Design for PRINT workshop - InDesign

InDesign sessions with design for print. Going through a few technicalities so that when you send your work to print it will work. Again like the last sessions we are looking specifically at colour.

Recap
New document:
Open new document not book.
Set your document size to the final size you want.

Columns & Margins - These are guides. If you want consistency this might be an option to use them. If you're not bothered you can ignore them as they have no effect of the printed document.

Bleed and Slug. By clicking more options you get these variables. Anything that goes to the edge of the page bleed off to compensate for any inaccuracies of your finished printed work. You should speak to your printer about the stock and Bleed to include. 

Slug - This is where registration marks or any printers mark will go. They are trimmed off the final print.

Facing pages -  Lays out pages in a booklet style.

Start Page number - What page you want to start on.

Primary Text Frame - If you check this every page will have a text frame automatically on it. Copy/paste text will automatically flow from one page to another. If you have more text then pages more pages will be added. 

ALWAYS ADD BLEED!

BLACK - Edge of page

Purple - Margin

RED - Bleed

Blue - Slug area

A = Master page. If you do something on the master page it applies to every other page. For example page number. The master page is the one under [none]

If you don't want something deleting from a page that was applied from master page click cmd+shift

You might have more then one master page for different elements, A-master, B-master. For example A-master = headers, B master = page numbers...

Colour

Like in Illustrator you need to make a frame to create a coloured area. Effectively frames are vector shapes.

 You have fill and stroke squares at the bottom of the palette.

We have swatches too that are named by their colour code:

Shortcut:

shirt+cmd + < or >  decrease size of type <  increase size of type > 

To create a new swatch:

Basically the same principle that we have already covered in Photoshop and illustrator. Again by creating a new spot colour you get the confirmation by this symbol:

Circle in the square represents spot colour.

Spot colour

A spot color is any color generated by an ink (pure or mixed) that is printed using a single run.

Ink Technicians around the world use the term spot color to mean any color generated by a non-standard offset ink; such as metallic, fluorescent, spot varnish, or custom hand-mixed inks.

The only thing you focus on in InDesign is really the arrangement of the elements that you have already perfected in other programs. 

Importnat check list:

Photoshop to InDesign

- CMYK or Greyscale

- 300 DPI for print

- Images actual size we need them

- Save images as PSD or TIFF file

Illustrator to InDesign

- CMYK

- .AI or Copy + Paste

When working with images in Indesign if you click on links it will gives you every images information. The Image on screen is a low resolution preview which is why it looks crap. When transferring document to another computer make sure you copy all of the images to. It may be worth while keeping all of your images in one folder organised.

When you paste illustrator artwork into InDesign it looks sharp and it also gives you the colour information in your colour swatch palette. 

If you open separation preview it allows you to see the separations of CMYK. This is like CMYK colour channels in Photoshop.