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Animazement 2010 flyer WIP
Ashura
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hello again. I haven't been here in a while, so no one here is going to recognize me. I made an art topic way back in May 2007; everyone who replied criticized my art in great detail, so I (tried) to improve since. Unfortunately, I rarely draw nowadays. I usually draw something for myself once or twice every three months due to my (currently) harsh life as a computer science student at FIU. Last week, I tried to squeeze out a drawing for a friend, with an intent to improve it via crits. I remembered this place, so I made this topic. (gosh I'm so serious =B)
My friend Eric wanted me to design a flyer for Animazement 2010. This is what he wrote:
"Oh hey. Marci wants to know if you can do her a really big favor. She is going to be making flyers and she says she wants (in her words) your "masterful art skills". She wants to know if you could design a logo that says ANIMAZEMENT 2010 and it be at the top, and have little chibis be along the bottom, leaving her room in the middle to make her flyer. She says the chibis don't have to be itty bitty. She says be creative, and that she will work around your chibis. But a variety of chibis is what she wants. A catgirl chibi, a gothic lolita chibi...you decide!
Oh and Marci says to put your signature in the bottom right hand corner, cause she is going to mass produce these and turn them into flyers for something going on at our anime convention this year.
But yeah. Marci realllly hopes you can do this. She says she needs it no later than the 20th of this month."
Here is the template. I know that Marci is going to write the flyer's text, so I intentionally left out the expected text.
Dunno why the colors are so bright. The drawing is meant to be in CMYK, but it gets converted to RGB by every image host that uploads it. As a result, the colors sorta mess up when the image host converts them. They look much better in CMYK mode:
http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/2962/flyertemplate.jpg
I just want to know if it's successful. I was going for a cute look; I know that chibis are cute, so I used soft and pleasant colors to accentuate the cuteness. Most importantly, I want to see if the composition can be improved (and how). Maybe it could be cuter.. I dunno. I'm not really that good at art. I just really want to impress Eric and Marci as much as possible. =B
So yeah, I would like honest crits on this. Artists are supposed to have thick skins, and I'm no exception. I can take it. =o
My friend Eric wanted me to design a flyer for Animazement 2010. This is what he wrote:
"Oh hey. Marci wants to know if you can do her a really big favor. She is going to be making flyers and she says she wants (in her words) your "masterful art skills". She wants to know if you could design a logo that says ANIMAZEMENT 2010 and it be at the top, and have little chibis be along the bottom, leaving her room in the middle to make her flyer. She says the chibis don't have to be itty bitty. She says be creative, and that she will work around your chibis. But a variety of chibis is what she wants. A catgirl chibi, a gothic lolita chibi...you decide!
Oh and Marci says to put your signature in the bottom right hand corner, cause she is going to mass produce these and turn them into flyers for something going on at our anime convention this year.
But yeah. Marci realllly hopes you can do this. She says she needs it no later than the 20th of this month."
Here is the template. I know that Marci is going to write the flyer's text, so I intentionally left out the expected text.
Dunno why the colors are so bright. The drawing is meant to be in CMYK, but it gets converted to RGB by every image host that uploads it. As a result, the colors sorta mess up when the image host converts them. They look much better in CMYK mode:
http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/2962/flyertemplate.jpg
I just want to know if it's successful. I was going for a cute look; I know that chibis are cute, so I used soft and pleasant colors to accentuate the cuteness. Most importantly, I want to see if the composition can be improved (and how). Maybe it could be cuter.. I dunno. I'm not really that good at art. I just really want to impress Eric and Marci as much as possible. =B
So yeah, I would like honest crits on this. Artists are supposed to have thick skins, and I'm no exception. I can take it. =o
-Ashura, Ace Defective
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As far as design goes, I like it so far, but it needs something more. In that middle area.
Obviously.
Except for the logo being kind small, I think the poster looks good! May I suggest handing in a blank template with your font and color suggestion. She might go on to do something crazy like use Papyrus, or some other font that doesn't match this style.
Did you set up the bleed for this?
You're going to feel really stupid when you actually read the post.
Twitter
EDIT: I'm still not going to read it.
It's most likely (if not 99.999%) the image host's conversion. Shame that the internet can't view CYMK pics.. It's a bit of a nuisance, but it's nothing too bad. =B
http://www.getfreefonts.info/free_font.letteromatic.html
This is the one that I intend to give her. I think it fits the picture nicely. I would also tell her to color the font in the same color (or a slightly lighter color) as the sample pic.
http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/112/testtext.jpg
Oh wow.. I never heard about bleed before. I gave this picture the normal flyer dimensions (8.5w x 11h); I didn't know that the edges could still be trimmed out of the printed piece. Eric told me that he was going to print the flyers at Staples. Unfortunately, the site doesn't seem to have any info on printing specifications. As a result, I expanded each side by the US standard (1/8 inch).
http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/7430/bleedandtexttest.jpg
I dunno if I'm doing it right, but thanks for the heads up. ^^
Mustang: You gotta read, mang. I intentionally left it blank because my friend Marci is going to insert the text.
I'm gonna get into some very basic pre-press, but please don't feel that I'm talking down to you. Instead I'm doing it for the benefit of those people who don't know about bleed and how proper size management can save your client money.
How the press works
When you design a 8.5" x 11" flyer with graphics that go all the way to the edge of the paper, the way the press will handle it is by printing the 8.5" x 11" graphics on a larger sheet of paper, in this case the next one up is tabloid (11 x 17). After printing on the tabloid size paper, the press will cut the tabloid size paper down to letter size.
Bleed
The term refers to the bit of graphics that stretches outside the 8.5 x 11 area of your poster to protect your design from press mistakes. Remember, the press is not perfect. Sometimes the machine will cut a little bit lower or more to the left than it should have. If you don't have bleed you might end up with an unsightly white gap.
Crop Marks
These marks are the press man's guides to knowing where he's gonna cut. Don't forget to put them in!
How you can save your client money
As a designer, the more you know, the more you can save your client.
As I told you before, an 8.5" x 11" flyer with bleed will be printed on a 11" x 17" paper, which of course is more expensive than if it were done on a 8.5" x 11". You can save your client money two ways:
I would suggest, reducing the physical size so that you can get two copies printed on a tabloid sheet, because I really like the look that you gave it., and there is no diference between 8.5" x 11" and 7.5" x 10" when you see it from far away. Remember, you have to include the crop marks within that tabloid sheet.
Ah! And also, before I forget... about the font: It's a great choice, let me tell you... but don't forget to send her an actual copy of the font for her to instal on the computer!
I'm back. =o
Oh, that clears things up! So bleed is just a way to say "hey, I'll draw a tiny bit outside the normal printing boundaries in order to prevent certain machines from printing ugly white gaps".
I'm sort of confused on two things that you said:
"Alter the design of the flyer so as to not have graphics bleeding out the edge... this way you can print it directly on a 8.5" x 11""
"When you design a 8.5" x 11" flyer with graphics that go all the way to the edge of the paper, the way the press will handle it is by printing the 8.5" x 11" graphics on a larger sheet of paper, in this case the next one up is tabloid (11 x 17)."
My flyer is exactly 8.5" x 11". The graphics weren't bleeding out of the edge (they were on the paper's edge). According to your first statement, I can print a paper on a 8.5" x 11" as long as the paper isn't bleeding outside of the edge. It seems easy enough. However, the second statement says that the "press would handle a flyer with graphics that go all the way to the edge of the paper" by printing it on a larger tabloid paper. It seems like a bit of a contradiction (or most likely my own misunderstanding)... one says "on the edge" and another says "outside of the edge". I'm confused... maybe I'm an idiot. =B
Thanks for all that info, though! It's nice to see people share their expertise to others.
What MT's saying is that, in order to get a finished 8.5x11" sheet, printed clear to the visible edge, you have to actually print on 11x17" sheets, with an 1/8" bleed area to accomodate someone cutting that 11x17" sheet down to 8.5x11. The bleed is there to compensate, for the most part, for shift in the stack of paper being cut, because the printer does not print perfectly every time and there's usually about a 1/16th" shift. Without the bleed, some of the sheets would again wind up with unsightly white strips on various edges when a printer cuts to the visible edge of the topmost sheet. The bleed prevents that.
The implication of what he's saying is, if you want 8.5x11 sheets with no white borders, you're going to pay twice as much to have the thing printed on 11x17 paper, so you may as well put in the effort of building a bleed in so they can cut it and have it come out looking perfect. Alternatively, as he also suggested, re-design it at 8.5x11 with the non-printable white margin in mind.
If you live in an area where it's convenient to do so, head to Staples or CopyMax or FedEx Office and just have them print you one off as it is now. You'll really see what we're talking about, and it never hurts to see how your colors, etc., are going to look printed, anyway.
http://www.amazon.com/World-Print-Production-Claudia-McCue/dp/0321410181/
There's an updated version by the same author that looks slightly different, but I haven't read it.
Gah, sorry for looking like an idiot. All of this is new to me.. I'm used to printing research papers, not flyers. x_x
OOOH! I had a vague idea on what MT said, but now I fully get what he said by your description. So the printer never prints copies perfectly (it mistakenly prints 1/16th of an inch to the right or the left). As a result, the crop lines in each copy are always slightly dislocated. Since the cutter cuts all of the copies at once and shaves along the topmost copy's crop lines, a copy with a different crop line will be cursed with a resulting white gap. For example, I print 50 11x17 copies of an 8.5x11 flyer without bleed; If the topmost copy shifted a bit to the left, then a random copy in the stack that is shifted 1/16 to the right would get an unsightly white strip on its left side after the cutting process. Having some extra graphics outside of the border (the bleed) prevents that from happening.
When you mean "re-design it at 8.5x11 with the non-printable white margin", do you mean this? I found out that the non-printable margin is the printer's trouble area near the border (it never prints that area reliably).
It sorta makes sense. The white gaps will be there, but they will look intentional since they will appear on all the sides. Maybe i'm doing it wrong. =B
magictoaster: here you go: http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/2962/flyertemplate.jpg I can also give you the actual CMYK TIFF file, if you want.
I'm guessing I should use adobe inDesign to put the crop marks?
Ahh! You're right! I didn't plan ahead on this one... now I regret that. Unfortunately, it's my fault for posting this so late; I don't have enough time to change the composition (only add to it). The convention starts on the 27th and I'm supposed to give it to Marci tomorrow. x_x
Thank you so much for the tip, though! I will plan ahead when I make more flyers.
small update. I brightened up the goth loli. I also finished bleeding the picture. I just need to figure out how to incorporate the crop lines. Is there a program out there that can do that? =o
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/8/gothloliupdate.jpg[/url
EDIT:
http://www.creativepro.com/article/photoshop-how-to-adding-bleeds-and-crop-marks
hmm... according to this site, photoshop can print the crop lines, as long as I check "corner crop marks". I guess I'll go with this.
EDIT 2:
Cross that. Wrong tutorial is wrong. I have to draw on the crop marks. Heheheh... now this is all making sense.
http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/4997/cropmarksgood.jpg
Usually, I handle any images in Photoshop and the text and graphics I do in Illustrator. You can create crop marks in Illustrator or export* it as a PDF, which allows you to include crop marks in the file. If you're interested in this, let me know and Ill write you up a step by step on how to do it and what to watch out for.
* Printing the file to a PDF printer and exporting as a PDF differ in that printing to a PDF sends the document to a PDF generator, but doesn't allow you to control the compression of your raster images. Exporting to a PDF gives you a greater gamut of control, not only over compression issues, but also, technical settings, such as print marks, bleed and things like that.