Pete Rivard, Principal Instructor for Digital Imaging, Dunwoody College of Technology in Minneapolis, MN joins hosts Scott Sheppard & Gene Gable to discuss designing for flexography and packaging. Pete explains that in 1914, Dunwoody College was founded by the folks who also began General Mills and has enjoyed a close relationship with the packaging industry as one of the nation’s key technical resource for print education. Pete also discusses some key points of what makes designing for flexographic printing processes so uniquely exciting, and different from traditional offset processes.

He also discusses details of their technical curriculum for flexographic printing, prepress, and design. Pete shares some insights on the overall process of flexo and package printing, which unlike other processes include finishing the piece, bag, box, label within the press run. Designing the page layout needs to consider these factors, as do the variety of substrates available which are used in package design. Package designers often use 3D tools to help visualize final printed boxes or other pieces to better understand the overall folding configuration which need to be addressed in the final print file. He also details the differences between flexo and gravure printing.

Packaging and flexographic printing are one of the major growth areas for designers available in the print industry today, find out more about Dunwoody’s courses at: http://www.dunwoody.edu/graphics/

Design News of the Week with Jay Nelson

This week’s Jay shares the results of the Pantone Color of the Year for 2009: PANTONE 14-0848 Mimosa established annually by the Pantone Color Institute. He also discusses Google’s new archive of Life Magazine’s Photo Archive that makes millions of their images searchable and available for reference dating back to 1750′s. Jay also explains the Copyright Clearance Center’s ReadyImages Service that provides easy access to a large collection of images having only to pay a small annual fee. Find out more at http://www.copyright.com

For more on Jay Nelson and his Design Tools topics visit: http://www.design-tools.com

Fabrizio Scippa, Creative Director/Signor Dettaglio & Marc Aguilera, Color Management Director/Eclectic Technologist from Encompus, Inc. join hosts Scott Sheppard and Gene Gable for some hands-on tips about how they are using and have integrated color management tools into their design workflows. Encompus specializes in creating brands and identities for medium sized businesses and Fabrizio explains that color in the look of the brand is an extremely important element in their design philosophy. Since they often create brands for their clients across all mediums print to web, color consistancy is very important to them.

Fabrizio shares examples of how color has opened up many business opportunities for them. Growing up in Rome around a family business in interior design, Fabrizio has learned the impact of color in many forms. Marc, who has a photography background, works well with his team because he is able to accurately measure color elements in nature and successfuly are able replicate and communicate them for each project. Like many studios, Encompus sees color as being a top priority and Marc shares some details about their workflows and how they are able to maintain consistancy in their studio using standards such as GRACoL 7; share those color settings, calibrating their monitors and proofers. Marc shares that they provide each client with a document that “decodes” their brand colors within the various color spaces and is actively involved in color education speaking at seminars around the country.

Marc also shares some tips on how designers – who are often overwhelmed by the technology of color – can easily improve color consistancy in their designs with tips he’s presented in his discussions during the Color Control Freak seminars. His hands-on experience enable him to get the most of out available color tools from X-Rite, using their measurement and calibration devices in addition to relying on the Pantone Goe™ System and Pantone Matching System® swatches to acheive color they can rely on. Marc also explains how they use the EFI RIP designer edition to accurately match colors in their output.

Jay Nelson joins the chat with focused questions for Encompus about the Pantone Goe™ System and their ColorMunki. Marc shares a live client example where they were asked to match a terracotta tile color that after measuring it with the ColorMunki, found there was no exact match in the standard Pantone Matching System®. Fortunately for Encompus, when cross-referencing the color to the Goe system, they were able to identify an exact match that pleased the client and enabled them to

For more information about Encompus and examples of their work visit: http://www.encompus.com/

Design News of the Week with Jay Nelson

Jay shares a great tip for a retro-plugin that will definately spark up your next design called Permanent Press by Mister Retro at: http://www.misterretro.com. This unique plug-in lets you create professional quality vintage offset printing and ink effects with any design, photograph, type treatment or image. Jay’s hot topic of the week is whether or not the design industry is ready to adopt the Pantone Goe™ System. The bigger question is are the printers using the newly defined Pantone Goe™ System base inks or are they using their existing inventory with some other matching techniques? Overall, the new color system offers a larger range of colors, organized it into a manner that addresses some of the flaws inherent in the older, but widely adopted Pantone Matching System®.

For more on Jay Nelson and his Design Tools topics visit: http://www.design-tools.com

Drew Trujillo, Designer –better known as Dr. Woohoo! joins hosts Scott Sheppard and Gene Gable this week to share his background and an inside look at his amazing design work. Fusing the best of art, technology, and design Dr. Woohoo’s technical and programming background help him to bring his visions to life. Drew explains, although his early background was in traditional mediums he soon became passionate about animation and digital art applications where his current expertise tests the boundaries of Adobe’s Creative Suite.

A renowned speaker, Adobe beta tester, and educator on Adobe Flash, AIR, and other interactive platforms. One of the best places to see his work in action is on In the Mod – Color Analytics: A Study of Color Palettes website. This site offers the ability to explore art, the interaction of color and palettes, and even lets you download your favorite sets directly to your Adobe apps. Dr. Woohoo gives us his description and experiences of the power working with Adobe AIR and how it integrates within the other Adobe Suite applications.

He has also published a book showcasing his work entitled, “Color Visualizations: Exploring the Circle, vol 02“. Where he uses software he developed to generate his artwork by extracting millions of color pixels in each image, analyzing and organizing the color data and then building the composition with absolute precision.

In addition to pushing the limits of available technology, Dr. Woohoo’s art is truly unique. He combines the organic qualities of nature and textures and expands them using digital enhancements that stand out in multiple mediums. His work is available for viewing and purchase online, including his kinetic art – Dandelions.

For more information, news, tips, his art, and more visit: http://blog.drwoohoo.com/

Design News of the Week with Jay Nelson

Jay Nelson joins us this week to share the latest news and discussion about typefaces and a informative history of OpenType to celebrate the release of ITC’s Franklin – not Franklin Gothic offering a new range of options for larger display fonts. Jay and Gene, our resident “fontologists” share the use, sizing, and variations of this popular typeface. Jay also shares his review of the type focused movie – Helvetica, which recently came to his home town of Denver for a screening. PopChar celebrates it’s 20th birthday this month, which remains a great easy way to enter characters.

For more on Jay Nelson and his Design Tools topics visit: http://www.design-tools.com

Andy Hussie, President & Andrew Hussie, CTO, Master Colors LLC join hosts Scott Sheppard and Gene Gable for an overview and discussion of their unique digital color selection tool, HVC Color Composer. Andy explains how his background as an artist/painter inspired him to find a better color selection tool. Using his son,Andrew’s talents in programming they were able to create a completely different way of composing color palettes that are able to predict complementary hues within a specified color range. Working as an enhanced color picker tool in both Photoshop and InDesign, this powerful plug-in expands not only the range of definable colors but allows designers to quickly arrange, organize, and select colors specifically for their project.

The HVC Color Composer accurately measures the contrast between colors, allowing it to create coherent “smart palettes” that work with various target colors chosen by the artist. The HVC Color Composer gives professional artists and designers complete control of their color compositions, and allows the user to create an unlimited number of color palette. Andrew explains some of the differences between using the HVC and other color spaces including RGB, Lab, CYMK and give some tips on how the HVC Color Composer analyzes and assigns colors in relation to these color areas.

The plug-ins are reasonably priced, under $100 and include a one-hour custom tutorial demo – by Andy or Andrew – on how to use the HVC color space to your best advantage allowing you to immediately begin mixing colors at a new level.

For more information, and to download a demo version visit: http://www.master-colors.com/

Design News of the Week with Jay Nelson

Jay Nelson joins us this week for an update on his recent trip to the Institute of Newspaper Technology Conference held October 9-11, in Knoxville, TN. Jay shares some of the details on their workflows and challenges. Most of the conference attendees represented local, mid-west newspapers whose constant pressure to reduce their operating costs have made it difficult for them to maintain their circulation. Jay also brings up the Orphan Works Bill which we will cover extensively in a future program. Jay, Gene, and Scott discuss the release of Apple’s updated MacBook and some possible issues around their decision to discontinue matte displays on Apple MacBooks.

For more on Jay Nelson and his Design Tools topics visit: http://www.design-tools.com

Gene and Scott round out the week with some tips on how to keep your creative business booming even when the current ecomomic conditions are not.