During the start of the summer holidays of the end of my second year I managed to get a placement on a graphics course in Trafford Park learning about how Printing.com works and how it is run. I was absolutely amazed by what I found out and what I saw whilst I was there. It really was an amazing experience.
We started off doing a little bit of an icebreaker on the first day then went straight in to the nitty gritty of doing intense learning about colours, the scientific explanation of how we can see and how it applies to graphic design and print. I was in a group of about 10 people that were a lot older and had a lot more experience than I did which I found at the beginning quite daunting, it made me panic slightly every time we were given a quick brief to do as I was worried that I would be unable to keep up as these people had their own businesses for years etc. However, I was fine and if I did get a little bit stuck I was not afraid to question what I did not understand which I am very glad of.
The two photographs below show a few notes that I made to help drill certain measurements and colour opacities and settings in to my head. They did tell us that we didn't need to write notes as we would have been given a pack with all the information given, however, I think that if I was to write things down at the time I would understand how and why this was said at the time. I am a very visual person and it can jog my memory quickly when I see something that I remember so this worked really well for me.
The image below is what people that work at the franchises of Printing.com all over the world use to check their work for the client. They have to go through a sheet almost like a questionnaire on what they have had to change etc. I found out that this was an extra charge and sometimes this has to be done before they could even start designing on it.
Here we received hand outs, booklets, leaflets, swatches etc which was very useful when we got given quick briefs to do as we could keep referring to these things for colour perspective and how much the job would cost in total.
Below was the main brief that we got to do on the second day. We were given 30 minutes to check the brief first and see what the client wanted and their needs for a business card. Then we had about 10 minutes to upload the job on their local Intranet called Flyerlink. This took a while to do and at every stage you nearly complete the job you are working on you have to change the status. It works quite well this as the printing people can see where you are up to and more importantly the client can too.
We did a sort of role play and had to give each other our designs and then comment back as if we were the client. The tutors wanted us to all change something on our designs which meant going though the whole process of checking again, which didn't bother me because I understand that this is what really happens in the real world!
Here is the brief I specifically got given below,
Here is the invoice below,
This was my final outcome, I then had to send it back off to the client to be proofed which means they have to sign and say whether or not that is how they wanted it and if not what they want you to change.
Normally the proof would be sent by email, but I found that looking at it on screen is totally different to actually printing it out as the sizes are deceiving. So the best way in my opinion is to get the client to come to the shop or send it by letter then less printing errors occur in future.
We also found out a little bit about spot printing, which is where you can get gloss printed on to whatever you want to on your work. The tutors only really touched on this as I think most of the class knew already how to do this and they weren't really there to teach they were just there to explain about how Printing.com actually works, which in my opinion is fair enough. As you can see below we were given big A2 sheets of swatches including CMYK colours and Pantone colours. I learnt that if a client wants Pantone colours the printer does not have the ability to print that bright. So that's why the swatches were invented to show the client what could be used instead or as close as to the colour that they originally wanted.
We were also given a tour round the actual printing building where we saw the huge presses printing at such speed. The noise in there was incredible! Very Loud! Most of the machines were I think German or Swiss and when they had stopped they played nursery rhyme tunes which was quite annoying at times! But it seems that all the guys that worked with the paper didn't seem phased. I went in to a room aswell where they had smoke shooters from the corners of the room to keep the room at a consistent temperature so that the printers did not buckle up. This to me was a little bit different as I felt like I was entering a science lab! The whole experience was just brilliant and I would love to go on another to learn and expand my knowledge more. My tutor told me that there is a video on you tube that a guy created from the printing lab and he has made a plasticine model and sent it round all the presses to show the method in which they print and put things together I haven't found it yet but I will do!
