Does anyone know of some thorough, comprehensive resources for learning the fundamentals of print design? My work responsibilities may be expanding in the near future and there are no local educational programmes for learning professional print design.
Print Design
That’s a tough one… I’d be willing to trade print design tips for web design tips.
What applications do you plan on using?
Likely to start with, Illustrator, tough conceivably I could use Photoshop for some projects. If all is successful and I take over all the print responsibilities of our department, I may be able to take ownership of our sole Quark license.
My former publisher, Against The Clock (http://www.againsttheclock.com) is (if I understand the relationship correctly) the official creator of Quark training materials. Call Ellenn at 800-256-4282 for more information.
Cool. Thanks, Jules.
Quark is dead.
Maybe so, but it is a requirement on every print design job posting I’ve found.
I’ve never used it, so I’m interested in your thoughts. What’s taking its place?
Okay, almost dead.
I used Quark Xpress for more than 10 years (more than 5 in a production environment). I now use InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop Exclusively.
But, the application you use to start out won’t really matter. If your smart enough to learn web design as well as you have, print design apps will take a short while for you.
More important is to grasp basic print design concepts and production requirements.
Thanks for the advice, Hugh. Now to find a place to learn basic print design concepts and production requirements. ;)
Unfortunately It been too long since I started so my perspective is a little warped, here is a few suggestions:
More than 10 years ago I read Roger Black’s “Desktop Design Power.” Although it is very dated now, many of the concepts were solid and presented clearly and translate from magazines to other collateral.
Have you looked at
http://www.aiga.org/
http://www.adobe.com/studio/main.html
http://www.typophile.com/ (started by a couple BYU design grads)
And of course look for design blogs and add them to your newsreader (if you haven’t already). I’ll post more places later.
I started doing strictly print design. I think the best way to go about working on print is to first buy a PeachPit Press book for the design application you’re using.
I second the motion for InDesign. The learning curve from Illustrator or Photoshop isn’t that huge and it produces postscript files for print beautifully, while Quark has struggles. Quark is a good program, it’s just more of a learning curve from Illustrator and Photoshop and the customer support is abysmal.
Second, I would contact the print house and get in tight with their pre-press people. If you go in asking them for advice before you start a project, they’ll help you every step of the way.
While I’m mostly Mac and InDesign based, if you’d like I can send you a file sometime to pull apart, to see how I built it. Email me and let me know if that’s something you’re interested in or if you have other questions. I’m always happy to tell someone how to do something. : )
Beyond that, the ony place I can think of that is a good resource is this place: http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/
Welcome to my other blog Jerilyn, and thanks for the suggestions. If it all pans out at work, I’ll definitely email you.
I am currently getting a degree in print graphics, and the way that I was able to learn is by looking at other people, and annalyse and disect everything about it. That is how you learn, so I would say look at magazines like communication arts, and How, and Print. Also I go to borders all the time and go to the art section and then jsut pick up books about typography, and just look at good examples of typography. Then depending on which type of print jobs you start doing will depend on what program to best use. For a single page lay-out I have never had any problem using illustrator, but once you get into books or brouchures, then you will want to get into Quark Xpress and InDesign, which InDesign is definetly taking over, but InDesign is basically Illustrator on crack. Good luck…
I just realized you are LDS, atleast that is my guess since you have a link dedicated to LDS, So am I…
My sister is married and living in Canada right now…
Thanks for the suggestions, Shane. I just got a copy of InDesign, so I am going to play around with it.
Yes, I am LDS.
Sorry I missed you last comment, Hugh. For some reason it was waiting to be moderated. Anyhow, thanks for the great resources. I will definitely check them out.