Quick Tip:
Maneuvering the Commercial Printing Maze Safely
Up until this year's Bootcamp, the commercial side of printing always seemed confusing to me … and more than a bit scary. But having Tom the printer there to answer our printing questions helped relieve the confusion. It also got me excited about this aspect of design.
So on the way home, I stopped by Barnes & Noble and found two new books about printing that I want to share with you.
The first is Real World Print Production. Like most of the Real World books I've seen, this one is thorough. What I especially like is that it has specific chapters for print issues with software like InDesign and Quark.
The other book is The Official Adobe Print Publishing Guide, Second Edition. This book isn't quite as intense as the Real World book, but it provides a good overview of the subject. It has a number of glossaries for the various sections, and is a good starting point for graphic designers.
The main chapters in the Adobe book are:
- Color and Commercial Printing
- Constructing a Publication
- Imaging and Proofing
- Project Management Guidelines
This might not look like much, but each chapter has about 10 different sections (such as Printing Terms, Using a Color Management System, Checking Your Files, and Selecting Vendors).
And, at under 200 pages, it won't overwhelm you.

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