CRI Training for Desktop Color Proofers

Both careers and fortunes may literally be at risk, so long before jobs ever go to press, everyone and his uncle wants to know, “How’s it going to look?”

Enter the “color proof.” It’s sole purpose is to confirm that all files, films, and you-name-it are 100% correct. The farther upstream in the process problems get caught and corrected, the better and cheaper it is for everyone. And better and cheaper are huge driving forces in the printing industry, same as everywhere else.

Enter the Digital Desktop Color Proofer, or DCP. If you imagine a large desktop color printer, but with far more accurate color, many more capabilities, and control options galore, you’ve got the general idea.

I got to design training for two of Eastman Kodak Company's early forays into the DCP arena. The second involved a third-party RIP, or raster image processing engine, that was even more complex than it was powerful. In short, it was a beast! Talk about your design challenge!

Admirable Bird's-Eye View?

Here's an overview of a my solution:


Front-end analysis revealed I could divide the program into three increments: Users, Queue Managers, and System Administrators. Users would take just the first stage, Queue Managers the first two, and System Administrators all three.

Each stage was divvied up into bite-sized modules. This yielded a highly hands-on, self-study, self-paced, lab for teams of participants. Teams were proctored by a Course Manager who could answer questions, provide hints, fix problems, and so on.

Participants followed maps like you see above, showing which course modules ought to be tackled in what order. Starting at the bottom arrows, they’d work upward along whatever connections they choose, so long as they didn't skip links to lower-down prerequisites.

For instance, if you’d just completed the blackened-in CIO module in the middle of the above picture, you'd be free to choose either the SIO or VPD module next. However, not MJQ, because MJQ depends on things you’d first need to learn in VPD. In such fashion, you’d eventually visit all relevant modules and complete the course.

Of course lots of worksheets, samples, guided exercises and opportunities for self-evaluating progress were provided. Nobody was hurried or deprived of a chance to explore possibilities or variations at their leisure. Likewise, nobody was held back if they made rapid progress.

This strategy works well because it shows participants all the bases they need to cover, and then gives them as much freedom as possible to enjoy their learning experience. Such freedom is a built-in characteristic of the CRI -- Criterion-Referenced Instruction -- methodology.

Naturally it's a lot of work to do all of the up-front detailed task analysis, development of sound instructional objectives and many other things required by this approach. However, the end result is a training program that you can prove genuinely delivers on all its promises. So it's certainly well worth it.

“And this just in...”

Thanks to a wonderful client, I've recently had a great time doing a printed brochure and accompanying website update for Chateau Hair Designs. Here's a quick summary:

New BROCHURE   New WEBSITE

Revised, redesigned a new printed BROCHURE about services and prices, integrating look and feel elements from new storefront signage into a tri-fold layout Revised, redesigned a new WEBSITE from legacy site materials to match printed brochure, including look and feel Upgraded website HTML and CSS to full standards compliance*, including a footer link for live verification Added CSS rollover effects to provide some additional details on selected items Integrated a new BLOG at Blogger.com with the client's site, overriding Blogger elements and styles to preserve that same consistent look and feel Enhanced photos to add "watermarks" where appropriate, and improve web appearance overall Integrated a new Web GALLERY at Picasa.com with the client's new blog Vetted additions and changes with multiple browsers, on multiple platforms Provided a private, "shadow" site and blog to allow non-disruptive preparation and testing of future updates Preserved legacy information by keeping the entire previous version of the site available on demand through a footer link * Unfortunately, it's common practice for public hosting agency web servers to insert additional code, such as ads, which won't pass standards validation. Oh, well... At least we do our part!

Dentist's Logo

The brand message here is "Top quality, warmth and caring." Usable either in color or monochrome, three-dimensional or flat, it's for stationary, uniform embroidery, jewelry, and so on.

With minimal address copy, it's also been run as a magazine ad.

I know, I know. As professionals, we're supposed to love all our "children" equally. Yet, for me, there's just something a little extra-special about this one.

The dentist being my wife surely has nothing to do with it.

Tee Party Poster

Every year our kids’ Montessori school hosts a big golf fund-raiser. Naturally, I volunteered to do the poster.

Thanks to school administrator Lorraine Scarafile, I got a nice landscape photo of the Bristol Harbour golf course from Rick Stewart, a photographer local to that area. Hmmm... I mused. Nice brochure photo, but as a poster all by itself, both a little low-rez and a little low “zing."

What to do?

I pondered, then remembered Claes Oldenberg, the Swedish sculptor famous for -- Guess what? -- huge renditions of little things. Like a 45-foot steel clothespin that stands near Philadelphia's City Hall.

Okie-doke!

Lorraine gladly supplied me with a handful of their custom-printed golf tees. The toys I borrowed from my kids. I then used a digital camera to shoot each “giant-to-be” element in close-up on a sheet of white seamless paper in my driveway, giving care to match camera and sun angles to the landscape photo. After bringing them all together in Photoshop (faking that logo on my daughter's teapot was fun) -- voila! Giant rubber ducky, giant sand shovel, and a giant "Huzzah!"

I finished up the whole thing using Adobe Illustrator for poster text and page layout.

You like? Personally, I think Claes would approve.

Tee Party Carts

Sometimes things don't work out like you expect. Like with the additional posters and ballot I made to support another aspect of the same Montessori golf fund-raiser.

School admin Lorraine's idea was to tie placards to the front of all the golf carts, and sell bragging rights. Okay. I love turning visions into reality, so off I went.

With permission, pro photographer Dawn Mamikunian provided tons of great kid pix to choose from. I used Adobe Photoshop for a consistent look, making 36 big posters, like the one you see at left. Adobe InDesign marshaled everything into a "Have a ball!" themed bulk-mail ballot (see front and back at right; click to enlarge) to encourage potential patrons to bid up the price of the posters in a silent auction.

Everything was ready to go. I even made a website preview gallery for folks to browse the ballot and scrutinize all of the individual posters at their leisure.

So what went "wrong?"

Well, a certain corporate sponsor caught wind of all this, took one look, and decided they liked everything so much they ponied up an irresistable lump-sum donation. They bought out everything!

Sometimes I wonder... Is there maybe such a thing as being a little too successful?

LPGA Ad

The annual Wegmans-sponsored LPGA golf tournament at Locust Hill is a really big event around here, drawing huge crowds and international news coverage.

Wegmans kindly gifted the Montessori school with some ad space in their thick and nicely printed event Program, right. At left is the ad I made to fit the given space on page 84, once again based on an excellent photo by professional Dawn Mamikunian.

Calendar Covers

For Writers and Books, a local non-profit literary center located in Rochester's blossoming "Art Walk" district, I created a stylized photo collage of their renovated building and landmark sculpture. How many giant #2 pencils are there, you ask? Well, this twenty-footer is actually a #740 Pencil, because that's their street address.

The collage graced the cover of one of their quarterly course catalogs, for which Carol Bassett did the cover design and layout.

The original is shown left, and as printed, right.

I did several more covers, but except for spot color, these were all printed in black and white:

TIP: especially in candid portraiture, if you're after what photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson called "The Decisive Moment" (and not too concerned about resolution or sharpness), you can opt to shoot with a video camera. Later, just grab your subjects' most expressive single frames. That's what I did to create the middle (blue mastheaded) calendar cover above.

Family Get-Together Poster

Our church had a Fall afternoon "carnival" and invited families and friends, neighbors and strangers alike to a free gathering for fun and fellowship. There was lots to eat and drink, plus live music, games, and many other attractions.

Yet, as you can see from the poster (left; click to enlarge), the invitation was meant to be completely open-ended, and encompass much more than just that one event.

Birth of a Notion

Here's a little background about how this poster came into being...

Isn't it true that many people are somewhat puzzled about their spiritual life? Well, that idea led to some wordplay -- "Missing peace/piece" -- which in turn gave birth to a doodle (right). This sketch was then used to stimulate discussion and serve as conversational "flypaper" to help ensure the capture all necessary text.

Ah, but what picture should be on that puzzle? Combing through thousands of photos in the church archives provided just the right choice: a heart-warming hug at a baptism performed some years ago (middle right). If you look closely, you'll see that back then our pastor wore his hair a little bit longer under his baseball cap. So, I gave him a "trim" during retouching so it would be easier to recognize him as he is today.

I also got my wife and kids to agree to serve as the hand models for the foreground of the photo-collage.

I then scanned a blank puzzle, and traced it as vector art in Adobe Illustrator. A framed poster (bottom right) was likewise photographed and vectorized to make a dove logo that's easily manipulated.

These and other elements were then combined in Adobe Photoshop to produce a preliminary photographic "sketch" (bottom left), to verify all elements were acceptable, and to stimulate discussion about possible refinements. For instance, it was decided to keep the iconic dove logo pure white, rather that have it be colored as if it were a piece lifted straight out of the puzzle.

Notice, also, that in the preliminary version, several puzzle pieces have not yet been paired with matching portions of the baptism photo, and that the final version incorporated many other refinements in layout and typography to help make the most important facts -- "what," "when," and "where" -- stand out more clearly.

All in all, it was a fun and successful project, for which I was more than delighted to volunteer.

One final subtlety in the poster graphics: yes, there really is a missing piece!

Hazmat: Hut

For several years I volunteered as Photo Editor for a small-press poetry magazine called the HazMat Literary Review -- HazMat for short. The name stands for "Hazardous Material," and bespeaks Editor-in-Chief Norm Davis' poetic proclivities.

What do Photo Editors do? Well, the short answer is they select photos and prepare them for publication. You know -- pick and choose editorially suitable images, collaborate with layout, crop, and then make sure color and tonal ranges match standard web-offset press capabilities -- that kind of thing.

One day while sifting through submissions, Gerald Wheeler's photo of a little greenhouse in Katy, Texas (right) caught my eye. A bit further back in my head, something about "People who live in glass houses..." began to rattle. Hmmm...

Since I knew Norm was a "stone thrower" as a matter of editorial policy, I contacted the photographer and got Gerry’s permission to “do whatever.” Then I took his original straightforward shot and transformed it via Adobe Photoshop into an explosive grayscale statement for the cover of HazMat volume 6, issue 2 (left).

Everybody liked the result. This cover was later featured in the writeup on HazMat printed in the 2005 edition of Poets Market.

Y'know -- there's just something about seeing the potential of an image and making it happen that really appeals to me.

Hazmat: Birthday Girl

The usual lifespan of a small-press poetry magazine is about that of a popsicle at the beach on a hot summer’s say. They just don’t last. So, after ten years-plus, HazMat is an anomaly.

Editor Norm Davis’ secret of long life is that if he doesn’t have enough good stuff to publish, he doesn’t! And then again, even when he does, he’s not in any particular rush. Call it truth in labeling. HazMat's a “periodical,” right? So what did you expect?

Contributors and subscribers put up with this because the results are worth the wait. Yet, it also explains how, after a full decade, you only get a “5th Anniversary issue.” -- HazMat volume 5, issue 2. It's a joke, sort of.

In any case, at left is my cover. The original photo, right, was taken in 1947 by Mary Lou Scott, mother of young Janet, the girl with the cake, who was a childhood friend of the Editor.

Graphically, there are a few subtleties worth noting -- not just disappearing the wound on her forehead (bicycle injury) -- I also changed the name on the cake from "Janet" to "Hazmat," and the number of candles from three to five. Janet, still gorgeous and now a retiree, further insisted all her candles be well "lit."

How'd I do?

HazMat: Shaman

As doubtless you've noticed by now, there's a definite tendency towards tilts and other weirdness in my HazMat cover art.

It's on purpose, of course.

Not just because it matches the edginess of the contents. It's because any cover displayed on a newsstand has two important jobs: first, to get the publication noticed, and second, to entice the customer to pick it up. The rest of the magazine only come into play once it's in hand.

Well, true fact: I used a small focus group to see which variant of the cover art worked best. You see only the winners here.

For instance, at left is the cover I did for HazMat volume 6, issue 1. The original photo, right, was taken by Kristy Swanson.

At first, Kristy -- who, by the way, is also HazMat's Art Editor -- was not especially fond of the twisted-bubble effect I chose for her "Shaman" cover. However, in a side-by-side comparison with other, more rectilinear versions, she herself had to agree: it was definitely a better attention grabber.

Case closed.

When you've really got a better way, it sometimes helps if you're able to prove it!

Hazmat's Monster Truck

Here's Norm Davis, HazMat Literary Review's Editor-in-Chief, behind the wheel of a Monster Truck named "Hazardous Material!" Don't that beat all?

I found this jacked-up beauty hanging around Vesa's, a local auto body shop. Kristy Swanson snapped this particular pic, which I later doctored in Photoshop to put Norm inside the cab.

But, later on, Norm actually did get to take the wheel!

The owner of Vesa's, who also owned the truck, was all too happy to show it off. We set a date and the whole Hazmat staff got rides! Families and friends, too. Can you imagine our collective joy? Fun, fun, fun!

Ah, well... I suppose it's just as well these things aren't street legal.