So I got the heads up that the kid management hired nearly three years ago has turned in his resignation. No surprise since he has been banging heads with boss.
So it's that time to find some dumb college kid who is or just graduated from college in graphic design. Like before, management is going to advertise for a "prepress person" in which then people show up asking for more $$$ than what they want to pay. So then they change the ad to hire a "graphic designer" knowing that so local college kid will take the bait, once in the door, they throw them in front of the digital press. When the college kid says "Hey, this isn't graphic designing?!" Management replies, "Yes it is! And don't question us because we're professionals and we know this is graphic designing."
So the new kid either sinks or swims and during his/her learning curve everything goes to shit or at best takes a lot longer. If they survive they are doing a prepress job for very little money which is how the boss wants it to turn out, and BTW if they can do the same job you are doing why am I paying you so much ?
If they don't survive the boss will try the same dodge again rinse / repeat.
Also, the college kids think graphic design is creating great masterpieces of their own choosing. They don't realize much of real world jobs entail grunt work and designing things that satisfy the customer's questionable taste.
make my logo bigger... that's what they need to teach in Design Skool
:hangme:
Quote from: david on July 17, 2017, 09:52:26 AMmake my logo bigger... that's what they need to teach in Design Skool
:hangme:
And bump it two clicks to the right... :banghead:
I don't know about you but my customers designs are amazing. They're even won awards. Like the Ray Charles Foundation best design by a blind person. The Font Conservatory's use every font in your entire library award and Pantone's design a piece with 200+ spot colors but don't inform the salesman what one they want in a 5c job award.
8) Ray Charles Foundation :laugh:
Well the new kid could make the brochure "more branded":
http://www.27bslash6.com/brochure.html
Or perhaps they could knock up a missing cat poster:
http://www.27bslash6.com/missy.html
Maybe some business cards?
http://www.27bslash6.com/bob.html
How about some logo design and or charts:
http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p2.html
That guy is pretty funny while still having the dickhead designer vibe.
Syphon, that is a profound post. It's a tragic sign of the times.
The owner of my company doesn't know the difference between graphic design and prepress.
Big fat fucking NO! Prepress is NOT graphic design. I'm a half-ass designer but I pwn prepress. I know exactly ZERO designers who can get a PDF to a platesetter and to an offset press. Prepress is more IT and practical engineering than creative/artistic. It is taking the art and engineering it to reproduce properly on the big fast rubber stamp. I have had better luck teaching IT and design to machine operators, because without understanding of the machines, you will have a shitty time of prepress.
Inexpensive, cloud-based design software will be the death of printing, not the intertubez. Because now, everyone with $30 a month for a Photoshop subscription is an expert/professional. And management believes them. Stick a "designer" in prepress and it will be the death of your printshop.
Quote from: Ear on July 19, 2017, 05:24:33 PMStick a "designer" in prepress and it will be the death of your printshop.
you won't get too much "prepress" out of them that's for sure. They spend their time surfing the net looking for the next hot trend in "social" networking to work into their next masterpiece.
:hangme:
Quote from: Ear on July 19, 2017, 05:24:33 PMSyphon, that is a profound post. It's a tragic sign of the times.
The owner of my company doesn't know the difference between graphic design and prepress.
Big fat fucking NO! Prepress is NOT graphic design. I'm a half-ass designer but I pwn prepress. I know exactly ZERO designers who can get a PDF to a platesetter and to an offset press. Prepress is more IT and practical engineering than creative/artistic. It is taking the art and engineering it to reproduce properly on the big fast rubber stamp. I have had better luck teaching IT and design to machine operators, because without understanding of the machines, you will have a shitty time of prepress.
Inexpensive, cloud-based design software will be the death of printing, not the intertubez. Because now, everyone with $30 a month for a Photoshop subscription is an expert/professional. And management believes them. Stick a "designer" in prepress and it will be the death of your printshop.
I printed this out and hung it up beside DCS's explanation of the evolution of the CSR. Good pieces - both of them. :thumbsup:
Quote from: Ear on July 19, 2017, 05:24:33 PMSyphon, that is a profound post. It's a tragic sign of the times.
The owner of my company doesn't know the difference between graphic design and prepress.
Big fat fucking NO! Prepress is NOT graphic design. I'm a half-ass designer but I pwn prepress. I know exactly ZERO designers who can get a PDF to a platesetter and to an offset press. Prepress is more IT and practical engineering than creative/artistic. It is taking the art and engineering it to reproduce properly on the big fast rubber stamp. I have had better luck teaching IT and design to machine operators, because without understanding of the machines, you will have a shitty time of prepress.
Inexpensive, cloud-based design software will be the death of printing, not the intertubez. Because now, everyone with $30 a month for a Photoshop subscription is an expert/professional. And management believes them. Stick a "designer" in prepress and it will be the death of your printshop.
Absolutely right. I am a designer as well as PrePress but I started out as a printer - hot metal then litho. I know what leading means because I used actual pieces of lead to space out lines of text. When I had trouble with impositions for 16 up folding I asked the boss to put me on the folding machine for a month. I've done a bit of everything which is why I'm good at my job. There is no better way to learn.
Having an understanding of all the processes is invaluable. It helps you catch issues upstream before they become actual production issues after it's printed.
Just don't think that because you helped run something for a bit makes you a master. Our bindery guy may be dumb as hell about a whole bunch of things but he can run those machines better than anybody here.
We've always said, make all the PrePress do bindery for a bit. Then they'll know how to strip (impose).
Well, there goes anyone out the door!
Third kid we had in last four years to walk out.
Management still tries to hire these kids that want to be web designers and graphic designs that don't know shit about printing.
Kid: What's bleed?
Me: Seriously?!
At least they can't fire my ass if I get up and dance naked on my desk. LOL
As of now, almost 99% of printing is done in our department
I've said we need a "digital press person" not some damn graphic designer.
So I'm guaranteed a paycheck for a little bit longer since I'm alone.
Boss tries to help. The key word is "try."
I've been lucky here for 18 years. I've only had two bosses and both know what they are doing. :)
Whoa, you are lucky.
What alternate universe do you come from?
Quote from: Syphon on August 11, 2019, 10:05:32 AM
Well, there goes anyone out the door!
Third kid we had in last four years to walk out.
Management still tries to hire these kids that want to be web designers and graphic designs that don't know shit about printing.
Kid: What's bleed?
Me: Seriously?!
At least they can't fire my ass if I get up and dance naked on my desk. LOL
As of now, almost 99% of printing is done in our department
I've said we need a "digital press person" not some damn graphic designer.
So I'm guaranteed a paycheck for a little bit longer since I'm alone.
Boss tries to help. The key word is "try."
this is why i dont ask for help anymore. i get this exact thing. and then they say they tried to help you. its not help to babysit someone else and still print.
I'm running into a similar problem at the car shop with service writers. It seems most of the newer generation don't understand what work is. They "try" but don't do things to completion and don't have the ability to think on their feet. If there are instructions they can follow them most times but if it requires thinking, they fail.
My present one formats his brain nightly. It's like the movie 50 first dates but he's not nearly as cute as Drew Barrymore and I'm getting real tired of babysitting.
Unfortunately, it's not just the younger generation. We had an older guy who was supposed to learn to run a press. Sent him for training at another shop with the same press. Turns out all he wanted to do was empty trash cans and change light bulbs. He couldn't think for beans. When he'd have a problem on the press, he'd tell the manager the press is broken.
He ain't here no more.
Speaking of Graphic Design...I think I got a designer fired today. Last time their job was printed we got PDF's made from InDesign. Beautiful pages with no issues.
Then they hired a new 'designer'. So this time they were completely done in Photoshop. Every page was just an image and all of the body text of every page was, of course, 4 color black. So I called and gave them the whole speech about how Photoshop is not a page layout app...yadda yadda yadda. The publisher called me and told me not to proceed and he would find another designer. So yeah...pretty sure I got a designer fired today. And I don't even feel bad! :evil:
Quote from: Joe on August 15, 2019, 05:31:51 PM
Speaking of Graphic Design...I think I got a designer fired today. Last time their job was printed we got PDF's made from InDesign. Beautiful pages with no issues.
Then they hired a new 'designer'. So this time they were completely done in Photoshop. Every page was just an image and all of the body text of every page was, of course, 4 color black. So I called and gave them the whole speech about how Photoshop is not a page layout app...yadda yadda yadda. The publisher called me and told me not to proceed and he would find another designer. So yeah...pretty sure I got a designer fired today. And I don't even feel bad! :evil:
I shouldnt laugh really, but you have probably saved the world from yet another :facepalm: deezigner
Wrong! Strike one down, 3 more take their place. Like some Sith Lord/Chimera nonsense.
UPDATE: My apologies. I failed.
The guy thinks he is pretty clever. At one point he sent me a new PDF named "Indesign PDF". And sure enough they were made from InDesign. I opened it and clearly he took his photoshop file that was just an image and then placed it into InDesign. Still was just an image with 4 color black. I told him that it "appeared" that he just took the previous files and placed them into InDesign and made a new PDF and he was shocked, shocked I tell, and said "how did you know that is what I did? I thought I could fool you.
:facepalm:
The publisher found out that he couldn't find a designer to reset all 16 pages correctly in two hours. Shocking huh? :shocked:
I was able to figure out why the black text was 4 color black text. It seems if you color it C-75 M-68 Y-67 K-90 it comes out that way in. Again x 2...shocking. :shocked:
And if you change it to K-100 and then output it again it comes out that way. Again x 3...shocking! :shocked:
Well it was still an image instead of text and the designer promised me he will use InDesign next issue. I'm 100% sure he means he will do the pages in PS again and then place that file in InDesign but that is a battle for another day. :shoots_self:
I've had so many do that crap. We ask for vector art, an .ai file or .eps. So they save or export their Word document as an EPS and thinks that fixes it.
:banghead:
I'd rather have a PDF from Word than a PDF from Photoshop.
Surely you must be joking.
We have a customer that sends Photoshop PDFs on the reg. They NEVER have bleeds. But when we open their PDFs in Photoshop, they are still layered, so we expand the canvas and pull out the layers that need help. It's way better than trying to deal with Microsoft color.
Well not the PDF's I got last night. Basically just an image of the whole page. So yeah...I am not joking. Give me a Word PDF any day. I can beat that sumbitch into submission any day! (with Pitstop)
Quote from: Joe on August 16, 2019, 03:16:35 PM
Well not the PDF's I got last night. Basically just an image of the whole page. So yeah...I am not joking. Give me a Word PDF any day. I can beat that sumbitch into submission any day! (with Pitstop)
That's all well and good until you get a bunch of .wmfs in a PDF rainbow screened with beveling and embossing effects and they want it recolored to match a Pantone. Ha! I've seen it happen; it's not pretty.
I remember PageMaker would take .wmf files back in the day and Windows users just loved to use those bastards. Our fix back then was to open the .wmf in Illy and save as EPS.