the graphic design school blog.

One of the most reward­ing aspects of being a graphic designer is the sheer scale of gor­geous and tact­ile mater­i­als to work with and print on. There are dozens at your dis­posal, some in com­mon usage and oth­ers wait­ing to be dis­covered and put to graph­ical use by future pion­eers. Because of their widely diverse nature, sub­strates can be used to sug­gest all kinds of mean­ings and sig­nify all kinds of signs, from lux­ury and good taste right through to anarchy and rough­ness. Sub­strates help to rein­force the mes­sages you wish to com­mu­nic­ate. I’ve hand-picked seven of them for the last in our unashamedly image-teeming short series of art­icles on sub­strates and fin­ish. So without fur­ther ado…

As var­ied as they are excit­ing, print fin­ishes encom­pass a wide range of pro­cesses for design­ers to invest­ig­ate and use. A fin­ish may be applied once a sub­strate has been prin­ted, to provide the fin­ish­ing touch to a graphic object. They can be used to add a dec­or­at­ive aspect to a piece, or a tex­tural qual­ity. In some cases a fin­ish might aid graph­ical func­tion, or even rep­res­ent an integ­ral com­pon­ent of a piece’s form. Seven print fin­ishes have been chosen for this art­icle based on their powers to cap­tiv­ate, dazzle and add weight to ideas. Read on, take notes, and choose one for your next pro­ject to turn a mere good response into a graph­ical tour-de-force…

Bind­ing, the col­lect­ive term given for the range of pro­cesses which hold and fasten a publication’s pages together, is essen­tial for, well, hold­ing and fasten­ing your pub­lic­a­tions’ pages together. Whilst on the sur­face not as com­pel­ling a design com­pon­ent as, say, print fin­ishes, a little closer inspec­tion reveals a range of dis­tinct pro­cesses which exist for dif­fer­ent uses. These bind­ing meth­ods aid func­tion; decisions on bind­ing neces­sar­ily affect a prin­ted piece’s robust­ness, longev­ity and form. Used cre­at­ively, they can even add an aes­thetic fin­ish­ing touch to a piece and help amp­lify mes­sages and inten­tions. The closer inspec­tion I men­tion above, and which bind­ing mer­its, is what this article’s all about.

The Graphic Design School have found a great list of Do’s and Don’ts relat­ing to PRE press/printing, cre­ated by Deborah Roberti of espressographics.com which should help you avoid one of these frus­trat­ing and embar­rass­ing (not for­get­ting to men­tion expens­ive) mis­takes when eval­u­at­ing your pre print pro­ject before it goes to press and some use­ful tips on image formatting.

Here are our fav logo gal­ler­ies and trend art­icles. The for and against trends, the good, the bet­ter and the darn beau­ti­ful logos of 2009.

Prints can be any­thing from digital art to advert­ising, to lay­outs for magazines, posters, fly­ers news­pa­pers you name it. We have scoured the four corners of Europe to find you the best of Print Designs.