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home > Tips & Tutorials > Graphic Design Process : Graphic Design Methods : Workflows

Graphic Design Process & Publishing Methods : Start to Finish Workflows

ALSO VISIT PREPARING FILES FOR PRINT / PREPRESS
ALSO VISIT PROOFING AND PRESS CHECKS
ALSO VISIT GRAPHIC DESIGN 101

Graphic Designers from our Community

A Fairy Tale Graphic Design Project from Start to Finish - I have found by following a few simple guidelines, my client base has increased and my stress levels have decreased.

How to Recycle an old design for a new project - How do you keep the design original looking for the new work?

A Design Process Revealed - Each designer — or design group — develops a method for solving problems, then evolves that method over time. While no one person or group may view a problem from the same perspective, general similarities often appear in their approach.

Art Direction and the Web - The purpose of this article is to introduce our readers to the principles and techniques of the art director — which relate closely to web design — and show how these can influence the overall effect of a website.

Basics of Directing Graphic Design Projects - Once you’ve done your research, chosen a designer, agreed on fees and signed a contract, all you have to do is sit back and wait for the pretty pictures to roll in, right?

Beginning With The End - Prepress - Where does a typical desktop publishing project begin? Dumb question? Perhaps not. For all practical purposes, the information gathering process starts at the end, with the printing process.

Book Packaging Process - Find out the entire process for book publishing - Cover Design includes title design, illustration research, at least 3 creative concepts for the front cover, back cover and spine. One comp of the selected design will be delivered by PDF files and/or inkjet proofs to the client for review. Client will make suggestions, minor copy changes, and relate them to the designer in writing.

Basic Planning of Your Design for Commercial Printing - For most graphic designers there is an enormous sense of achievement to be had from seeing your creative efforts finished and in print. After 16 years I still get a thrill from seeing a printed version of my screen creations.

Briefing Graphic Designers (PDF)- This guide provides you with valuable tips on briefing Goprint’s graphic designers – an important step in managing the design of your communication material. We also explain the Goprint creative process.

A Graphic Design Method - When working in an environment that requires lots of creative production in a short time schedule (ie., when working on the web), it can be helpful to have a design method. A method is simply a set of steps that you can refer to, without having to constantly recreate the path from start to finished product. This tool can be liberating in four ways:

Design Phase of Desktop Publishing - How a desktop published document is created
Prior to the actual creation of the document is the design phase. This is an on-going process but initially it involves determining the basic form of the desktop publishing document. Some of the sub-tasks involved in the design phase will overlap with other stages of the desktop publishing process. Although presented step-by-step, desktop publishing is not an entirely linear progression. You'll find yourself going back and forth many times between tasks and between each phase.

The Design Process: First Steps and the Client - Graphic design is a process, contrary to the chaotic images you may have seen in an art department at deadline. It all starts with your client's need for a website, logo, brochure, etc. In order to meet that need you must follow certain steps.

Desktop Publishing Bluelines - Usually inexpensive, photographic proof from negatives where all colors are shown in blue (or another color) is called a blueline. The negatives used for the printing plates are exposed to a photosensitive paper to produce the image on the blueline. A blueline is a type of contact proof, so named because it is created by having the negative come in contact with a special type of paper.

Developing a Workflow for Your Graphic Design Project - In graphic design, a workflow comprises all the necessary steps that have to happen for a particular job to be completed. Obviously, whatever your final result is supposed to be will determine what the workflow is. If you’re designing a piece that will be output to the Web, it will have a different workflow, or process, than a project that will end up on a printing press.

Document Format • Design Phase of Desktop Publishing - What Are You Going to Design? - The first step in designing any type of document for desktop publishing is determining what format it will take. Will it be a brochure, a newsletter, a small space ad, a business card, a greeting card, or something else? Sometimes this step is easily skipped. The general format of the document may be pre-determined. If asked to design a business card, then a business card it will be. At other times you may be tasked with presenting a certain amount of information to a specific audience and you must determine the best way to deliver the message.

How The Creative Process Works - The creative process in its purest form is simply a way of solving a problem. For example, a client needs to promote a new product or service to their customer base to increase sales. In one sentence we have described the problem and how we will measure the success of the solution. With the problem identified, we use it to research, gather pertinent information, analyze it, and develop the strategies to solve it.

Including the Client in the Design Process - Most Graphic Designers would cringe at the notion that our clients secretly believe that in the middle of the night, while everyone is asleep, tiny design elves sneak into our studios and complete design work for us. It certainly would explain a lot, like why they always have to remind us to make the logos and typefaces larger.

Nathan King Design Graphic Design Process - Nathan King is a fellow graphic designer and he lists the 5 phases of his graphic design process.

Process in Graphic Design - How should it look? Planning is complete — we’ve met, discussed, reviewed, defined and recommended. Our project brief sums everything up to the client’s satisfaction. Design is when we squint at a blank sheet of paper, wait for divine inspiration and sketch out the perfect solution in a burst of enlightenment, right? Not usually — although just often enough to keep us optimistic.

Process in Planning Graphic Design - What should it say? Although it may take a variety of forms — teleconferences, meetings, surveys — planning is the most critical phase of design. Before we consider colors, pictures, fonts or media we need to ask, “What do you want to communicate?” Besides “what,” we also find out “when,” “where” and “to whom.” Without investigating and defining these variables, design would be a shot in the dark.

Production Process - This guide is for authors of Brookes Publishing titles, however, it gives to you the process of publishing a book and at the bottom, this articles tells you all about press proofs. In the Printing and Binding Section, there is a couple paragraphs all about bluelines.

Process in Graphic Design Production Process - Making it real. Production can be hard to distinguish from design. While designing, we often create finished artwork; in production we often refine some aspect of design. But somewhere in between, activity shifts from exploration to implementation.

Proofs for Desktop Publishing - Outline of Proofing Systems - A general term for a variety of options for seeing what your file will look like when printed is a proof. Proofs are used for checking that all text and graphics and colors come out as expected before going to press. Proofing your work comes at various stages but there are specific types of proofs created during prepress and printing that allow the designer to see if their piece will come out as intended in the final printing. Different types of proofs are more accurate than others but with increased accuracy comes increased costs.

Prototype Techniques in the Web Design Workflow - “I’m having problems with the whole concept of storyboarding. My problem I think is that I’m not a designer by background. I have years of IT experience . . . I have in the past designed application programs and am familiar with flowcharts, hierarchy diagrams . . . but still I seem to have Web designer’s block!”

Ray Paslow - Graphic Designer - This is a great page full of useful information on how Ray Paslow Agency works out their graphic design process with their customers.

RC Paper - A type of resin coated paper commonly used for photographic prints in the darkroom is known as RC paper. Because some prepress proofs are printed on RC paper the term is sometimes used to describe that type of positive photographic print made from a screen negative. As a proof RC paper is a type of contact proof used for position only or for camera-ready artwork.

Reviewing a Blueline Proof - What should you look for when reviewing the blueline your printer sends you?

The Process of Submitting Art / Art Specs Tutorial - Welcome to the MorphiusDisc Mfg tutorial, which should help you get started on the right foot preparing your project for manufacturing. This tutorial is designed to help you avoid costly errors and production snags that could delay your projects completion, and it should help to ensure that your finished products are of the highest possible quality.

Ten ways to keep your design costs down - We all know what it's like to have champagne dreams and beer budgets. So does that mean we have to choose between our business' image and our pocketbooks?

Traditional Process in Graphic Design - Are you new to graphic design and the proofing graphic design / layout / desktop publishing process. This graphic design agency lays it all out for their customers. Find out what their Graphic Design Process is.

The Visual Language in Graphic Design - Nowhere is the process of design communication more critical than in teaching beginning designers, since the effectiveness of the communication is crucial to the success of the student. I surveyed books intended to teach graphic design to novices, and tried to analyze the nature of the communication with a view toward applying the results to a knowledge acquisition system for graphic design applications. This paper reports what I learned.

What to Look For On A Proof and A Press Check - Because color interpretation is subject to an individual's judgment, we can't possibly hope to tell you how to judge color. We can offer suggestions on press to get the desired results, but once you're here on a press OK, you're pretty much in control. So what we can offer is a checklist for you to make sure you've followed all the steps to a successful and satisfying press run.

VISIT PREPARING FILES FOR PRINT / PREPRESS

VISIT PROOFING AND PRESS CHECKS

VISIT GRAPHIC DESIGN 101

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BACK TO PRINTING / PREPRESS PAGE

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PAPER INFORMATION

PROOFING / PRESS CHECKS

BLEEDS & BLEEDING EDGES

FIND LOCAL AND STATEWIDE PRINTERS

BLUELINE PROOFS

PREFLIGHT CHECKLIST / PREPARING FILES FOR PRINT

PDFS AND PREPRESS

POSTSCRIPT

IMPOSITION

RIP

TRAPPING

COLOR INFORMATION

COLOR SEPARATION

FOLDING . SCORING . BINDING

HALFTONES AND DITHERING

COMPUTER TO PLATE (CTP)

ENGRAVING

FLEXOGRAPHY

GRAVURE

OFFSET LITHOGRAPHY

SILKSCREEN

STOCHASTIC

THERMOGRAPHY