Guidelines for Supplying Artwork

Sample general guidelines for submitting print design work to a print house.

Fonts

Convert text to paths, curves or outlines (vector art).

Support Files

EPS - Illustrator/Freehand: Fonts converted Tiff - Photoshop: Save as 300dpi at actual size. PDF - PDF/X-1 a:2001, high resolution (300dpi)

General Guidelines

BLEEDS -Files must include a 1/16" bleed area, if bleeds are desired.
For example, an 8 1/2" x 11 "full bleed document will actually be 8.625"x 11.125','to account for a 1 /16" bleed on each edge.

BLACK TEXT - For best results, black text should have a CMYK breakdown of 0 Cyan, 0 Magenta, 0 Yellow, 100 Black.
The quality of 4 color black text cannot be guaranteed.

TRI-FOLD MEASUREMENTS - Front: 3.7295 Middle: 3.698 Fold-in: 3.5725
Example Tri-fold: This method works with any measurement. I will use 8.5x11" because its common.
Take the width and divide by 3 (11 /3=3.667) Take a perfect third and add .0625" (3.667+ .0625=3.729)
This is the front Panel.Take a third and add .031 "(3.667+ .031=3.698) This is the middle Panel.The rest is the fold-in Panel.

LARGE BLACK AREA - For best results on printing large black areas, rich black (20 C, 20 M, 0 Y, 100 K) should be used,
for uniform ink coverage. Using only 100k can result in uneven ink coverage, and a black that is not as dark as it could be.

FULL COLOR - We require all text and photos fall within the safe zone. All non bleed items must be .125"from the trim.

BLACK & WHITE - We require all text and photos fall within the safe zone. All non bleed items must be .312"from the trim.

Acrobat Preflight & Output Preview - will help catch any corrupt fonts, missing links or black text issues.

More Resources

1. http://www.designshard.com/print-design/tips-on-pre-flight-before-sending-to-the-printers/

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1. 
   http://www.thefarmerandthechef.com
   

   A culinary event with a rustic wooden plank background design.

2. 
   http://www.intridea.com
   

   KISS principles are hard at work here... simple gets it done! Looking a little harder though and this site has quite a few added innovative goodies, like tooltip bubbles and a ratings/improvement box. The site has enlisted in the Save The Developers campaign for certain low-level browsers, which don't support the above mentioned goodies.

3. 
   http://www.dogfish.co.uk
   

   KISS again... this one-page flyer layout design is poppin' clean and uses a fresh & vibrant color palette.

4. 
   http://fall.tnvacation.com
   

   The TNvacation seasonal family of sites is now standard fare on most CSS gallery menus. This nostalgic Fall season portal is no different! They do just an excellent job of revitalizing these sites, year-in and year-out, while also linking to many regional city and county visitors bureau and tourist attraction sites. TNvacation rocks once again...

5. 
   http://www.seoweb.co.uk
   

   Pretty cool portfolio site, the interface on the work page is buttah... The main site navigation could use some hover effects though, plenty of attention to detail otherwise.

6. 
   http://www.floggedmagazine.com
   

   Poor flogged little puppy has lost his way. :(
   A continued influx of flogged designer work and creative points of view, should make this site-magazine an interesting place to visit occasionally and possibily gain some recognition for your own designs.

   Don't feel sorry for me, any of my designs that got flogged were a valuable experience, for better-or-worse, the client had to live with the design choices as well. It's good to be open minded about these things, eventually you develop a knack for selling a design concept, while taking criticism more professionally. After the cursing is over, it doesn't hurt so bad anyways. Learn to be a flexible design ninja ...just like Mr. Bill.

   Maybe you'ld prefer to try selling your design spec work, so rudely written-off by a client that didn't quite get it. Check out Mubs' post this week for tips on Where To Sell Designs, if you'ld rather go that route.

7. 
   http://www.tvrdek.cz/en
   

   I've never really cared for narrow-width site layouts, this one is something completely different, even though it's largely very narrow, oxymoronically speaking. Interesting concept, I can see this creating some visual trends as well.

8. 
   http://tastyplanner.com
   

   Besides tasty recipes this site has some divine web 2.0 interactive goodies, like Recipe Box, Meal Planner, Grocery List and desktop widgets. Yum-ee-ee!

9. 
   http://wpcoder.com

   An imaginative layout, with subsequent pages all done as pop-overs using the jQuery Thickbox.

10. 
    http://honker.evaneckard.com

    Another free WordPress theme brought to you by SmashingMagazine, this one called Simply Ornate was designed by Evan Eckard. Featuring a transparent foreground, so all things are possible for the background image -think upgrade, Prototype.js /Script.aculo.us enhancements, and some pretty cool StereoTabs (wow... that's a great blog and a new one on me, I need to venture away from the jQuery camp a little more often) in the sidebar.

    They are offering the theme with 5 different color scheme backgrounds, with the transparent foreground, many things are possible, maybe even a flash animated background, looking for a good tutorial link for that suggestion?

    
    
    

Technorati : Web Design Journal, Websites Gallery, Weekly Top Standards
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1. 
   http://islandphotobooth.com

   This retro layout is quite well done, with all of the fun stuff a vintage-retro layout should have. It's a pretty good fit for the subject matter of the website.

2. 
   http://www.onefastbuffalo.com

   Another vintage website, this one with an overall antique vibe to it, you'll want to ignore the validator on this one, that and the all caps in the description meta tags and blinking navigation elements that results from not using a sliding-doors CSS technique. I do like this website though, with it's slide-in vertical navigation and various antique ornamentation, including a menu for changing the wallpaper background of the page. Catch OneFastBuffalo before this traveling wild west medicine show moves on to the next stop on the stage coach line.

3. 
   http://thefirsttwenty.com

   A really tidy and complete 1-page grid layout, using a lightbox to load content above the current page, resulting in showing the user many pages within a one-page layout. This non-profit site is somewhat a tribute to the fireman, while rasing money and awareness for a great cause highlighting the everyday heroic efforts of firemen, and creating needed resources.

4. 
   http://www.usataxdollars.com

   A nice little interface to give you an idea where your federal tax dollars are going in the USA, via a pie chart and detailed breakdown. Kind of cool actually.

5. 
   http://billyhughes.oph.gov.au
   

   Considering some of the government websites out there, this site should rate very highly! The site put up as a support site for an exhibition of past Australian prime minister Billy Hughes, who held the office from 1915 to 1923, when the country was enduring the horrors of the first world war. Marvelous little site, especially if you don't know much about Australian history.

6. 
   http://www.headconference.com
   

   Another web developer event to add to your calendar, October 24-26, 2008. This one is global and all you need is web access and $99 bucks. With some big names and major players, it looks like a pretty big deal. Check it out, the site credits are in the footer on the homepage.

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1. 
   http://www.carhartt-streetwear.com
   --
2. 
   http://www.abc-baseball.com
   From the good and oftentimes imitated folks at TaprootCreative.com. The distressed looking photograph in the header loads randomly on every page, as usual I can't quite dissect exactly how they did the scripting ...anyone? They have optimized and compressed all the css and javascripting, making it harder for a web layman to study, kudos to the Taproot web ninjas.
   --
3. 
   http://www.miamiangelproperties.com
   This Miami real-estate website, is a double-edged Samurai sword (sticking with a theme) for me. On one hand what I love about the site, is the beautifully illustrated header. On the other hand, the header is a bit large-ish for the inside pages and is constant and unchanging on all the pages of the site. Variety is the spice of life and some header variations could make this site even more unique. They've done a great job overall on the design, and integrating the WordPress blogging/CMS platform.
   --
4. 
   http://simonemaranzana.com
   Excellent Typography, Lighting Effects and 3D-style graphics are the specialty du jour, bon appetit!
   --
5. 
   http://www.darrenhoyt.com/demo/agregado
   Freebie of the week this WordPress theme featured on Smashing Magazine and created by a couple of the guys from Category4.com, namely Darren Hoyt and Matt Dawson.

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Intro: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_label

Let's take a look at some record labels still thriving on the internet because of a vibrant internet design and presence, and others... well not so much, but we'll look at some of those too.

Historic Record Labels

1. http://www.alligator.com
2. http://www.bluenote.com
3. http://www.motown.com - Two click-throughs and I finally arrived at Universalmotown.com they had some trippin' flash masked movie plalyer in the header on the homepage, very cool.
4. http://www.rhino.com
5. Sunrecords.com
6. Stax50.com - Stax Records 50th Anniversary site
   http://www.soulsvilleusa.com - Stax Museum of American soul music
7. RepriseRecords.com/faq.php

Recording Industry Heavyweights

1. http://warnerbrosrecords.com - Warner Music Group
2. http://www.emigroup.com - the EMI website leave much to be desired
   http://www.emirecords.co.uk
3. http://sonybmg.com - Sony BMG (partnership)
4. http://www.universalmusic.com - Universal Music Group
   http://www.umgnashville.com

Popular Record Labels

1. http://site.amoctone.com - A&M Records
2. Atlanticrecords.com
3. http://www.beggars.com - more of an interface than a site, bit interesting nonetheless
4. http://hollywoodandvine.com - Capitol Records
5. Columbiarecords.com - Rounded corners design... ho-o-hum-m-m...
6. http://www.epicrecords.com - part of the myPlay network
7. Geffen.com
8. http://www.islandrecords.com
9. http://www.islandrecords.co.uk
10. http://www.jrecords.com
11. http://www.legacyrecordings.com
12. http://www.sparrowrecords.com
13. http://www.vervemusicgroup.com
14. http://www.virginrecords.com
15. ZombaLabelGroup.com - Urban edgy, not too bad, some of the best R & B artists around.

Independent and Small Record Labels

1. http://www.blindpigrecords.com
2. http://www.cookingvinyl.com
3. http://www.dominorecordco.com
4. http://www.epitaph.com
5. http://fat-cat.co.uk
6. http://www.fiercepanda.co.uk
7. http://www.indian.co.uk
8. http://www.jeepster.co.uk
9. http://www.mentalrecords.net
10. http://www.skint.net
11. Smallmanrecords.com
12. http://www.subpop.com
13. http://www.warprecords.com

Other Links:

1. http://www.dirtynelson.com/linen/special/label.html - list of record label links, likely there may have been some gems in this huge list.
2. http://www.mary4music.com/Labels.html - Blues record companies alphabetized list

1. http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
2. http://www.google.com/trends
   Evaluate the trend of your selected keyword phrases
3. http://www.google.com/insights/search/
4. http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
5. http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-information/
   Grabs it's results from Google Suggest, crunch the numbers in a hurry to find what works best.
6. http://quintura.com/
   A tag cloud style of keyword exploration. This tool helps in narrowing down a good keyword phrase with it's web 2.0 hover-popup suggestions.
7. http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html?query
   www.Keyworddiscovery.com has quite a few very handy looking keyword and domain search tools, including industry keywords.
8. http://www.webconfs.com/website-keyword-suggestions.php
   Enter the domain name of a website and this tool tries to determine the theme, and keyword phrases that will return the biggest numbers. It is strongly recommended to only use those phrases that are accurate, to get the best results and bring users to your site who will return because they are finding the content they are looking for.

I found many more, in some cases using the api's of others already on the list, mostly the wordtracker api. Of those, some used hard to read captcha forms before being able to submit your keyword search, making those tools unusable when compared with the ease of other online keyword search tools.

1. 
   http://www.cesserdigital.net
   I recognized the work of Miguel Ripoll (link to an English translation via google), almost instantly! I don't think there are any other designers or firms that I can so positively identify. This design enterprise agency is one to watch for sure.

2. 
   http://jobs.webdesignerwall.com/
   Looking for a new design gig, or just more opportunity to spread your designer wings? Check out Nick La's new design jobs board, you gotta love Nick's work!

3. 
   http://www.kindledinme.com/
   Love the hierarchical use of colors in this design and the slow scrolling javascript slider on the homepage. The rainbow colors look splendid on the dark earth tone background.

4. 
   http://www.august.com.au
   Another spectacular use of fade-in flash backgrounds. S;otting flash backgrounds a while back, I've forgotten to try and incorporate the technique into my own website designs and redesigns. The idea of flash backgrounds really resonates with me, I'm not big on flash as an interface and full-site means of navigation usually.

5. 
   http://www.almalatina.info
   I don't speak the language, but this looks to be a great ballroom dancing site maybe, and you know what they say about ballrooms, especially in Italy?

6. 
   http://www.thelippincott.net
   The mixed nostalgic, newsprint, and grungy graphic elements of this design, along with outstanding typography and a loose grid layout combine to create an old world flavor that makes me hungry for more, marvelous site.

7. 
   http://www.classicwfl.com

8. 
   http://www.mukustudios.com
   Amusing Flash interactive portfolio, some talented illustration works.

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