Media Design and Print Take Centre Stage!

Print Company Takes Centre Stage!

Belfast print company, Media Design and Print, are continuing to buck the economic trend by pushing forward with new innovation and filling yet another gap in the marketplace.

(L-R) Media Design and Print partners,

Michael, Harry and Harold Beckinsale.

The launch of their new website www.mediadesignandprint.com in April 2012 has seen impressive growth for the Belfast firm, with an increase in online queries being followed up with actual orders. Not content with this

success, however, they felt there was a gap for yet more innovation.

The latest development has seen the launch of their newest website www.loadzalabels.com This website sees another first for Northern Ireland as customers can now go online and place an order for small and larger quantities of labels/stickers in a variety of material and finishes, to fulfil customer needs; they’ll even design the artwork for a small fee if required.

The site has been specifically designed to work with smartphones and tablets as well as desktop PCs, and is already seeing a good response, with excellent user reviews from clients across the UK and mainland Europe.

To help highlight their newest service and also promote the Media Design and Print brand, the company have teamed up with Belfast’s Odyssey Arena by sponsoring signage in the arena for the next twelve months.

This sponsorship deal will see the Media Design and Print and Loadzalabels.com branding featuring prominently in the main arena.

In explaining the reasons behind this latest promotional activity, business partner Michael Beckinsale said, “At Media Design and Print we are constantly looking for ways to let people know about who we are and what we do. We want to be regarded as innovative and forward-thinking and want to be seen as a premier company in the Northern Ireland marketplace when it comes to all things print.

What better way to portray this than to feature in Northern Ireland’s premier sports and entertainment facility, the Odyssey Arena, in such a prominent way. When it comes to print, we want to be the first company that comes to people’s minds and we feel this latest promotion will certainly help us achieve this goal.”

Media Design and Print’s inward investment has continued to create employment opportunities on both a full and part-time level, with another two members of staff joining them in 2013 in addition to those who joined in

2012.

As the economy moves to a more positive position, the partners at Media Design and Print are confident and optimistic for the future as they enthusiastically respond to the ever-changing needs of businesses in Belfast and beyond.

Still launching new innovations

At Media Design and Print we're continuing our trend of providing new ways of doing things.

The launch of our new sticky labels website www.loadzalabels.com is the latest development in our quest to make buying print as easy as going to the corner shop for a bag of crisps. The step-by-step process is so easy to use, a child could place an online order.

Perfect for small quantities, at loadzalabels.com you can order sticky labels for birthday parties, stag/hen parties, and just about any other function you can think of. You can have your labels printed on a range of materials and have them cut to any shape, no matter how intricate.

The site has been purposely designed for smartphones and tablets, as well as your desktop pc, meaning you can take a photograph from your mobile device and upload it into your order to get those special pics put into print at a few taps of the screen.

For the month of May we're giving 25% OFF all orders placed online, so what are you waiting for?

You can of course still order from our standard boxed range of off-the-shelf PCL labels at mediadesignandprint.com


Invoice Books
Another new innovation this month sees us producing invoice books and pads in a staggeringly quick 2 day turnaround. We've always produced duplicate/triplicate NCR books and pads but the addition of new software and production methods means that we can now supply them in only 2 days from order!

You can have them printed black print only or in glorious full colour. Made into books or pads, all our books come numbered as standard and are ready for collection in 2 days, nobody does them as quickly as that!

So that's it for the moment. Give our new LoadzaLabels site a try or continue to visit us at Media Design and Print. You are of course welcome to give us a call, our friendly team of specialists are always happy to speak to you if you're worried about any aspect of your project.

See you soon.

Monitor Calibration

Monitors, On-Screen Color, and Color Reproduction

The problem of colour monitors, on-screen colour, and colour reproduction is a complicated subject that involves a number of very different technical problems and different technologies. Let's get this discussion off on the right foot by stating right up-front that you can never accurately match your monitor's colour to your print job. OK, with that out of the way we can start to look at the problem and examine some partial solutions.

 

RGB vs CMYK Colour

The first problem to deal with is the way that computers display colour is the exact opposite of the way that colour appears when printed on paper. For a more detailed explanation of RGB vs CMYK color please refer to our earlier CMYK Color post.

Computer monitors create images using combinations of just three colours: Red, Green and Blue (RGB). These are the primary colours of visible light. This also how televisions display images on their screens. RGB colours appear brighter and more vivid specifically because the light is being projected directly into the eyes of the viewer. The monitor literally shines the coloured light directly into your eyes.

RGB colour is an "additive" process in which the three colours are combined in different amounts to produce various colours. It is called "additive" because you must add varying amounts of two or more colours to achieve hues and values other than the three basic red, green and blue colours.

Professional printing presses print full colour pictures by using the colours Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK). In this "subtractive" process the various inks absorb the light reflected from the underlying white paper to produce the colours that your eye sees. The colours that you see are those colours which were not absorbed by the ink. It is called subtractive because when you subtract the other colours, the colour that is left is the colour that you see.

 

 

Because the perceived CMYK colour is made by light reflected from the printed page it can never be as brilliant and intense as the backlit colour on a computer monitor. It is also affected by the underlying paper colour, reflectivity, and the lighting conditions in the rooms where the page is viewed. As a result, CMYK is never as intense as colour when viewed on a computer monitor.

 

Computer Monitors Have the Blues

As a general rule, all unmanaged computer monitors are too bright and as a rule they are too Blue in colour (this may vary by manufacturer). To begin to approximate print production colour it is necessary to take some degree of control over the colour that your monitor displays. There are some basic free tools that come with some systems and Adobe supplies a Gamma colour adjustment tool with Photoshop. We recommend however that if you want to have more precise control that you make the investment in one of the relatively inexpensive devices designed to analyze your monitor's colour and to make a customized ICC profile which then adjusts that colour to the printing industry standard for colour displays.

 

Monitor Calibration Tools

To calibrate your monitor to the greatest possible degree it is necessary to use a specialized calibration device such as on of the ones listed below. These are reasonably priced devices and should be within the budget of any design professional. If used regularly, any of these will make a big difference in the day-to-day accuracy of your monitor. It is a good idea to search the internet before puchasing one of these devices because the price will vary by as much as 10-20%.

• Xrite i1 Display LT or i1 Display 2
• Pantone HUEY
• Datacolor SpyderTV or SpyderTV Pro
• Integrated Color ColorEyes Display Pro

Any of these mentioned above will adjust your monitor without a large investment. It is possible to spend much more on a calibrator which will also be able to help with printer calibration.

 

Basic Monitor Calibration Without a Calibrator

We recommend that you consider purchasing any of the devices mentioned above. It is quicker, easier, and the results are much better. However, if you choose not to invest in a calibrator then there are some basic things that you can do to help your monitor display colour. If you have Photoshop then you should use the Gamma tool to make some basic adjustments.

In general you should always set the Contrast to 100% and then adjust the Brightness down. The Gamma tool will give you a black and dark gray target that you use to adjust Brightness. Usually the goal is to just be able to make out the dark gray square on the black background. The Gamma tool will then lead you through a series of adjustments designed to neutralize the colours of your display and to remove any cast that is usually present (remember the Blues mentioned earlier). It is a very good idea to set the desktop backround to a neutral gray to remove any influence that the background or wallpaper will have on your colour perception.

The standard target gamma for printing is now 2.2 (older Macs were often set to 1.8 but 2.2 is the current standard). The colour temperature goal is 6500K.

If you don't have the Adobe Gamma tool then you can use whatever adjustment tools that may have come with your system (Macs have something similar to Gamma in their OS X). The goal is the same no matter what software you use. You can even use the controls built into the monitor itself if you have nothing else. Be certain to use a neutral medium gray desktop background when making any adjustment. You are trying to make this gray absolutely neutral. Small adjustments will shift its overall cast from Red to Blue to Green very quickly.

We hope this information is helpful to you but as always, if you need to talk to us just pick up the phone and call us on 028 9045 9864 or email us. Media Design and Print are always happy to help.

RGB v CMYK - Do You Know Your Colours?

At Media Design and Print, one of the most common queries we regularly receive relates to colour reproduction.

Below is a fairly in-depth explanation on the problems that can sometimes be encountered with specific shades and hues, but we hope it helps you understand the processes involved when our expert team produce your projects just how you want them.

 

CMYK or RGB Color?

Most graphics software programs give you the choice to work in either RGB or CMYK color. These are also called colour spaces. There are colour spaces other than RGB and CMYK but they are less common and we will not discuss them here.

What is RGB Color?

Digital cameras and scanners and create images using combinations of just three colours: Red, Green and Blue (RGB). These are the primary colours of visible light and this how computers and televisions display images on their screens. RGB colours often appear brighter and more vivid specifically because the light is being projected directly into the eyes of the viewer.

This is an "additive" process in which the three colours are combined in different amounts to produce various colours. It is called "additive" because you must add varying amounts of two or more colours to achieve hues and values other than the three basic red, green and blue colours.

Computer monitors and televisions vary the amount of each colour from 0 to a maximum of 255. Equal maximum amounts of all three colours (often expressed as R255, G255, B255) creates white. The absence of all three colours (R0, G0, B0) creates black. Equal amounts of all three colours somewhere between 0 and 255 will create varying shades of gray.

 

RGB (additive) Colour

Many graphics applications default to the RGB colour space because computers use RGB to display colour themselves. It is easier. Most software and even desktop inkjet and laser printers assume that you are using RGB colour to simplify things for users. However, strange as it may seem, all desktop inkjet printers actually use CMYK (or at least CMY) to produce colour documents. Not all printers use the black cartridge when printing colour, the cheapest models may use equal amounts of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow to produce Black (often poorly).

What is CMYK or Process Colour?

Based upon Sir Isaac Newton's Colour Circle, Four colour process printing was originally developed in the late nineteenth century along with the halftone process for reproduction of continuous tone images (photographs) and has been used for over 100 years to reproduce colour images. The colours Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow appear directly opposite the Red, Green, and Blue on the Colour Circle devised by Newton over 300 years ago.

Newton's Colour Circle

Professional printing presses print full colour pictures by using the colours Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK). In this "subtractive" process the various inks absorb the light reflected from the underlying white paper to produce the colours that your eye sees. The colours that you see are those colours which were not absorbed by the ink. It is called subtractive because when you subtract the other colours, the colour that is left is the colour that you see.

In the CMYK colour system, equal proportions of Yellow ink plus Cyan ink produces Green, Yellow ink plus Magenta ink produces Red, and Cyan ink plus Magenta ink produces Blue (actually more like purple to most eyes). Various colour shades and values are achieved by varying the relative amounts of the four coloors. Black ink is added to improve the quality of 3-color blacks, to provide added detail to images, to speed drying, and to reduce overall ink costs, thus the name: Four Colour Process.

CMYK (Subtractive) Colour

This is the Four Colour Process (also known as Process Colour or Full-Colour) printing that comprises the vast majority of magazines and marketing materials you see every day. Process colour is generally very good for reproducing pictures but there are some types of colour that it cannot reproduce well. This is because the gamut (or range) of reproducible colour for Process Colour is not as wide as that of RGB colour. As a result, certain intense values of colours such as Orange, Green, Blue, and other bright colours can sometimes appear dull or even dirty. On the other hand, bright Reds generally reproduce very well.

That is not to say that CMYK colour looks dull or dirty. Just look at any colour magazine such as The National Geographic and you will see that it does a very god job of reproducing nearly every colour that might be needed. For those special colours that cannot be satisfactorily reproduced by CMYK there is always spot colour (special extra inks that are mixed to match a specific colour or even a customized colour). Spot colours are often used for metallic and other special effects colours.

It is best to select any colours you use for fonts or other design elements in your layout using CMYK definitions instead of RGB. That way, you will have a better idea of how they will appear in your printed piece.

RGB Must be Converted to CMYK Colour in Order to Print

At some stage your RGB file must be translated to CMYK in order to print it on a printing press. It is best if you do the RGB to CMYK Conversion of your images. You will have more control over the appearance of your printed piece if you convert all of the images from RGB to CMYK before sending them to us. Be aware that it is possible to create colours in RGB that you cannot reproduce with CMYK. These are beyond the CMYK colour range or "out of the CMYK colour gamut".

Here are some examples of how various RGB colours convert to CMYK:

RGB Colors (what you see on screen)

CMYK Colours (printing inks will do this)

You most likely won't notice this kind of colour shift in a colour photograph. It is more likely to happen if you pick a very rich, vibrant colour for a background or some other element of your layout. It probably won't look bad, it just won't look exactly the same. But it may not be noticeable at all either.

You can purchase a colour guide with thousands of process colours with their RGB values and their CMYK screen percentages, to help you choose the right colour for your project. We recommend the PANTONE Color Bridge Set which contains both coated and uncoated stock ink swatches.

When we receive RGB images in a job we instruct our RIP software to make the conversion to CMYK. The RGB to CMYK conversion table tries to map colours to get as close as possible to the appearance of the original. We think that it does a very good job but it is possible that it might not be to your liking.

Here is an example: many programs translate the 100% Blue in RGB into a purplish blue colour in CMYK (Adobe InDesign will give you C:88, M:76, Y:0, K:0). We suggest that you use a CMYK value of C:100, M:60, Y:0, K:0 to get a nice blue. Working in the CMYK colour space allows you to select the exact CMYK mix that gives you the results you want.

We want you to be pleased with your job, so please, take the time to prepare your file properly. We cannot be responsible for results if you furnish your images in RGB. Even though monitors always use RGB to display colours, the colours you see on your monitor will more closely match the final printed piece if you are viewing them in the CMYK colour space.

So there you have it. Whether it's a simple A5 leaflet or an A1 photo print there's more going on in the background after you've sent us your PDF than you may at first think.

In all instances, if you are unsure about your project, please feel free to call us on 028 9045 9864 or email printing@mediadesignandprint.com and the team at Media Design and Print will always be pleased to advise.