Printing Terms

A freelance artist must often act as liaison between an employer and a printer. If you are given this role, it will help to know some of the basic terminology printers use. Here are a few terms to get you started:

• Mechanicals: This term refers to the requirements of this particular press, and also to the separated forms used to print four-color images. Often still used despite the rise of digital printing, which does not require them.
• Prepress: The process of going over a first copy of a printed product with the press operator to make any needed corrections to color and other factors
• Gutter: The space between columns in a printed publication
• Bleed: When a color image is printed all the way to the outermost edge of the printed page.

Tags: advice, artists

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 10:27 am and is filed under Career Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.