When you enrol at university, you expect to learn something new, and pick up information and skills that you can keep and take with you to use in later life. Well, you can expect no different when you enrol at the virtual University of Print. The University of Print, run by our award winning Clever Print Management team, provides expert tips and seminars to guide our ‘students’ through print techniques, finishes, stocks, colours and more. Each month, you’ll receive monthly tips and advice so that in no time at all you’ll know everything there is to know about clever print management! You could be a clever print expert in your own right, but what exactly will you learn? Here are four things you could learn that will make your printing decisions more informed choices in the future.
Print process
When we take on a print job, we put a great deal of thought into choosing the right process to print it. With our monthly tips, we’ll teach you the processes and how we decide between litho, web, digital, gravure, flexo or screen – and we’ll explain what each of those processes means too! For example, one month we may teach you all about gravure printing, a type of intaglio printing process that involves engraving your image onto a metal plate or cylinder before using a rotary printing press to press the image onto the paper or other material. We don’t simply explain the processes, but give you detailed information of when and why they would be chosen and what they are most likely used for. There won’t be anything you don’t know about printing processes by the time we’ve finished sharing our expertise!
Paper & print
It’s not a case of sticking a piece of A4 into the printer and calling it a day, at Print Management we take our time deciding which type of paper will best complement your print, taking the size into consideration too. Would it look better with a matte finish, or a flattering gloss? Could we save paper by printing it one size instead of the other? These are questions we ask ourselves every time we take on a print job, and questions that you’ll soon know the answer to after enrolling in the University of Print. Certain finishes will ensure you job won’t scratch or show fingerprints, while others can affect the colours of your print. It’s up to us to know our stuff to ensure we do the job properly, but why not find out all about it for yourself so that you can keep up with the process?
Fonts
You might think you know all there is to know about fonts simply from selecting your favourites in Word, but there’s much more to it and we take the choosing of our fonts very seriously. Often, companies will approach us with a particular font already in mind, or an idea of a font, but it’s up to us to make sure it works well and has the desired effect when printed. Each month, you could find out all about fonts, learn the difference between serif and sans serif, and find out all about tracking and kerning. One of our main jobs when it comes to printing text is to ensure it reads easily and that it stands out, which sometimes requires us to adjust the spacing between certain letters, especially when we’re fiddling with the size of the print. This is called kerning!
Folding and binding
At Print Management, our skills go beyond that of printing, we are experts in design and therefore are able to manage our paper like true artists. Paper can be folded in various ways and different jobs require different formats, so we have become accustom to creating some true masterpieces. Similarly, when it comes to binding brochures or booklets, we can advise the best methods to ensure the bind does its job and doesn’t take away from the print. At the University of Print, we want to share our knowledge of folding and binding with you and will provide you with step-by-step guides and everything you need to know to become experts yourself. Just remember who taught you what you know!
If you want to learn the art of artwork and how to get clever with print, whether you want to master certain techniques or are interested in finding out more about what we do, sign up for the University of Print today and start receiving your monthly email tips.
