1. dpi = dots per inch. ex. In Adobe Photoshop when you’re creating a new document, you can set the resolution, if you’re designing it for web then 72 is what you want. But if the piece is going to get printed, set it to 300. This is for Raster images, so the job doesn’t come out pixelated/low res. Vector artwork doesn’t work like that, you can design something that’s 1” x 1” and scale it up to a gazillion inches without loosing any quality (since it’s vector) see Adobe illustrator.
For Raster images where resolution does matter, if you want to make an image larger, you will loose quality. That’s why some people always design is higher resolutions than 300, since the boss might just come in and say “hey that postcard/flyer looks great, print a poster/banner” In that case, the designer doesn’t have to re-design the whole piece. This is all for “print”, 72 dpi should be OK when designing for web.
2. Computers have limited fonts, and not everyone has every font, or some funky font you downloaded from bobsfreefonts or something. If you save a file without doing anything, and try to open it on a different computer. The file will not look the same and will give you a “font error” if that other computer does not have the same fonts loaded. The software will just replace the font (that it’s missing) with something else.
There are different font management programs/products out there, you can try “TheFontThing” which is free, (for the PC) Generally you don’t want to have a lot of fonts installed in your system since it’ll slow it down. So you can use these “font management programs” to temporarily load fonts into your system, do you work and that’s it. Or you can also install and then uninstall fonts. Or just look at a bunch of fonts without having to install them, pick the ones you want and start working.
When designing something to be viewed online, people might see something different on their end. For example, if you’re doing a website I might see it differently on my end since I might not have that font. Even though most programs “outline” the text before you “publish”. (ex. Adobe Flash/ Macromedia) Buuuut if you do, then people won’t be able to select/copy you text.
When sending stuff to print, your printer will not have all the fonts that you have in the document, so that is why, you either have to “rasterize” the fonts (ex. in photoshop) so the system/software sees it as just another image/pic layer instead of a font. But once you do this, you will not be able to edit the text. In something like illustrator, you would “outline” the fonts, so the software sees the text as Shapes instead of fonts, again you won’t be able to edit it once you do this. In other programs (Quark) you would include the fonts when you are sending the job to your printer so they can “load” the fonts you used in their system, and print your job. (this is kind of old school) Why send a printer all your images and fonts, if you can just save a PDF file. But again there are people who can argue against this and say that if an update is made, they’ll just need to send 1 image to their printer instead of the large file (or the whole x page booklet…or whatever it is) it really just depends on the environment. But I say, if you are the person designing it, and making all the changes, just send them a print ready PDF.
3. This doesn’t apply to webdesign. When you send a job to the printer, they can print that 4×6 postcard you sent them, but it will be a problem when they try to cut it. It’ll be extremely difficult if not impossible to cut every single piece exactly where the design ends.
Some printers won’t tell you this and will just send you a 3.875×5.875 job meaning they’ll cut your job a bit smaller. This is where bleed comes in. You always want to include about 0.25 inches of bleed (or 0.125 for leet printers) meaning, you want to include more of the design/image. So when they cut the job, when it moves even juuuust a bit, you won’t see any white space or part of another image. They cut a few hundred (lets say about 200, depends on the paper) sheets at a time, and there are other jobs on the sheet also, so the bottom ones tend to shift juuuust a bit, and if you have bleed, you’ll have the job run to the edge and not have a thin border. If the paper you’re printing it on is glossy on both sides, the cutting is even harder, since the sheets will tend to slip/shift. (also the papertype makes a big difference) you might want to give your job to a small mom/pop or a local printer if you want them to babysit the job and spend 4 hours cutting it. But with gangrun printers who print a bunch of jobs on the same sheet as yours (and cut the job in 20 min.) you might not get so lucky, but you’ll pay less.
4. For online design, you don’t have to worry about colors, since whatever you design will show up on the screen. The color might/will look different on different screens, unless the monitor is calibrated. Believe it or not, the uber hardcore leet designers/printers calibrate their monitors several times a day. Since the temperature of the room changes, and the conditions change. There is a whole section about the kind of lights you’re suppose to have in the room, and the color of the walls etc. You can look into monitor calibrators (Spider calibrators are pretty affordable and do the job) All this is so whatever you’re seeing on your monitor is the correct color.
When sending stuff to print, you will have to decide what kind of printer (and by printers I mean print shops/houses) will print your job. If the guy/gal is doing CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow and Black) then you do not want any Pantone colors/Spot colors in your document. RGB colors (Red Green Blue) are for the screen, and a printing press that uses CMYK can not product vibrant RGB colors. Spot colors can be printed, (usually at a higher cost) where you’re printer will buy/use that specific color you asked for and there are a lot of colors that you just can’t get by mixing CMYK ink. You can get a Pantone Color Guide (kinda pricey) that you can pick your colors from (or see the conversion to CMYK) and see how the same color will look on an uncoated card stock vs. a coated one. RGB colors can have a lot of vibrant colors (that you can see on the web, but when you convert it to CMYK, there will be a color shift, and depending on the actual color, the shift can be pretty noticable.
5. This doesn’t apply to web, only when sending stuff to print. when designing jobs that you want to send to print, make sure that all the text and important elements are not close to the edge and/or touching. You want everything 1/8 inch away from the cutline (again depends on the printer, see their templates) Like before, when the cutter (guy/girl) is cutting your job, it’ll extremely hard to cut every single piece perfectly where you want the job cut (even with automated machines/cutter) so if the job shifts a bit, your text will get chopped off, unless you stayed within the safe zone..
6. Embeding images, I didn’t mention this before but there are some programs that when you import and image, they don’t actually hold/contain the actual image. They’ll actually link the image. Think of it as a shortcut for a folder, a folder shortcut is not the actual folder but a link to the folder. If you send the file to someone, whether it’s for print or not, they might open up the file and not see some of the images you used (missing image errors) One of the reasons they do this, is so that the file size stays small, and that you can update/edit/modify those images in another application and update it in that program. If you Embed the image, the program will include the image/pic but the actual file size will increase.
For now (2009) when people are designing for web, one of the main things they focus on (STILL) is how to make the file size smaller. So it loads faster, and uses up less banwidth. For print, the focus is more on quality and how to save the file correctly, so the colors come out exactly how the client wants it. There is a lot more that you can read about and do research on, hope this small bit helped.
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