No, not to some futuristic alien-infested location straight outta your favorite sci-fi novel… in fact, we’re going to take a trip into the Past, the Present, and the Future. Simultaneously. Without a time machine! Designers have dubbed this adventure The Press Inspection, and with increasing rarity in our cost-conscious, hyper-paced profession, I relish these opportunities to visit favorite local print shops where good old-fashioned American industrial manufacturing meets frighteningly cutting-edge digital technology. The alienesque photo above? We’ll get to that in a minute. Or two. But first: How did we end up here on a gray day in November?

Today’s field trip actually begins on the other side of the world in a small children’s residential school called Yemin Orde Youth Village, near Haifa, Israel. Founded in 1953 to accommodate Holocaust orphans during the great immigration waves of the fifties, today the 77-acre campus is home to more than 500 children from war-torn and otherwise devastated countries around the world.

Crossing the ocean quickly to Washington, DC, a small office in an apartment building on Connecticut Avenue, we find one of designfarm’s longterm clients, Friends of Yemin Orde. The American-based fundraising arm of the Israeli youth village, FYO financially supports the programs, the children, and the graduates of the school, as well as other disenfranchised youth who are served by outreach programs.

Next stop, a small unassuming brick building facade in Baltimore, Maryland, home of one of The Whitmore Group’s printing plants, Schneidereith & Sons (fine printing since 1849, 5 generations of printers). This will all come together, you’ll see.

Entering the building, the acrid but weirdly pleasant and somehow comforting smell of printer’s ink threatens to potentially knock you out… until your senses adjust. And as soon as you get past the front office, you know that as a designer you are about to enter another world all together, far from your  groovy little office with its cheap-&-chic Ikea furnishings and an Apple computer or two; a world with a rich century-hopping history AND incredibly up-to-the-minute digital technologies. This is where the rubber meets the road the ink hits the paper. Yet, it’s so ultra-sparkling clean you could eat off the floor.

Just down that long shiny hallway and slightly to the left, is housed one of the most monstrous printing presses you’ve ever seen. The Heidleberg Speedmaster XL-105-41 (at a prices topping 3 million dollars, you may want to buy one used here) is just that… a fiercely speedy piece of German engineering, which when fully revved up will put 18,000 6-color impressions of your project onto paper per hour. A run of 750 pocket folders for Friends of Yemin Orde (two sides!) is completed in about half an hour. And I get to watch!

In fact I am invited to climb aboard the beast (I stupidly ask: Do I need a hard hat? Because I’ve always wanted to wear one…) where I am able to witness–close up and personal–the fact that despite the amazing computer technologies running this badboy… it’s still a lot of beautifully messy gloppy wet inks being laid down with perfection onto luscious bright white paper. The image at the top of this post shows the front end of the press where said paper begins its ridiculously fast journey.

The real reason I am there of course, is NOT to climb around the equipment squealing with genuine excitement and taking photos so I can write another endless (but fascinating, right?) blog post. It’s so I can do the job I am paid for by my client, the aforementioned press inspection.

We will look through a magnifying glass called a loop, refer to our Pantone color guides, check our ink draw downs (for this project, we had ink specially mixed and tested because we wanted something we just couldn’t exactly find amongst Pantone’s 6000 choices)… all to make absolutely certain that the end product is drop-dead gorgeous and will perfectly support our client as they approach donors for millions of dollars on behalf of the children of Yemin Orde (we call this full-circle).

But wait, there’s more.

While I’m at Schneidereith & Sons, “on press” as we say, I am treated to a few other eye-popping lessons in modern printing. Lying around the Epson Digital Press (a machine 1/10th the size of that Heidleberg but pretty impressive in its own right) are sheets from another of our projects. At right, designfarm’s post-move updated business cards, along with former business partner, computer consulting experts MacLab’s promotional folder inserts… looking so… well, Warholian.

Left, is a lovely water color painting. Do printers paint too?? Maybe. But this in fact is not a painting. It’s a high-end digital reproduction, output on archival canvas. A legal fake! Whoa! How’d they do that?

Turns out, The Whitmore Group has been doing a lot of that lately. Pictured left, the beautiful Hasselblad H3D 39-Megapixel Medium Format Digital camera (German engineering again, and with a price tag of $32,000 this ain’t no Powershot, ok?) with which ancient works of fine art are photographed, including many important corporate and government portraits, in order to create amazingly authentic reproductions on archival canvas. (Memo to self: If graphic design career tanks, think forgery, ebay, &tc. JUST KIDDING!).

Pictured right, Whitmore’s digital reproduction of a painting of Paul Morton, Secretary of the Navy, 1904-1905 with whom my rep, one Joseph Wagner, shares a certain uncanny bald-guy-with-bushy-moustache resemblance. Joe, and his moustache, have been in the industry for 30+ years. Talk about expertise. And in case you don’ t know, printing experts are truly an endangered species of sorts. Which is why we value the partnership with the few and the proud, like Mr. Wagner. And his moustache.

Not to get all sentimental or anything, but there is a definite price–and I’m not talking just monetary–to all of these present and futuristic advances in what was once a vibrant outgrowth of industrial-revolution America. If you are of a certain age (who me?), as you are escorted through the pristine plant, you remember a time when instead of the muted hum of enormous and enormously sophisticated machines, there was a constant deafening noise… and there were people (wearing ear plugs). Lots and lots and lots of people. Whole huge shifts worth of apprentice and master pressmen, plate-makers and strippers (NOT THAT KIND)… to name a few of the profession’s occupational casualties. So although this blogging queen loves watching technology march on, I acknowledge that there are losses. And it does make me sad.

But let’s end on a cheery note. Thank goodness we can still smell that ink in the air. Because baby, when that goes, I am SO outta here.

File this post under Great design never goes out of style, but more importantly, under How a seemingly unrelated object from the world we live in makes its way into our professional design lives. A perfect example of how cultural phenomena in sports, fashion, music and yes, even graphic design, can converge in an effective and meaningful way.

But first, some back story. Waaaay back.

The history of the shoe pictured above (my red hightops) is a history of 20th century America; too long to document in this post.

Briefly, Converse rubber-soled All-Stars basketball shoe was first produced in 1917 and quickly made famous by the brand’s namesake, Hoosier player Charles Taylor who became the shoe’s best salesman/evangelist. Other highlights on the shoe’s resumé include: 1939 | The fist NCAA championship basketball tournament was held. Both teams wore Converse All Stars, 1950’s | The shoe becomes popular with rockabilly fans and other music subculture types, 1970’s | The Ramones popularize the shoe for punk rockers and teenage girls wear them in high school hallways all over America (back then mine cost under $20 and my daughter Molly age 10 just bought her first pair), 1990’s | Another music-related resurgence of the retro style within Seattle’s grunge culture and, 2000’s | Spotted on fashion models, hipsters, in music videos, and all over the streets of most major cities worldwide. You just can’t keep this shoe down!

So. When we located the image pictured left for a Friends of the Library membership development brochure design, I rewrote the publication’s title in order to employ the image most effectively. As can happen, the combination of a great image and a great headline is often too tempting to resist. This became the winning comp in the series.

I’m happy to announce that the brochure delivered yesterday and they are gorgeous. From the client: “Our brochures are phenomenal, and I mean phenomenal! From me: YAY!!!! And, HOW FUN!

While I may always favor some version of the classic black and white…

I will also occasionally fall hard for something as utterly silly as those pictured above. I love ‘em but something tells me that glittery unicorns is not quite what hoops-star Charles Taylor had in mind back in 1917. Do you have a favorite pair of Chucks? Send us a photo and we’ll do a recap of this post.

Want to join the club? Visit zappos.com to find pages and pages of styles in many fabrics, colors, and prints, including collaborations with major designers such as Ed Hardy and John Varvatos. Jodi’s shopping tip for you women out there… raid the kids department for $AVING$.

With all of this blogging lately about color it’s time for me to introduce you to one of the designer’s most primary and useful tools-of-the-trade, and explain why clients too should consider owning at least a portion of the Pantone guides to color.

First, a few general lessons about color. Did you know that color is not really absolute? We all think we know what we’re talking about when we say “red,” but beyond the fact that there are zillions of hues of red, our eyes might see (and our brains might perceive) these hues differently. Some of this is physiological and psychological, to be sure, but even simple and absolute things like lighting (which can be cool or warm), context (ie, what color surrounds the red?) and material or substrate (is the color printed on shiny coated paper, being viewed on a computer, a piece of fabric?)… will have a PROFOUND affect on our perception of that color.

This complex and tricky situation–essentially, controlling color perception among those who are concerned with it–is Pantone’s raison d’etre. In every professional creative field, from specifying color for graphic design, such as brochures, Web sites, etc., to fashion and interiors, Pantone provides a printed set of standards that help us discuss and actually perceive color in a more consistent way. So that maybe, une rose est une rose est une rose.

In today’s cost-conscious, digital world, we designers are producing fewer and fewer color proofs of our work for clients, saving time and money, and opting instead to email pdf’s that for viewing on monitors. Monitors, which are variously calibrated and reproduce color in a special and different way (RGB, or Red, Green, Blue) is a subject for a whole other post. For now, just trust me… your monitor is not a safe way to view color for print.

Along with proofing by pdf, we are also buying and managing far less printing on behalf of our clients; clients are opting to navigate this hugely complicated terrain on their own in an effort to keep costs internal. For all of these reasons, please (please, please) consider buying the Pantone Color Bridge Set. At $179, it’s not cheap, but will save you piles of money on ibuprofen alone. It may also save you thousands of dollars in print materials that turn out differently than you expected because you viewed a pdf of your company brochure on your monitor. Let’s dig in to this, shall we? I suggest a cup of coffee.

Ok, ready? I know that you are!

Pictured above is a complete set of Pantone guides that we bought in 2000, admittedly lightyears ago in terms of our industry. This set probably should have been replaced because of color fading alone, but having kept ours undercover they remain in like-new condition. For most clients, the entire set of these (over $500) is way more than you’ll need, but if your company can afford it, I’d recommend the whole shebang (the CURRENT set, not the slightly outdated one we own). Explanations of these tools follow.

The 3 guides above represent the complete Pantone Matching System, commonly referred to as PMS. Your organization probably has corporate PMS colors and possibly even an expanded palette of same… part of the graphic standards (along with fonts or templates perhaps) developed by a professional designer (we hope) to keep your materials consistent and cohesive among outside and inhouse designers alike.

PMS colors are PRE-MIXED INK FORMULAS. Think of paint that you buy for your walls or home… these colors are professionally mixed in controlled environments, and when specified for your brochure, can be counted upon to be relatively absolute. The books above fan out to show you the full range of these available SOLID colors, printed on uncoated, coated (shiny), and matte (coated, but dull) papers. Why? Because these substrates profoundly change the way many PMS formulas will appear. You can see this illustrated below; I have the three books open to the same page. The difference between uncoated and coated (either shiny or matte) is particularly apparent.

The reason to own this set of books is so that you and your designers can discuss PMS colors, and even paper specifications to some extent, while viewing these things in the same context (remembering again that the colors will shift in sunlight, warm or cool fluorescents, etc…). So when we say: We are thinking about PMS 265 for your logo… you can look that up in your book and say: Oh, I like that very much!

Remember, we can NOT show you what a PMS color will look like by printing on our sophisticated studio inkjet printers. These printers use CMYK to print color, not premixed inks. If the studio inkjets used the actual PMS inks, we’d have thousands and thousands of cartridges (one for each of those 6,000 colors!) residing here in the studio. Obviously not feasible. Let’s explain further.

Pictured above, the Pantone Process Coated and Uncoated (same substrate issue) and the Solid to Process guides. Let’s tackle process first and then the whole solid-to-process conversion ordeal (about which, there is some shocking news! A virtual cliffhanger if you will).

Process refers to printing in CMYK, which stands for Cyan (blue), Magenta (hot pink), Yellow (yellow) and Key (Black). This is the printing process used for all materials that contain color photos; essentially a pattern of dots in varying percentages of all or some of these FOUR COLORS will make up every hue seen on the printed piece. To the naked eye, the dots blend smoothly together, looking under a magnifying glass or “loop” will show you the pattern of dots.

Sometimes, process printing is combined with Pantone printing… a company may have a budget for a 5 (instead of 4) color job, so that their corporate color (PMS 265) remains absolute. But, if budget doesn’t allow for the addition of this 5th color, we will be converting your PMS color to its CMYK equivalent. And that’s where things get tricky.

The first two books pictured above show you JUST a selection of CMYK process colors. Because the combinations are close to infinite, even the thousands of builds shown can be frustratingly limited for us. Still, if we stick to one of these, we can talk to our printers and our clients in the same absolute color language.

The last book, solid to process, shows the conversions from Pantone or PMS to CMYK, side by side. In the photo below, the PMS or PREMIXED pantone color is in the bottom row. In the top row is Pantone’s best effort at replicating that color in CMYK process. Or is it? READ ON, my friends. And, prepare to be shocked.

In what can only be called hugely scandalous, Pantone has CHANGED the CMYK builds, unbeknownst to me until the very morning of this writing. Let me say that again… Pantone has CHANGED the CMYK builds!!! A client, having just this week taken my advice to purchase the NEW Pantone Bridge guides, pointed this out while we were discussing colors. And boy, was my face RED! PMS 032 Red, for those in the know.

So, if you own the Solid to Process book, THROW IT AWAY and purchase the Bridge, pictured below. If you own nothing at all, purchase the Bridge, pictured below. Mine is on order!

Here’s what you’ll get and really, it is all a non-designer needs: The same presentation format as the Solid to Process guide, but (heretofor unpublished) on BOTH coated AND uncoated paper. And, most importantly, with Pantone’s revised, updated, new and improved conversions that promise to be a closer match between PMS and Process. Whoooohooooooo!

Get it? If not, don’t worry… this is the stuff of big headaches, for sure. Just go back to the beginning of this endless (but hopefully not pointless) post and read all of this again. Or call me, I’ll try to help. Because an educated client really makes the best partner for brilliant design and printing results.

I took this amazing photo of NYC from my hotel room window the last time I was there. I printed it in my darkroom at home. I’ve got photography skills, don’t you think?

Oops, what is that… um, crease along the bottom? Well…. umm, uhh, I wasn’t showing you the whole lovely print I made in my darkroom at home, because, well, my 10-year-old folded it along the bottom so I cropped that part out. Yep, that’s what happened.

Oh no, I’m caught in the act. I didn’t take a photograph of New York City after all… and my 10-year-old is exonerated.

In fact, here’s the reality. The “photo of NYC” is actually just a super tight crop, a close-up of a part of a cute little gift bag that sits on my desk here at the office. The reason I love this bag and the reason it occupies valuable real estate on my desk, is because I can (mentally!) dive into the image, as shown at the very top of this post, and feel like I’m there… I can zoom in with my mind’s eye, eliminating the surrounding clutter… and travel. I heart NY.

I can also demonstrate what’s possible with cropping, a tool in every designer’s bag of tricks, and something we do by second nature after a certain number of years. A practicing designer begins to really see the world differently and can then manipulate your perception as well. Verrrrry powerful stuff.

Thankfully, most of us (your friends at designfarm, included) operate in service of good vs. evil.

It’s official, we are happily relocated on the 8th floor of the Takoma Business Center! Info appears above with new stuff in RED. I know what a pain it is to ask you to update your files, and I appreciate you doing so.

By the way, the drawing pictured above is the one I used in order to solve the problems of moving. It’s hard to see that it’s done on graph paper… 1/4 inch square = 1 foot.

Because three dimensional design is super challenging for me, I’ve employed this technique for 3 moves now, at the office and at home. And it really works! I highly recommend this for anyone… whether you are design-minded… or (especially) if you are not.

For the office move I had the space planner’s scale drawing to work with. Unfortunately, it really was not done very accurately, which caused problems. For two home moves, I’ve measured the rooms myself, and it worked out far better.

If you’re moving, or even planning a new room, give this technique a try. Mark the windows and doors on your drawing and then measure existing furniture you think you want to include… and any new furniture you’re considering buying. Cut the furniture out of the same graph paper and put double stick tape on the back. Then… play! In many situations, the best plan will quickly present itself. I recommend you ask another person to also work with you, both on paper and in real life when the move occurs. In two instances, I’ve had the help of friends and colleagues who brought a different (and ultimately, better) eye to the process.

There will always be things you’ll change. What looks good on paper may not have the right feng shui in real life. But it will definitely give you a solid start, and will help you as you plan what to take, what to buy, and what to leave behind.

You wouldn’t think that moving from the 7th floor of a building to the 8th would be a big deal, would you?

Well then… you haven’t been a busy design practice with a bunch of gotta-save-everything designers on staff. Collectors. Catalogers. Archivers. Designers!

The good news is: Minimal change to our address… just a new suite: SUITE 812.

New phone number (not yet confirmed) is easy to remember… a bunch of 8’s: 301-270-0888.

In its entirety, our new info:

designfarm
6930 Carroll Ave
Suite 812
Takoma Park, MD 20912

P: 301-270-0888 (unconfirmed but we are crossing our fingers)

Design is all around us whether at home, at play, or adorning our workspace. Here at designfarm, we love to fill our shelves with inspirational items that we desire to display and find from our walks of life. From a bouquet of vintage button flowers to an endless collection of fruit stickers, these artifacts not only decorate our workspaces, but they define our unique “design” personalities. So come on in and check out a sampling of the delightful goodies we have laying around. Perhaps they will inspire you!

You can always find unique treats on Jodi’s desk like this vase of assorted button flowers and the doll baby enjoying the sunshine one afternoon. Cute skirt, eh?

And just a few steps away at Sarah’s station, you can gaze at a multitude of fruit stickers as well as a variety of antique souvenirs she has found along the way.

And finally, arrival at my desk where you can find an assortment of toys, containers, and knick knacks. The “d” is from our retired logotype. I don’t know why, but I just love it!

In the end, it just goes to show that design is everywhere, including our workspaces. As designers, we love to collect items from our travels that catch our eye. Could be great lookin’ type, a funny toy, vintage photographs, or something as simple as buttons. That is a little peek of what we’re about and where we derive our creativity from. We’re collectors and designers… and we love to fill our workspaces with all that we find!