COMPONENTS OF A "TYPICAL" PRINTED PIECE

Look at your magazine or book and analyze its production components. The details we notice in any printed piece can tell us a lot about how it was manufactured. What's the first thing that strikes you? There are no naive or wrong answers—you know more about print than you may think.

PAPER
• surface appearance (glossy vs. matte)
• where does the gloss come from? (coated vs. uncoated)
• texture (smooth, not coarse; no visible fibers or other parts of the tree; free-sheet vs. groundwood)
• thickness (basis weight of text and cover stock)
• just how "white" is this white paper? (brightness)
• how much "show-through" does it have? (opacity)
• are the text and the cover papers the same? (self-cover vs. cover stock)

CONTENT: TEXT
• is more than one typeface used? (identifying type by family, face, and font)
• where did the type come from? (where did it used to come from?)
• type characteristics (serif for body text; sans serif for chapter headings, subheads, and pull quotes; ragged right; ample leading. How do we "spec" all of these variables, and how did we do it in the "old days"?)
• typographic design elements (subheads, pull quotes, type color)

CONTENT: IMAGES
• photographic images (scanned from prints, chromes, or slides, or captured as data files by digital cameras; color corrected, combined digitally with other images, and incorporated into page layouts)
• non-photographic artwork (scanned from originals, or created digitally with a design application; color corrected, combined digitally with other images, and incorporated into page layouts)

DOCUMENT PLANNING AND CONSTRUCTION
• is the page structure consistent? (uniform column widths, gutters; whitespace; chapter opening pages, etc. How was it done? How did we used to do it?)
• count the pages, including the covers and inserts: what does the number tell you? (signatures and impositions)

COLOR
• does the document make liberal use of color? (although we take color pretty much for granted in most of the printing we consume nowadays, color was expensive and only selectively used in printing until fairly recently)
• is the color "realistic"? (i.e., is it faithful to the "memory color" of the depicted scene or object?)
• how many different colors do you see? (range of visible, ergo achievable, color diminishes [is compressed] from original to photograph, monitor, proof, and printed piece)
• was each different color that you "think" you see printed in its own special color of ink? ("illusion" of full color from CMYK separation)
• look at one of the color illustrations through this 8X printer's loupe: what do you see? (halftoning)
• some of this color is "bleeding": where?
• in graphic design and production, how do we let each other know that the color is OK? (proofing)

PRINTING (PRESSWORK)
• is this a good job of printing? Is it clean? Sharp? Free of obvious color shifts and imbalances; "hickeys"; smearing; "ghosting"; show-through? Good printing is about keeping these and a host of other problems from occurring by maintaining tight control of a highly variable process)
• if you wanted a few more copies of the piece you are holding, couldn't they just go back on press and print you a few dozen more? it's a trick question. (run length minimums and cost per piece, conventional vs. digital; print on demand)
• is your copy of whatever you are holding identical to every other copy in the print run? does it have to be this way? (variable-data printing)

BINDING AND FINISHING
• how is the piece held together? (perfect vs. mechanical binding)
• your piece was printed from flat sheets of paper or from a continuous roll (web) of paper: how did it get to be the paginated item you're holding in your hands? (folding, slitting, collating, and gathering; inline vs. offline in the bindery)
• does your piece contain a spread that demonstrates the high quality of the binding? (looking for a precise crossover; bindery impositions, printer's spreads vs. reader's spreads)
• the tear-out card in your piece: does it appear to have been printed in the same run as the rest of the booklet? then how did it get there? (inserts)

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