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Hiya! The following is a transcription of the above video!
You’d think with all our fancy technology, people would just get how these things work by now, but no.
I’m constantly amazed at how often printers are misused. And don’t even get me started on the number of times I’ve seen someone try to print a high-res image with a low-res file.
How do we keep getting this wrong? It’s 2024, and yet here we are, still battling with, ‘Do I use CMYK? Do I use RGB?’ And ‘How do I file prep?’ like it’s the Dark Ages!
So, before I lose my mind, I beg you—I’m going to tell you everything you need to know. So please, just pay attention!
Back in the day, before printers were a thing, people were all about hand-drawing everything. Then, around 1440, this guy—your mama—I mean Johannes Gutenberg—was like, ‘Hey, what if we can make books faster?’ Sound familiar? Go watch the fonts video.
Huzzah! He invented the printing press, and suddenly books were available everywhere. And people could finally stop pretending they could read calligraphy!
Welcome to DFJ Markets where we—oh, sorry, let me just put that back up. There we are, now… was that one fresh or toasted? Oh dang it.
dfjmarkets.com, coming soon!
In the late 1400s, this Italian guy, Aldus Manutius, was all about printing. He started the Aldine Press and is basically the father of the paperback book. Thanks to him, we were finally able to have portable books instead of, I don’t know… scrolls, I guess. But that doesn’t really matter because, uh, the Kindle kind of stole his thunder there.
Actually, in the 1600s, printing got political. Governments and churches tried to control what could be printed, leading to secret presses and underground publications. And you best believe political printing still exists today.
In the 19th century, we got the steam-powered printing press, which was way faster than anything before it. It could churn out thousands of pages per hour. This was huge for newspapers, making them widely available and affordable.
Early printers often included hidden messages or funny little drawings in the margins. It was essentially the workers’ way of breaking free from the repetitive work.
Then came the typewriter. Um, so, I actually don’t know which image is the first typewriter, but basically, it started from the Gutenberg Press and then just continually evolved. From what I can gather, the steam-powered press took hold of mass production, while the typewriter became part of everyday use.
By the 1960s, Xerox introduced the first commercial laser printer. It was huge, expensive, and NASA called, ‘Preparing for launch in five!’ But hey, it paved the way for sleek machines that we still complain about to this day.
The 1980s brought digital printing, which made it easier and cheaper to print small batches.
Printers have always had a love-hate relationship with us. The laser printer literally revolutionized the office world. They could print at lightning speed compared to their predecessors. But hold on, Jaden—printers were used in the office, so how did artists get a hold of them? Well, actually, artists and printers go way back.
Like I said in my fonts video, because a whole page of text is boring, artists were needed to create interesting graphics, and that’s how they got involved with printers.
Ancient folks used papyrus—I think that’s how you say it. Anyway, it’s made from plant stems. The Chinese then invented actual paper around 105 AD, thanks to Cai Lun, a Han Dynasty official. By the 19th century, paper was being mass-produced, which was great for printers but terrible for forests.
Nowadays, we have all kinds of paper—glossy, matte, recycled, and even tree-free.
But why is this important, you might ask? Well, different textures, materials, and weights of paper dramatically affect how your print job looks and functions. You print something, you need paper—but on paper, you need ink to print something. So if you have a bad ink system or paper that doesn’t match the ink you’re printing with, then design print job bad.
CMYK, RGB, and Pantone are the three big players here. One of the reasons why your print jobs turn out like doo is because they each have their own purpose.
CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The black is ‘K’ probably just so you don’t think ‘B’ means blue. When you print something, your printer uses these four colors to mix and produce all the colors you see, but it doesn’t technically mix them together.
See, what happens with CMYK printing is it prints in layers. I could be wrong about this order, but it prints the first layer, cyan, then it prints again with magenta… you get the gist. The colors are actually being overlaid on top of each other to create the final color that you’re after.
RGB stands for red, green, and blue. This is the color model used for screens like your computer, TV, and phone. These colors mix light to create the full spectrum of colors you see on your screen. If you’re designing something that’s only going to be on a screen, use RGB. Just be aware that colors can look different depending on which screen you’re viewing it from.
If you’re designing digitally, you’re going to see those CMYK colors as RGB colors. But if you’re using a program like Photoshop or Illustrator, you can go into the settings and make sure the display shows colors as accurately as possible. So if your file is in CMYK and your print colors are in CMYK and your display colors are in CMYK, it should look relatively close to what it’ll look like when printed.
The third color system is Pantone. Each Pantone color is standardized, which is crucial for brands that want their colors to look consistent across different mediums. Nine times out of 10, manufacturers will ask you to provide Pantone colors.
Most print companies are pretty comprehensive in converting whichever colors you provide into what they need to print.
Ink weight refers to how much ink is laid down on the paper. It’s a balancing act because too much ink can saturate the paper, making it soggy and prone to smudging. On the flip side, too little ink can make colors look washed out.
Printing black that is only black will come out way less saturated than if you were to overlay all the colors. Plus, some of that ink will get soaked into the paper as well.
Because of this, paper density also plays a crucial role. Thicker, heavier paper can handle more ink without buckling, while lighter paper requires a delicate touch. This is how you end up with a weird, bubbly page—because the ink has saturated it so much that it’s gone soggy.
You might find that your color is what’s called ‘out of gamut,’ meaning the CMYK printing press can’t reproduce it.
I’m a cheeky someone who—unless I know for certain it’s only ever going to be printed in CMYK—I always make my files in RGB. Since RGB has a wider color spectrum, I’m going to get the most out of my colors, especially when it’s used digitally. But when I convert it to CMYK, it’ll definitely lose some vibrancy.
If you go the other way around, converting a CMYK to RGB doesn’t convert as well. You’re not regaining vibrancy; you’re just staying at the dull whatever.
Anyways, obviously, there are a couple of ways to get your design printed. By manufacturer, you can do spot printing, CMYK process printing, screen printing, or maybe you just want a normal CMYK print and then add spot color or screen printing to a specific area.
Next point! Always remember to have at least 3mm of bleed when you’re sending it off to a printer. Otherwise, you could risk having your image get cut off.
Oh, I just remembered what drives me nuts. It doesn’t matter if your image is vector or raster; I see people printing their logos in low-res! I’m saying resolution, in case you don’t understand what res is.
To avoid pixelated messes, you always want to make sure the pixels match the purpose. Typically, anything digital is going to be 72 DPI, and anything that’s going to be printed needs to be 300 DPI.
DPI means dots per inch—so per inch, 300 little baby dots.
My little secret is to always set up my file in 300 DPI. I want the most optimized file possible just in case I ever need to print it. When I export the file, if it needs to be shown digitally, I will export it as a 72 DPI resolution. And this is because it’s easier to go smaller than to increase the size.
Anyways, thank you guys so much for watching. I’ll see you next time. Later, byeeeeee!
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