Print Production Fundamentals with Claudia McCue

Join author Claudia McCue on a journey that introduces the printing process and reveals the keys to designing a document that prints as well as it looks onscreen. This course takes you on the floors of two commercial print houses (BurdgeCooper and Lithographix), to better understand the life cycle of a print job and observe printing presses in action. Along the way, discover how to better communicate with your printer, choose the correct paper, inks, colors, and fonts for your project, and how to correctly lay out your documents in Adobe Illustrator and InDesign. This course is designed to help you and your printer produce a professionally finished print job, whether it's a business card, brochure, or multipage magazine.

lynda.com thanks the BurdgeCooper and Lithographix printing companies for access to their facilities and permission to film on site.

Topics include:
Understanding the importance of contact proofs
Handling corrections and alterations
Choosing from offset, letterpress, thermographic, or digital printing options
Understanding how the inks, colors, and paper interact
Building a document at the correct size
Folding and trimming
Choosing fonts
Working in Illustrator with swatches, effects, and more
Laying out a document in InDesign
Generating a final PDF
Troubleshooting print issues
Preflighting your print job in Acrobat