Tenth entry- Process and Technology of Visual Printing

Hello, everyone! Basically this is my last entry post and it’s a pleasure to share my knowledge with you. Anyway, today I’m going to further discussed on Process and Technology of Visual Printing, emphasizes on the techniques and process used in printing nowadays. Let’s go!

As I mentioned in my previous entry, printing is a process for reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest examples include Cylinder seals and other objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The earliest known form of woodblock printingcame from China dating to before 220 A.D. Later developments in printing include the movable type, first developed by Bi Shengin China, and the printing press, a more efficient printing process for western languages with their more limited alphabets, developed by Johannes Gutenberg in the fifteenth century.

Modern printing is done typically with ink on paper using a printing press. Its also frequently done on metals, plastics, cloth and composite materials. On paper it is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing.

Woodblock printing

In the East Asia

Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns that was used widely throughout East Asia. It originated in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later on paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220 A.D.

In the Middle East

Block printing, called tarish in Arabic was developed in Arabic Egypt during the ninth-tenth centuries, mostly for prayers and amulets. There is some evidence to suggest that these print blocks were made from non-wood materials, possibly tin, lead, or clay. The techniques employed are uncertain, however, and they appear to have had very little influence outside of the Muslim world. Though Europe adopted woodblock printing from the Muslim world, initially for fabric, the technique of metal block printing remained unknown in Europe. Block printing later went out of use in Islamic Central Asia after movable type printing was introduced from China.

In the Europe

Block printing first came to Europe as a method for printing on cloth, where it was common by 1300. Images printed on cloth for religious purposes could be quite large and elaborate, and when paper became relatively easily available, around 1400, the medium transferred very quickly to small woodcut religious images and playing cards printed on paper. These prints were produced in very large numbers from about 1425 onward.

The Printing Press

Johannes Gutenberg's work on his printing press began in approximately 1436 when he partnered with Andreas Dritzehen – a man he had previously instructed in gem-cutting – and Andreas Heilmann, the owner of a paper mill. It was not until a 1439 lawsuit against Gutenberg that an official record exists; witness testimony discussed type, an inventory of metals (including lead) and his type mold.

Compared to woodblock printing, movable type page setting and printing using a press was faster and more durable. The metal type pieces were sturdier and the lettering more uniform, leading to typography and fonts. The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type for western languages, andprinting presses rapidly spread across Europe, leading up to the Renaissance, and later all around the world. Today, practically all movable type printing ultimately derives from Gutenberg's innovations to movable type printing, which is often regarded as the most important invention of the second millennium.

The Rotary Printing Press

The rotary printing press was invented by Richard March Hoe in 1843. It uses impressions curved around a cylinder to print on long continuous rolls of paper or other substrates.

All printing process are concerned with two kinds of areas on the final output:

1. Image of printing areas,
2. Non-image or non-printing areas

After the information has been prepared for production (the prepress step), each printing process has definitive means of separating the image from the non-image areas.

Conventional printing has four types of process:

1. Planographics, in which the printing and non-printing areas are on the same plane surface and the difference between them is maintained chemically or by physical properties, the examples are: offset lithography, collotype, and screenless printing.
2. Relief, in which the printing areas are on a plane surface and the non printing areas are below the surface, examples: flexography and letterpress.
3. Intaglio, in which the non-printing areas are on a plane surface and the printing area are etched or engraved below the surface, examples: steel die engraving, gravure
4. Porous, in which the printing areas are on fine mesh screens through which ink can penetrate, and the non-printing areas are a stencil over the screen to block the flow of ink in those areas, examples: screen printing, stencil duplicator.

Offset Printing

Offset printing is a widely used printing technique where the inked image is transferred (or "offset") from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface. When used in combination with the lithographic process, which is based on the repulsion of oil and water, the offset technique employs a flat (planographic) image carrier on which the image to be printed obtains ink from ink rollers, while the non-printing area attracts a film of water, keeping the non-printing areas ink-free. Currently, most books and newspapers are printed using the technique of offset lithography.

Gravure Printing

Gravure printing is an intaglio printing technique, where the image to be printed is made up of small depressions in the surface of the printing plate. The cells are filled with ink and the excess is scraped off the surface with a doctor blade, then a rubber-covered roller presses paper onto the surface of the plate and into contact with the ink in the cells. The printing cylinders are usually made from copper plated steel, which is subsequently chromed, and may be produced by digital engraving or laser etching.

Gravure printing is used for long, high-quality print runs such as magazines, mail-order catalogues, packaging, and printing onto fabric and wallpaper. It is also used for printing postage stamps and decorative plastic laminates, such as kitchen worktops.

Flexography Printing

Flexography (often abbreviated to flexo) is a form of printing process which utilizes a flexible relief plate. It is essentially a modern version of letterpress which can be used for printing on almost any type of substrate, including plastic, metallic films, cellophane, and paper. It is widely used for printing on the non-porous substrates required for various types of food packaging (it is also well suited for printing large areas of solid color).

Letterpress Printing

Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing using a printing press. A worker composes and locks movable type into the bed of a press, inks it, and presses paper against it to transfer the ink from the type which creates an impression on the paper.

In practice, letterpress also includes other forms of relief printing with printing presses, such aswood engravings, photo-etched zinc "cuts" (plates), and linoleum blocks, which can be used alongside metal type in a single operation, as well as stereotypes and electrotypes of type and blocks. With certain letterpress units it is also possible to join movable type with slugs cast using hot metal typesetting.

Inkjet Printing

Inkjet printing is a type of computer printing that recreates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper, plastic, or other substrates. Inkjet printers are the most commonly used type of printer, and range from small inexpensive consumer models to very large professional machines.

There are many different kinds and types of printer paper, and one size does not fit all. In fact, a specific grade of paper that might be absolutely perfect for a particular task or purpose may be wildly inappropriate for another. Paper destined to be output on a desktop printer is generally divided into two distinct categories: photo paper, and everything else. In this article, we’ll talk about non-photo, general-purpose paper only. Every kind of paper is graded according to four different criteria and this website will help and guide you in choosing the right paper for the right printing results. 

So that’s the end of my very last entry. Till we meet someday in different days and have a nice day everyone!

Ninth Entry- Production of Static Product

Hello Everyone! Welcome to my ninth entry and are you excited to start our lesson today. So today we will emphasizes on Production of Static Product, which generally covers the creation of pamphlets, brochure, bunting, banners and so on. Since we have covered the digital imaging and their process of making it, so this entry will show the end / final product of your work. Excited enough? Let’s the lesson begins!

Step 1: CMYK Mode

The first rule for creating any printing file is to start it with a CMYK mode. This is one important step that is often overlooked by designers. It is advisable to start learning colour mixing with basic CMYK.

Step 2: Actual size 

Illustrator allows the designers to create the design file in different measurements such as:

• Points
• Picas
• Inches
• Millimeters
• Centimeters
• Pixels

 For example, the bunting size is 15 Feet x 3 Feet so the actual size for this artwork would be 180 Inches x 36 Inches.

Step 3: PPI setting

Since banner and bunting is viewed at a distance away, the dots per inch (ppi) can be set at lower value as contrary to the one that you will normally setup in a magazine, which is 300 ppi.

Therefore, it always a good idea to set it at the range between 100 and 150 ppi to be safe and to preserves it clarity in printings.

Step 4: Save in JPEG

One of the most crucial reasons to flatten your design works is it greatly reduce your file size. Everyone loves having a small size as it makes:

1. sending it through email possible and can be done swiftly
2. loading file on older computers a lot faster without too much problems
3. less likely to have printer pooling error

Step 5: Ready to be print

Now everything is ready and all that left to do is to send this to your printing supplier for printing. Do leave your comments whether you think this is useful or vice versa.

Different sizes of banners available

Different types of pamphlets designs

Different types of posters 

Are you interested already? I hope you do. So that’s basically the examples of creating and making posters, pamphlets, bunting and banners. For the last entry, I’m going to explain on process and technology in of visual printing, types and techniques in digital printing. Till then, I do hope you gain something from my blog. Together we gain the same knowledge and shared with the others too. Thank you and keep fighting!

Eighth entry- Visual Technology for Dissemination

HELLO EVERYONE!!

Good day, everyone! How do you do? So for the last week entry, we focused and explored on Adobe Photoshop whereas we learned on how to manipulated images and combining many images into a single image, with special effects and unique and mindblown backgrounds. So today, we are going to explore on image technology printing, CD-ROM and web, and as well as producing images for the three main subjects earlier.

We start off our entry with image technology printing. What is actually an image technology printing? Are we familiar with these terminologies? Well, luckily I have the answers that you needed.  Image Technology Printing or Digital printing refers to methods of printing from a digital-based image directly to a variety of media. It usually refers to professional printing where small-run jobs from desktop publishing and other digital sources are printed using large-format and/or high-volume laser or inkjet printers. Digital printing has a higher cost per page than more traditional offset printing methods, but this price is usually offset by avoiding the cost of all the technical steps required to make printing plates. It also allows for on-demand printing, short turnaround time, and even a modification of the image (variable data) used for each impression. The savings in labor and the ever-increasing capability of digital presses means that digital printing is reaching the point where it can match or supersede offset printing technology's ability to produce larger print runs of several thousand sheets at a low price. 

Examples of digital printers that were used to print bigger size of images

History of printing

Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220, and woodblock printing remained the most common East Asian method of printing books and other texts, as well as images, until the 19th century. Ukiyo-e is the best known type ofJapanese woodblock art print. Most European uses of the technique for printing images on paper are covered by the art term woodcut, except for the block-books produced mainly in the 15th century.

Examples of block printing in the early days 

Tibetan monks engraves wordings on woodblocks

Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220, and woodblock printing remained the most common East Asian method of printing books and other texts, as well as images, until the 19th century. Ukiyo-e is the best known type ofJapanese woodblock art print. Most European uses of the technique for printing images on paper are covered by the art term woodcut, except for the block-books produced mainly in the 15th century.

Modern days

There are nine main types of printing processes:

Offset lithography

What we are exploring in this article

Engraving

Think fine stationery

Thermography

Raised printing, used in stationery

Reprographics

Copying and duplicating

Digital printing

Limited now, but the technology is exploding

Letterpress

The original Guttenberg process (hardly done anymore)

Screen

Used for T-shirts and billboards

Flexography

Usually used on packaging, such as can labels

Gravure

Used for huge runs of magazines and direct-mail catalogs

Disk Images

Disk images, in computing, are computer files containing the contents and structure of a disk volume or an entire data storage device, such as a hard drive, tape drive, floppy disk, optical disc or USB flash drive. A disk image is usually created by creating a sector-by-sector copy of the source medium, thereby perfectly replicating the structure and contents of a storage device independent of the file system. Depending on the disk image format, a disk image may span one or more computer files.

Disk image file formats may be open standards, such as the ISO image format for optical disc images, or proprietary to particular software applications.

As disk images contain the contents of entire disks, they can be huge. Some disk imaging utilities are filesystem-aware and can omit copying unused space from the source media, or compress the disk they represent to reduce storage requirements.

So far, we have cover digital images making and processing. That’s it for today folks! The next entry, I will explored more on Production on Static Visual Product, emphasized on banners, pamphlets and so on. See you soon! Fighting!