A Typographic Trip

Robin Mitchell, our Advanced Print & Typography instructor, set up a class field trip to Hemlock printers.

We had a great tour of the main plant, and the neighboring Hemlock express plant. Robin’s Print Rep, Eric Kouwenhoven, brought us around the plant and explained the sections, and processes that happen behind the scenes. Before you are handed your beautifully designed business cards, or flyers, letterheads -this stuff goes through a huge, and thorough process to get to perfection.

Eric said that most print houses are handling high resolution PDFs to work with, and even if you give them an InDesign file, it is then converted before anything goes down. Honestly, I wish I could have brought a voice recorder or something to document all the little tid bits of information that I know will come handy in the future. We got a chance to see all the machines, and all the craftspeople who were operating the machines, the inks, the papers, the die-cuts, the recycling.. I was astonished at how huge this place was -and equally happy to see how diligent they were with their recycling!

Physically going there helped a lot with my understanding of the print designer’s job. We talk a lot about things like paper weight, ink, varnishes, bleeds, gutters etc, trapping.. the list goes on and on.. but actually being there to see some of these things come into play helped me understand how important each of these details are to a print job. Not only that, but if a lot of these details aren’t addressed at an early stage it can be a HUGE expense to find out the hard way!

I think my favourit part of the trip was being able to look at the samples they were producing. On each sample of the jobs they run there is a small sticker on the back that gives a breakdown of the job.

For example:

Litho’d Black throughout, Cover: 80lb Via Felt Cover Pure White, Text: 80lb Via Felt Text Pure White

Cover: litho’d 4c/p + spot dull varnish 2 sides, flood dull varnish throughout, 120lb Centure Gloss Cover…

Crazy huh? It’s like a completely different langauge, a whole new set of things you have to decipher. To help with this learning curve, Robin gave us an in class assignment. We had to make a mock Print Quote request. She brought in a collection of paper samples, and pantone books for us to dig through. It was great to be able to imagine your business card if you had an unlimited budget.. well atleast, I thought it was great. Here’s what I came up with.

**Print Quote Request Assignment

Letterhead set print quote request

Business cards (engraved)
These are the “Reality Check” cards

Paper stock
Brand: Gilbert
Line: Oxford
Color: Smoked
Weight: 100lb Cover weight

Colour/Ink
2/0 (2 PMS Colours)
Pantone 8003 U
Pantone 448 U
No Bleeds

Quantity
500 Cards, total

Dimensions
3.6×2”

Letterheads (offset print)
These are the “Reality Check” letterheads

Paper stock
Brand: Gilbert
Line: Esse
Color: Latte
Weight: 80lb Text weight

Colour/Ink
1/0 (1 PMS Colours)
Pantone 448 U
Bleeds

Quantity
300, total

Envelopes (offset print)
These are the “Reality Check” envelopes

Paper stock
Brand: Gilbert
Line: Esse
Color: Latte
Weight: 80lb Text weight

Colour/Ink
1/0 (1 PMS Colours)
Pantone 448 U
No Bleeds

Quantity
300, total

Dimensions
A-2 4 3/8”x5 ¾”

Delivery
We will deliver files to you on September 10^th. We need the letterhead set delivered by September 18^th.

Supplied files
Disc to you, with digital files
Please include the cost of film and plates in your estimate.

Contact
Please contact me with any questions:
Leah Bancroft, 778.288.9562
hello@leahbancroft.com

*Included in this package would be:
- disc with files set-up for print (NOT separated into colours)
-laser proof of cards

One thing that both Robin, and Dougal mentioned to our class recently was that if you have not fallen in love with typography yet, you better do it soon. Typography seems to be REALLY key in all things design, and can really showcase that you know what you’re doing