General Lettering Discussion

[HdE]

Isn't he just?

This EXACT issue just came up with something I'm doing. I'm fair impressed!

[chilipenguin]

Okay, another one for you. I'm doing a page just now that bleeds off the top of the page plus the left and right sides. The art extends past the safe area (right out to the bleed in one area) in the top panel while in the bottom panel the art is squeezed in the top right of the frame with white space bleeding out the right and bottom. I've asked about bleeds/trims etc and been told that the artist doesn't usually work to these (?) and to just keep the lettering within a 10x15 live area.

What should I do about sizing the page? I've sized it to the 11x17 already but I don't really know if that's going to work or not.

[Jim_Campbell]

What should I do about sizing the page? I've sized it to the 11x17 already but I don't really know if that's going to work or not.

Stick it on the page template and letter it. I practically gave myself an ulcer worrying about this stuff at the start, but if  you've notified the editor that the art doesn't sit on the template properly, and they don't care, then neither should you.

I will confess to being astonished how cavalier many artists are to this basic nuts and bolts stuff, like getting the fucking page size correct. I assume that this is because other people have been expected to fix this for them after the fact and they've never had an editor with sufficient balls to punt the job back at them with a note to do it again properly.

Get the best fit you can on the template -- make sure your lettering stays inside the Safe area, and be done with it. Not worth losing any sleep over...

Cheers!

Jim

[chilipenguin]

Thanks Jim. That's pretty much what I was going to do anyway I think. Just wondering if I should maybe just resize it to include a 3-5mm bleed anyway just to be on the safe side.

[chilipenguin]

Thought this would be the best place to ask this. I finished lettering some pages the other day and sent them back to the writer but he would like a PDF with all the pages plus a cover he sent me. What's the best way of creating said PDF? Should I be using the final TIFFs that I sent him or should I export these as JPEGS first?

[Jim_Campbell]

Thought this would be the best place to ask this. I finished lettering some pages the other day and sent them back to the writer but he would like a PDF with all the pages plus a cover he sent me. What's the best way of creating said PDF? Should I be using the final TIFFs that I sent him or should I export these as JPEGS first?

I think you'll find that most PDF software will use JPEG compression on the images regardless, so I don't think it will make much difference. Try doing just a couple of pages with TIFFs and a couple with JPEGs and see if there's a noticeable difference in file size. If there isn't, use the TIFFs and save yourself the extra step.

Cheers

Jim

[chilipenguin]

Cheers for that Jim, but what software should I be using? I don't have much experience creating PDFs from multiple files so I'm not sure of the best way of doing it.

[chilipenguin]

Hey. Just wanted to bump my last question as I still don't know which software I should be using to create PDFs. It's not something I have done before (apart from in Quark). Could I import the files as pages into an Indesign doc and export that as a PDF?

[Jim_Campbell]

Could I import the files as pages into an Indesign doc and export that as a PDF?

Yes. Absolutely. I'm assuming you're on Windows, but if you are using a Mac, any programme with a print dialogue will generate a PDF. I use the much-underrated Preview for this all the time. Open one image file in preview. Open the sidebar, drop the rest of your pages in, then print to PDF

But otherwise, yes: InDesign and output a PDF file.

Cheers!

Jim

[chilipenguin]

Thanks Jim. Yeah, I ended up going with Indesign. I used Quark quite a lot at uni but haven't got to grips with Adobe's answer to it yet. Quite easy to use as it goes (so far it's just been sat on my hard drive, gathering dust). Thanks for the help.

[Jim_Campbell]

Thanks Jim. Yeah, I ended up going with Indesign. I used Quark quite a lot at uni but haven't got to grips with Adobe's answer to it yet. Quite easy to use as it goes (so far it's just been sat on my hard drive, gathering dust). Thanks for the help.

I think there's an option in the ID preferences to use Quark keyboard shortcuts, which might lessen the pain of transition.

Cheers!

Jim

[Jim_Campbell]

Wow! You really DO learn something new every day:

This hint means that you can move the stroke to behind the fill (as described in my lettering guide) on live, editable text.

Ordinarily, I would have to convert the text to outlines, but this:



is all live text.

I'll have a further play with this and then see if I can incorporate it into an updated guide -- I want to add in a section about masking SFX so that they appear to be 'behind' elements of the artwork.

Cheers!

Jim

[HdE]

I'll have a further play with this and then see if I can incorporate it into an updated guide -- I want to add in a section about masking SFX so that they appear to be 'behind' elements of the artwork.

Cheers!

LEGEND!

That 'masking' thing is something I do by exporting lettering ito Photoshop as an overlay and manually cutting bits out. It's a neat looking trick, but my method is a real faff, and quite laborious.

An updated guide gets my vote!

[chilipenguin]

I'm working on pages just now that have a black caption box with a white stroke and white text, as well as a couple that have a blue fill/dark blue stroke with black text. What should I be doing regarding overprint? I'm confused...

[Jim_Campbell]

I'm working on pages just now that have a black caption box with a white stroke and white text, as well as a couple that have a blue fill/dark blue stroke with black text. What should I be doing regarding overprint? I'm confused...

Print or web? If it's web, nothing needs to overprint -- trapping specifically concerns how the four different printing plates affect each other when generating separations.

If it's print, then in your example of a black caption box with a white stroke and white text, nothing should overprint. A white stroke set to overprint won't appear at all (if the other colours overprint it, then the paper won't show through, which is all that white is, after all).

Blue fill, dark blue stroke, black text -- the box should have no overprints (although if the stroke was black then it should overprint). The black text should be set to Overprint Fill.

Cheers!

Jim