Meeting Notes Archive

Wednesday, May 7, 2003

Expression Center for New Media
We met for the first time at the Expression Center for New Media in Emeryville. It was a very nice facility and the staff was friendly and helpful. Parking was a little confusing, as signs in the parking lot said “no parking,” but that turned out to not apply for the evening.

Expression Center for New Media http://www.expression.edu/

Social Time
The meeting started with our usual pizza and social time. Sodas were late, as yours truly had very bad Internet driving instructions and got lost in Oakland… um, twice.

Preflighting Your Files
This meeting focused on the ever-important topic of preflighting our InDesign® files. InDesign has options available that have never been offered in a layout program. As a result, there are new areas of preflighting to consider and master.

Presentations

Mark Atchley
Atchley.Biz

Mark was generous enough to share his expertise in the area of preflighting again. He was also a presenter at the January meeting (read the notes).

Here are just a few of the valuable pointers Mark gave:

1. Be sure to unlink text files that you flow in.
2. Remove unused colors and replace them with none.
3. Check embedded fonts in Illustrator® and Photoshop® files.
4. Native Illustrator files are best for maintaining spot-colors and transparency.
5. Place text in the top-most level if it is over a transparent area.
6. Include Document Hyphenation Exceptions when packaging a file.
7. Save the Summary and include it in the package.

Mark emailed me additional information that he found after the meeting: Adobe has come out with a tech doc that cautions, “Preflight feature doesn’t detect RGB color in (some types of) images (InDesign 2.x for Windows or Mac OS).”

Adobe Systems Incorporatd Support Knowledgebase http://www.adobe.com/support/ techdocs/301a2.htm?code=TA

Mark Atchley Mark’s website: Atchley.Biz http://www.atchley.biz

Mike Herzog
Ocean Label Printing.

Mike gave a “printer’s perspective” of preflighting. He gave several anecdotes of files that represented a “deadly sin.” It was a good reminder that, as designers with a powerfully creative tool, we still must adhere to basic printing common sense. It’s important that we strive to educate ourselves. One good book to look into is Great Production by Design, by Constance Sidles.

Steve Werner
Steve gave a brief overview of his new book, InDesign® for QuarkXPress Users. He also donated a book for the raffle prize and offered additional books at a good discount. I bought a copy. It is very well done. The idea is excellent. A lot of us have a decade of experience with Quark. This book takes that accumulation of experience and translates it into this “new” software in a way that makes learning easy. The book is broken into short, easy-to-read chapters.

Resources

There is a plethora of resources available to help you educate yourself on handling issues such as transparency.

Visit the Tips & Techniques section on this site for great links.

I’ve also found and included this sheet of useful information: Top Tips for Designing for Successful Output.

News

We have a new chapter representative! Mark Atchley has agreed to put on the “fearless leader” hat. Woo hoo! Check out Mark’s website to get to know a little about him (see above).

Etc.

I met recently with Mark Atchley, our new fearless leader, and John Agger, our PR machine, and we evaluated our past meetings and discussed areas we want to improve. We determined that we want to really strengthen opportunities for member participation. Some ways to achieve that might be to moderate presentations, save more time for Q&A, and plan events that encourage participation. Have any ideas? We’d love to hear them.

Personal Note

I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to serve as your chapter representative (aka, “fearless leader”) for a while. I’ve met wonderful people and learned a lot, not only about the software but also about how to organize events. And I got a little experience speaking in public. We’ve had a good year, and I’m sure that upcoming meetings will continue to get even better. I urge you to get involved in the group, if even only as an occasional volunteer. I’m off to the far shores of France.

Au revoir,
Leslie Nicole

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