS X If you ever decide to change your Mac so that it boots into OS 9, there may come a time where a startup error will refuse to let you continue to boot, with no obvious way to get back into OS X to fix anything. Here’s an easy tip: Hold down the “X” key while booting and you’ll be brought back. Improve text in InDesign Turn optical character alignment on. When deciding how to hyphenate a line of text, InDesign will consider how the text will appear to the eye and not just how the math metrics add up. Play Windows Media in QuickTime Have you ever wanted to play all of your media content in one OS X player, but been stymied by QuickTime’s inability to play any kind of Windows Media files? Now there’s a free solution. TeleStream’s Flip4Mac WMV player, which used to cost $10, has been released to the public for free download.
An Extraordinary Service Experience: Business Officer All the ingredients for a strong bond were in place from the beginning. April Sellers had just made her first sale as a ULI account executive, signing the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) to a multi-year printing agreement. And Gerry Romano, CAE, had just joined the organization as editor of Business Officer, the association’s monthly magazine. As NACUBO’s flagship publication, Business Officer magazine has a reputation as the authoritative source on higher-education business management, providing its 24,000 readers with up-to-date information on current challenges and emerging trends in strategic planning and budgeting, accounting, finance, technology, facilities and student financial services. “We pretty much started at NACUBO on the same day,” recalls Romano, who has since been promoted to director of Member Communications and editor in chief of Business Officer. “ULI has ‘held my hand’ through some key magazine-team changes that left me needing extra assistance temporarily, and they’ve helped me orient a number of new team members.” She notes that ULI’s New Title Start-Up Meetings have been a huge help when NACUBO has a new staff member or consultant who needs to be brought up to speed quickly. “The ULI team is always happy to come to our offices and provide a rundown on printing and mailing processes. They also spend a lot of time listening to our special needs and responding to our questions.” Romano describes the support she gets from Account Manager Brooks Goode, Client Services Manager Shannon Marzolf and Tech Support Rep Andy Moore as terrific, and notes that the Yellow Team provides excellent back-up. And for Sellers, Romano has nothing but praise. “April is extraordinary,” Romano says. “Everyone should have an ‘April’ in their lives ... someone to answer questions completely and clearly, address concerns promptly and provide excellent input and advice ... someone consistently on the ball, professional, enthusiastic and cheerful. Where did she come from?” Sellers herself says the relationship with NACUBO is “truly a partnership. Gerry and the rest of her team are great to work with—hardworking, really organized, passionate about what they’re doing. We’re not perfect, and we have had an occasional issue, but they know that if something isn’t right, we’ll fix it. So they’re comfortable being open and honest about how things are working, and what we might be able to do to improve the process or the relationship.” Sellers adds that the NACUBO team is “just a lot of fun to work with! We work hard, and we play hard.” Nowhere was that commitment to both work and play more evident than in the redesign process NACUBO completed last year. “Throughout the process, our editors and designers received strong support from ULI’s Yellow Team. And in the end, the plant delivered an outstanding product,” Romano says. “We really counted on ULI for responses to our many questions about paper choices, new mailing label options and ways to more efficiently produce Business Officer. Again and again, they came through with comprehensive, clear information and suggestions. And—almost as important—this is a group with a great sense of humor! That’s always a plus, but it’s particularly appreciated when you’re talking about things like labels.” Romano notes that the ULI team spent a lot of time evaluating NACUBO’s paper needs and desires to help them make the right decision. “They kept showing us samples and running the numbers on all the options we wanted to consider,” she explains. “That was a key part of the redesign process, since we knew a paper upgrade would come with a significant price tag. Done wisely, though, we knew it would boost Business Officer’s reader friendliness, level of sophistication and overall impact. And ULI helped us make the right paper decision.” “We were able to suggest a lot of different options,” Sellers says. “I was really pleased that NACUBO was so happy with the end result. They’re really proud of their magazine—especially since the redesign.” To celebrate, Sellers hosted a dinner at a Washington, D.C., restaurant, inviting Goode, Marzolf, Moore and key members of the Business Officer staff, as well as spouses or significant others. “I wanted to make the event special,” Sellers says. “It was really fun to get to know each of them on a more personal level. I even got to see pictures of Gerry’s cat, Tracy.” Romano says the high level of service NACUBO received during the redesign came as no surprise. “From the start, United Litho has been a full partner in Business Officer’s success,” she says. “We’ve enjoyed top-notch performance ever since we began working together, and I really appreciate how the Yellow Team has supported us through our many transitions with the magazine staff. As we’ve changed staff and switched designers, ULI has been our rock.”
From funky fonts to problematic PDFs, from soft proofs to system specs, former DPP operator Andrew Moore draws on his extensive background in digital prepress to provide one-on-one assistance to customers trying to navigate the often-perplexing world of electronic publishing. Offering training as well as troubleshooting expertise, Moore has been United Litho’s designated technical support representative for nearly seven years, garnering rave reviews from both customers and colleagues. Beth Moorman, magazine production manager for the National Glass Association, is one of many who can’t say enough good things about him: “When we migrated to a proof-less PDF workflow, Andy was my go-to person to answer any prepress question, no matter how simple or complex. He provided hours of support, even going so far as to contact the software manufacturer to alert them to a problem with the way the application handled a specific prepress issue,” she says. “He has a tremendous talent for explaining extremely technical processes in a way that even a novice could understand, and he’s always there with a smile whenever we At 37, Moore’s hair is graying a bit, but his grin—both impish and infectious—brings out the kid in everybody around him. Whether firing up his electric griddle for an impromptu pancake breakfast in the Sales & Marketing Department, coming to work dressed as a member of the Blue Man Group for Halloween, or tossing out Hershey’s Kisses to reward good questions from ULI Boot Camp “recruits,” Moore is determined to inject fun in unexpected ways. In his personal life, that fun comes in the form of running, cooking, adding to his growing wine cellar and competing in Frisbee K9 circles; last year, he and Jessie, his Border Collie-Sheltie mix, were Small Dog Champions in their local Frisbee club and World Finalists in the Hyperflite Skyhoundz World Championship. In his job, he gets a huge charge out of diagnosing and solving problems. “I can see why customers love working with Andy,” says Account Executive April Sellers. “I love working with him myself. He has a great sense of humor and he's so knowledgeable about digital issues. When my customers compliment United Litho, Andy is always singled out. He isn’t even specifically assigned to the Yellow Team, but he makes such a great impression and forms such great relationships that customers consider him an integral part of their team here.” Moore says he treasures those relationships, too. “A number of customers have told me that they think of me as an extension of their staffs, so I’m thrilled when I can resolve a problem that’s been driving them crazy. That just makes my day!”
Easier Soft Proofing: Saving Steps One of the requests we get quite often is how to simplify the process of printing pages out of Rampage Remote. For those customers who want to use Remote exclusively to proof their magazine, there’s been no obvious and easy way to print each page on the their own printer—without selecting each page, downloading it, selecting it again and printing it. To download and print every page in Rampage Remote to a local printer: • Log in to Rampage Remote with your username and password as usual. Click on the “Page Name” field so that the pages sort alphabetically. Then, select all of your pages by clicking on the topmost page, holding the shift key and clicking on the bottom page. • Command-click (or Right-click for Windows users) the bottom entry and choose “Download.” • In the resulting dialog box, choose “stitch pages into one large file.” • Under “Quality Options,” choose your requested DPI and quality. We recommend using High for soft proofing. • Under color options, pick CMYK. • Click the “Download” button, name your file and click “Save.” It will take awhile for Rampage Remote to generate all of the proofs and stitch them together. (This all happens in the background before the download process begins.) After the download has finished, you can simply load the PDF in Acrobat and choose Print as you would with any other document. This is a huge time saver for those who want to distribute a large quantity of hard or soft proofs to their editors!
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Technically, mechanical ghosting occurs when the rollers that distribute ink in a press can’t replenish the depleted ink fast enough, effectively starving the plate of ink in some areas and causing a visible difference in coverage. A classic example of this appears at right.
This problem can also be seen in the example at left, where the vertical edge of the green border is starving the rollers in the cyan unit and affecting both a section of the teal horizontal band immediately below and the purple band on the page running in-line with it. Unfortunately, proofs don’t show either of these problems.