LEARNING CENTER

Since the advent of Electronic Mail, enterprising and morally gray entrepreneurs have been using unsolicited email, or SPAM, to play the odds and make a buck. The emails they send range from semi-legitimate to downright illegal, and the unfortunate truth is, there's very little that can be done to stop them.

Today SPAM accounts for 14.5 billion email messages a day, or 45% of all emails. Most of these are advertising (36%), with adult content at a close second place(31.7%). Despite SPAM's reputation, scams and fraud account for only 2.5% of all unsolicited email (75% of which are identity theft scams). Spam blockers help weed out many of the worst offenders, but plenty of SPAM still gets through.

When your job is printed at a commercial printer, one of the biggest decisions you can make that will have a huge impact on the cost and presentation of your book or magazine is binding. Luckily, most printers are very knowledgeable about this subject and usually steer you in the right direction when it comes to choosing a binding method that is appropriate for your job. Nonetheless, it's always a good idea to know what options are available to you and to understand the pros and cons of each method. So get your learning cap on and let's talk about binding!

At Casey Printing, we always try to bring you the best tips, best practices, advice and industry information, but every now and again you need to break it back down to the basic 'how to' tutorial post. So today we're going to go over the basics of how to create a trifold brochure in InDesign. 

Before we get started, download the trifold brochure InDesign template and follow along. You may also want to reference our 10 Pro Tips for designing a brochure that gets results.

I still remember the first time I sent a file to a commercial printer. I was a fledgling designer building my first magazine layout for a professional architecture magazine. I toiled and sweated over that issue, and when I thought it was ready, I couldn't be more proud of my creation. This was the masterpiece that was to kick my career into high gear. Then I sent the files to the printer, and what happened next made me feel like a 1st-year rookie (which I was): The printer rejected the files. Hairline strokes, embedded images, inconsistent margins,  and missing fonts were just a few of the culprits, and I really can't remember all of the rest. The bottom line: Creating flawless press files for your printer can be a technically daunting and difficult task.

Luckily, the software used by both printers and designers has improved greatly in the past decade, and it is much more forgiving. Nonetheless, there are still steps you can take to minimize costly and time-wasting headaches for both you and your printer.

Working as the Creative Director in a print shop like Casey, I have been a first-hand witness to every kind of file submission known to man, from PDF to Publisher, created by every production method, from professional design firm to a friend with a Mac. All of them have one thing in common: best value at the best price. Unfortunately, sometimes “going cheap” can cost you a lot more than you think. So in an effort to uncloak the hidden costs associated with designing on the cheap, I bring you this week's Casey Connect.

The Internet has changed a lot in the last 20 years. From Yahoo! Chat Rooms to Facebook, Dogpile to Google, GeoCities to Wordpress.com, and Yahoo! Photos to Instagram, the World Wide Web has matured at a blazing-fast rate, and this has left some early adopters dust. Many ideals about what made a profitable site in the late 1990's would be considered a cheat sheet for how NOT to build a website today.

Unfortunately, having grown up with these websites ourselves, it can sometimes be difficult to recognize that our website is out of date or not following modern best practices. Trends change all the time, and it's hard to know which ones will yield the best results. So how do we stop ourselves from falling into the pitfalls of out-dated website design?

You may have heard the term “you never get a second chance to make a first impression?” This is especially true for Marketing and Sales, and for many of your prospects your business card is that first impression. So to help assure that you put your best foot forward, I'm going to share some tips that will help give you a competitive edge in the sales “Shark Tank.”

Have you ever walked into a room and suddenly felt like you took a wrong turn? You try to retrace your steps back to familiar territory to figure out where you went wrong, and what you should do next. At this point you might ask a passer by for directions, or phone a friend to relay the experience and get your bearings.

Did you ever remember to send someone a birthday card — the day AFTER their birthday? Chances are you shrugged your shoulders and thought “too late now.” Perhaps you made a resolution to add their birthday to your Google calendar so you wouldn't forget next time. Then you might've posted birthday wishes on their Facebook timeline along with all their other “friends.” After all, it was probably Facebook that reminded you of their birthday in the first place.

This is a perfect example of how poor timing can dilute the sentiment of your message. Had you remembered to send that birthday card on time, you would have entrenched yourself in the halls of best friends and endearment. Instead, you got “liked” on Facebook.

If you've ever looked very closely at something printed on an commercial offset press, you may have noticed that the images and colors you see on paper are not what they seem. The reds are not really reds, and the blues not blues. Instead they are combinations of dots that, when seen adjacent to one another in tight groupings, give the appearance of solid colors and images. This process is known as halftoning, and it is an essential technique for all modern printing.