Comments for Nani Prints

Comment on The changing logo landscape by Great Examples of Modern Corporate Logos « Ready Aim Design

Great Examples of Modern Corporate Logos « Ready Aim Design — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:32:03 +0000

[...] The eight color design, however, bends traditional rules of logo creation (typically three or fewer colors to keep printing costs down) and sparks some interesting debate about the evolution of print design in an increasingly digital landscape. [...]

Comment on The reflex blue blues by links for 2010-03-04 « random thoughts and casual ruminations

links for 2010-03-04 « random thoughts and casual ruminations — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:07:56 +0000

[...] The reflex blue blues « Nani Prints [...]

Comment on The reflex blue blues by naniprints

naniprints — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:14:55 +0000

Hi Tyler, Good idea to seal the sheet. Aqueous coating on uncoated may introduce sheet stretch, though, so weight, surface, hold-out, and recycled fiber content should be assessed before going that route. I’ve had offset on sealed sheets, too. The third example I cite was a coated dull stock, sealed with aqueous.

When I work with graphic designers, heavy coverage is pretty much a given. In my experience, they loooooooove big solids. So not only are we talking big solids here, in most cases we’re also talking double bump (two hits of) blue ink.

Comment on The reflex blue blues by Tyler Ashcraft

Tyler Ashcraft — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:59:17 +0000

I think it’s important to reiterate that this is typically only a problem in heavy coverage areas. Another solution is to seal the sheet with an aqueous coat, even if you are using uncoated stock. This will add some resistance to rub and offsetting.

Good post! Rarely does anyone beside in-plant job planners consider this type of thing.

Tyler Ashcraft
Account manager
Bridgetown Printing, Portland Oregon

Comment on The reflex blue blues by naniprints

naniprints — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:38:16 +0000

Hi Rafael, Glad I could add to your printing encyclopedia. I love it that there’s always something new to learn, even if it may not be all that fun at the moment—like when you’re hanging around, waiting for ink to dry. Over the past few years, there’s been a lot more corporate orange than corporate blue, so the problem may be less prevalent until blue comes back into fashion, as it undoubtedly will.

On that reflex blue annual report job I mentioned, my rep said, “I don’t care if this job IS a fairly short run, next year we WILL l run it on the UV press!”

Comment on The reflex blue blues by rafael armstrong

rafael armstrong — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:27:06 +0000

Huh! I had never really– in all my years working with print– given much thought to the effect the mix itself had on drying.

I’ll have to keep that in mind for future print jobs.

Thanks!

Comment on Money-saving tip #3: series pricing by naniprints

naniprints — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:22:48 +0000

Hi Jim, Thank you for weighing in. I absolutely agree with you! This kind of series pricing is NOT a given, and much more possible with a vendor with whom you have a strong working relationship and a positive history.

As I tell my students, you can only get away with lying to a printer ONCE, and then it will be your tough luck the next time you need to throw yourself on his mercy. If you have burned the vendor in the past, he’s likely to say, “Too bad for you, Bucko!”

Comment on Money-saving tip #3: series pricing by Jim Munro

Jim Munro — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:03:30 +0000

This is really good advice but I would ad just one thing.

Please be truthful with your printer. We have all heard the story before. The one that goes something like, “Give me a really great price because I’m going to need a lot more of these….”

Printers are professionals, tell us what you need and what you are trying to accomplish and we will help you get there.

Comment on On passing postal muster by Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:27:43 +0000

Brian, I assure you our barcode looked better than Nani’s lo-res jpeg. As I mentioned I work at a printing company, which also happens to be one of the largest mail houses in our area (LA). As I mentioned our very experienced Mail Production Manager helped coordinate the sample mailings for us, then took the results personally to the Postmaster to discuss the discrepancies. Her response was basically that she couldn’t (wouldn’t?) do anything about it. I don’t know where you mail out of but here they seem to make up the rules as they go along.

Comment on On passing postal muster by naniprints

naniprints — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:00:57 +0000

Thank you so much for your kind words! If my posts help someone figure these things out, I’m glad. Postal regs aren’t for the faint of heart. Thank goodness for mailing pros!

Excellent point about the color issue with OCR readers, something I didn’t go into. You’re right, the dark orange alone would put that postcard example into the lim lim pile. If you are concerned about stock color, one way to check is to make a B&W photocopy of your design. This one would read nearly black. In my experience, if you bring up stock color with the USPO postal requirements folks, they tend to get excited about colors as pale as beige!

Thanks for mentioning the new flats addressing rules. They may as well be written in ancient Egyptian pictograms, for all the sense I could make of them. The fold-it-in-half suggestion is cool.

Personally, the USPO machine-read addressing thing has wreaked havoc with mail delivery at my house. I finally wrote to the head PR guy for the entire US Postal Service to get resolution, after a YEAR of trying to get the PO to fix the problem. Their database was “correcting” my address to my neighbor’s address whenever letters or catalogs didn’t have a secondary designation (unit number) on them. (It’s amazing how well it worked to write to the head guy. Days later, the person empowered to solve the problem was ON it, and fixed it. This showed me yet again that some great people work at the USPS, but are often hamstrung, and as you point out, overworked and underpaid.