Getting covers printed

[Nicu Buculei]

Paul W. Frields wrote:
> Obviously this is my first time through this process from the inside,
> but here are some of the issues that confront us for getting the discs
> made, from the Artwork perspective:
> 
> I talked to Mairin yesterday and she says that getting the
> artwork/sleeves/discs printed has been a very time-consuming process
> in the past.  Given our very fast-approaching release, let's get some
> consensus on these questions:

I wound in my inbox some specs from the printing shop Red Hat used at 
the last release:

"The layout of die for the graphic designer, is 10x6.5.  It is converted 
to a 5"x5" sleeve, their are glue tabs of .75" on the sides.  They 
should also account for bleed about 1/8" all on ea. side.  If they need 
additional info, let me know, it is only one sided, (of course, inside 
is just blank).  A PDF would be great to send it to us. "

> * Which art are we going to use for the sleeves?  Do we have any
>   possibilities for re-use of any previous design?

If we keep the tradition, the last incarnation of "Waves" would be used 
- I tried to play a bit with it but it absolutely blocked my computer 
(excessive use of blur in Inkscape is very CPU hungry).

We can reuse the main template: open the old SVG, release the clip, 
delete the old background, import the new background, clip it. And of 
course, update the text.

> * Who is responsible for dealing with the printer?  What are the
>   mechanics behind doing this?

Printer is the printing shop contracted for the job? (Double Data) If 
so, last time Max was in direct contact with them. He worked closely 
with Mairin and my input was limited (I am on the "wrong" timezone and 
available at odd times).

> * How can we make this process easier in the future?

I believe the problem is like this: our fancy images are best suited for 
deskjet printing, for a few number of copies. For large scale printing 
you may need color separation  and other pre-processing.

Another problem is, a professional printing shop will expect vector 
graphics, preferably as PDF (they don't work with SVG). And our images 
with advanced SVG features do not export well to PDF (some of the 
features are simply unsupported, some not yet implemented, parts or the 
graphic are rasterized, losing all the advantages of vector images).

But basically the process is simple (as I outlined above, like 5 minutes 
for upgrading a template to the current graphics), the key is to have a 
final version of the desktop artwork in due time and that artwork to be 
suitable for print.

-- 
nicu :: http://nicubunu.ro :: http://nicubunu.blogspot.com
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