More vocabulary

Jennifer | 10:19 am | January 11, 2008 | prepress, terminology, printing, process, workflow, General

Production works in acronyms, here are some you might come across:

• FSI - Free Standing Insert.
  Those annoying flyers you get with your paper are referred to as FSIs.
• GSM - Graphic Standards Manual.
  This is the visual bible for your brand. Logo and tagline usage guidelines.
• PMS - Pantone Matching System.
  Pantone colours are specific ink mixes that create a colour standard.
• CMYK - Process colour. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.
  This is the most common colour printing. These 4 colours are combined to create all the colours you see in printed pieces.
• RGB - Digital colour. Your monitor uses it - Red, Green, Blue.
  This colour profile is often used for digital and new media work.
• PSD - Photoshop file.
  PSD files are photographic files created by photoshop. They are commonly used in press-ready file creation.
• EPS - Encapsulated postscript, used for images.
  EPS files can be vector art or photographic images, they are another common format found in press-ready files.

Other terms and phrases you might hear thrown around include…

Working files. When someone requests working files, they are asking for the files used to generate the graphics. This means fonts, images as separate files that are linked to the page layout file. Working files are necessary if adjustments might need to be made. For example, you would send your printer working files if there was concern that some photos might need to have adjustments made.

PDF/X1-a. PDF files can take many forms, they can be small files meant only to be used on screen, or highly specific files made to run on presses. The PDF-X series are common formats used in printing, and PDF/X1-a is usually the file type requested by most magazines.

I’ll keep posting more as I think of them. After awhile all these terms become a part of everyday language, it gets difficult to remember what isn’t common knowledge!