Production Blitz

1. Printing methods is the first key concept in production. There are five different methods that work into printing methods which include offset lithography, gravure, flexography, ink-jet, and large format.

Offset lithography is the most popular commercial printing methods. It works for the commercial industry because it is quick and inexpensive.

Gravure method is used for long runs of magazines and catalogs, particularly mail order catalogs because they are consistent with printing images with millions of tiny cells.

Flexography is popular within the packaging industry and easily prints on milk cartons, bread and candy wrappers, gift wrapping, cereal boxes and more.

Ink-jet printing is just like your deskjet printer you can easily find in your home. These printers are good for doing small jobs and printing addresses.

Large format printers are used for very short runs or even single copies, but they are able to do very big jobs. They can print on banners, displays, maps and more large items.

To the right is an example of what a large format printer can easily create. The design can be as complex or as simple, but it can still print it onto large canvases, like this banner.

2. Quality problems are very crucial because it can cause a stop in production and have to start over. Ghosts, hickies and scumming are all types of quality problems.

Ghosting begins with poor layouts of the design. A major reasons for ghosting is with layouts having large solids within the design.

Hickies come from dirty presses and from picking. This fault also shows up when there are large solids involved in the design.

To the left is a picture of what hickies can look like when it comes out of a printer.

Scumming is a streak within the ink of the design or also a tinge. This problem is caused by too little water.

3. Folding and binding is can be very important when creating a design because you are able to change a design very drastically by different folds. There are three concepts involved in this method which include bleeding, tri-folds, and signatures.

Bleeds are when there are correct dimensions to the design so the picture does not show the white space around the picture. It is almost like the picture overlaps the dimensions of the design, therefore there is no white space.

To the right is an example of bleeding of a picture. The picture on the left has no bleed while the right does.

Folding is a fun concept within this method because there are an endless amount of options to choose from. But there are folds that are more useful for different designs.

Signatures are foldings of paper that are then cut in order to make multiple of them out of one piece of paper. There are many different methods in creating signatures.

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