Digital spot UV varnish from McGowan's Print

McGowan's Print were kind enough to provide a free sample of their new digital spot UV varnish finish on their business cards. The finish is done on a Scodix Digital Enhancement Press on some nice, very white 300gsm matt laminated business cards.

As you can see from the pics the digital spot varnish is very accurate with good registration, clean finish with the varnish only on the image areas, and covering even the small areas of the 'creative' text.

I'm very impressed and will certainly consider a digital spot varnish on future, short-run jobs.

Thanks McGowans!

GF Smith papers invite

I was lucky enough to receive a GF Smith papers invite to their 5 day event creative event in London this April. In collaboration with It's Nice That, Monotype and the British Council's Architecture, Design and Fashion Department, the event "investigates the craft within the creative industry, through live demonstrations, workshops, installations and talks by the artisans and exponents."

The invite comes in a chocolate-brown envelope, featuring a 30mm hole cut right in the middle, giving a sneaky peak at the contents - who can resist opening an envelope after getting a glimpse like this? The invite is a duplexed colourplan paper (aqua blue and sandy yellow), printed black on the inside only. A very neat touch is the dog-eared corner, contrasting the inside colour against the outside, and featuring the event title. The dog-ear also reveals the name of events' host - GF Smith. Inside, the typesetting would be extremely boring, were it not for the ingenious event title 'Beauty in the Making' pulled from the paragraph and set in caps at a 45 degree angle.

New work - Dirt School's Little Rippers poster

Poster design for this Spring's new kids courses by Dirt School - 'Little Rippers'!

Running from Glentress forest in the Scottish borders, the courses help kids to ride the trails safely and awesomely!

Check out Dirt School for more details.

New work - Callander X 10k run poster

Poster and commemorative mug design for Callander Sport and Adventure Project - the Callander X is Britain's most stunning 10k run.

The design features an illustration of the famous St Kessog's church (now the Trossachs and Rob Roy visitor centre), and silhouette of Ben Ledi which overlooks the town.

Enter the 10k here!

Graphic Design templates

Vickers Creative has started compiling artwork templates for all those simple jobs - A4 corporate presentation folders, business cards, stationery (letterheads, comp slips etc.) - with more being added every week!

The templates will be saved in a variety of formats - CS5, CS2, CS, AI10 & AI8, as well as EPS, PSD & JPG.

Feel free to download these templates to help you with your design projects!

Graphic Design templates

Kiltr - new Scottish social network

If you're Scottish, live in Scotland, or deal with Scottish companies you will want to get onto the newest, hottest social networking site Kiltr.

Based in Glasgow's West End, Kiltr is humorously "made in Scotland from electrons", and the network aims to join up the Scottish diaspora around the world.

The site portal is clean, easy to navigate, intuitive to use, fast... all the things you'd expect of a brand new social network.

I'm a bit behind the times on this one as there are lots of Scotland-related businesses and individuals already active on the site. Get yersel over to Kiltr and get networking!

Moo Luxe business cards

I received an email from Moo a few weeks back introducing their new Luxe business card product. As a print geek I couldn't resist ordering myself a small batch to check out the quality.

Essentially the Luxe product is a poor man's Colorplan triplex, where 3 pieces of fibrous stock are laminated together. The nice thing about the combination of different stocks is that one can combine different colours, resulting in a nice sandwich effect. The Glasgow Press, a letterpress printing specialists based in Glasgow, have some lovely samples on their site.

Moo have created a premium product using Mohawk Superfine paper, resulting in a 600gsm business card - this is 2 to 3 times thicker than your average business card. Any recipient of this card knows you mean business when they feel the firmness and texture! Their cards (and other products) are printed using a digital press system which means there are no minimums on individual designs; Theoretically I could have had a different design on each card!

Just like Apple products the presentation was just too good not to record as I opened it… The cards were sitting on my desk this morning, and before I even put the kettle on I had to unveil the cards within. I admit, I was a bit giddy with excitement.



Inside the corrugate box was this beautiful white textured box with magnetic closure, wrapped with a purple ribbon.



Moo's foil-blocked ink droplet - a nice understated touch.



My pack came with an opening line suggestion on the top card - this one is from the film Anchorman. Another nice touch. The back of this card is a personalised referral URL to earn me discounts with Moo.



The red paper sandwich within the triplex.





A nice colour match between the red centre and the Vickers Creative logo. Great definition for digital printing.



Nice, crisp print on the very white Mohawk Superfine paper.



I took a gamble on the rear and reversed the text. This is 7pt Futura LT Book on flat black (100% K). As you can see from the image I could safely go down to 5pt with this fine typeface and very crisp print. (For more info on black for printing check out the very in-depth blog post The Professional Designer's Guide to Using Black by Andrew Kelsall)



The Mohawk Superfine surface texture.



A nice flat black - sometime 100% Black can look a bit washed out without a touch of Cyan, Magenta or Yellow, but this is perfect for me.

Summary:
For the price (a little over £30 for 50 cards, which is the smallest and therefore most expensive quantity, including VAT and postage/packing) I am immensely pleased with the quality of these cards. Make no mistake, these are not letterpress cards, and will never replace the indentations left by the letterpress plate, specific single spot colours, nor the hand finishing associated with letter pressing. But, for the money the colour is very good, the registration is excellent, the print is crisp, and the edges of the cards show clean cutting. Combined with a lovely presentation box Moo have really gone the extra mile here. I may even order another set once I've smugly handed this batch out.

Moo.com Luxe business cards

Anchored images/objects in InDesign

The ability to easily wrap text around images and other objects in InDesign is one of the great features of the awesomely powerful page layout application.

However there is one niggling problem as a graphic designer when using InDesign to produce pay layouts for clients. Picture this scenario: A client has provided copy and images for a short document. It's very text heavy with a few nice images to beak up the text. You, the designer, have laid out the text and images, hopefully using stylesheets and the client is happy with the head, title, body and other text styles, and the position of the images. Then, the client updates the copy and you have to replace much of the text. Suddenly the text reflows and your well-placed images now appear alongside different text! So how to anchor images in InDesign?

There is an easy solution: Place your images or objects in the copy as anchored objects! That way they will move as the text length changes. It's as easy as this:

1 Select the image/object you wish to anchor to the text.
2 cmd+x or Edit>Cut
3 Place the text cursor or I-beam at the point in the text you wish to anchor the image/object
4 cmd+v or Edit>Paste
5 Use the Text Wrap pallet to set the wrapping options and text offset


6 Select the image/object with the direct select tool (black arrow) and go to Object>Anchored Object>Options


7 Set the anchored object position within the text in relation to the page (can be a bit fiddly, but just experiment and all will become clear)


8 Here is the anchored image in the text - the anchor position is circled


Now, if the copy length changes and text reflows, the images or objects will move with the anchor, even across pages and spreads! The anchor is also easily removed by going to Object>Anchored Objects>Release.