arts grafiques orient

We have won the a Top Aplications Award for the book: “More is More” of  Alex Trochut.

FESPA Digital 2012

We visited this fair.

Anything significantly new.
No news has surprised us in this edition of fair that is touring every year in a different city. The next it will be in London.

Well, the trend is changing to oversized formats. I think the plotters were the great strengths but also the more empty stands. The most popular stands  were  the t-shirts. Incredible the amount of  stands of t-shirts and  also the expectation that they created. The other success were the labelling and cutting machines.
My impression was that nothing new was presented, but at least this sector wants  to introduce new services, new qualities, they are making a big effort to introduce new fresh air. Another impression was that i think there’s a tendency to increase the robustness of the digital machines (one of the weakest points) . It was not usual to see this type of machine interior maded it  by iron …

There was also freaky time…

The white of paper is as a filter.

 As we got used to print on special paper gives us the experience of claiming that the white tons are infinite. And the issue is not trivial. Not at all. The colorimetry varies a lot from one to another. It’s like applying a filter. The base of the color that we are used to print on is white and even on screen, but in this case the base is  light. Thus often we ignore the small detail that the real color of the paper or rather this real tone of white. That particular tone will interact with each of the inks and the result, as you can see, can be quite different. Or even  to print a paper that has two different faces (ex. the one-side coated of carton board).It would be required to make a different Approach for each side. Coated and offset.
  At the end,  is like the taxes, is something that nobody pay attention, but always comes ….

The laminated is one of the finishing that less has changed .
Matt or gloss.

Read More

When you see Villarosa appear through the door, you know that something will happen.

This occasion it was because the book of cuban model called:Rachel Valdés  with ilustrations over her pictures.

We really feel lucky to work with people like villarosas who have no walls and they feel so comfortable with corporate brands and at the same time with outsiders projects like this.

During the printing days all our warehouse was eroticized thanks to so suggestive illustrations

There are books that require the whole team get the better, squeeze the options, reinvent processes and we have to admit, hope to have some luck.
This is, in a simple lines what the auditori book production has been.
It’s been a long process where we have found that when working in teams you need all the maximum complicity between the designer and printing company to get a good result. And at last we are very happy with this job because it was complicate and different. So we take the same path as always; Step by step, checking all the possible problems and take advantage of every little detail we have.
Quim Serra design a kind of book, that  we had not ever done or had not seen any example to follow. But as we are used to this kind of orders that are out of the usual, we work hard on it, Anticipating the possible errors, teaming up with all the people involved, providing ideas, thinking hard before making any move.
While we suffer a little bit,  we also learned a lot. We learned from Quim. From his understanding of the object. We learned from the binding. We learned as always do with this kind of projects. Because we love people who do differents things because they teach you, they force you to improve and innovate.

Alex Trochut book

Doing this book has been an experience. An almost handmake project, because knowing Alex Trochut and Dani Navarro something special just come out. Here is a brief summary of the production.


Such projects are like a snowball. At first everything is going slowly, even painfully slow, but that gets a little speed, it becomes a big ball that engulfs everything and every detail is vital for the successful finishing.
The graphic production of the book revolved much around the cover and Dani tried everything else was just an accompaniment, a stand for what really mattered, the work of Alex.
When we started the first tests we checked that the offst paper holds up well  the images and the coating was at the limit of transparency.

After several tests on various kinds of papers, we started with most difficult part. The tests of the cover. Were difficult and complex. We had to reconcile the greens in the background with the standard tone that has the photoluminescent and in turn that the continuity with the inside had to be “natural.”
At first the flyleaves would had to be on black offset paper but by chance, when we were preparing machine for printing, we printed by error a white sheet and after that  then it was clear for Alex. Flyleaves it must to be  in white offset paper and also wanted to change the ilustration  giving it  a little whiter and no longer printing a very soft tones but with more intensity.

Here you are  a video of the day we print the guards and white offset paper.

This change forced us to change also the bookmark and the headband to a white ones too.
We started to print and with a week our company  became an Alex illustrations gallery. It was amazing to see a garden of pallets 70x100 everywhere with this work so extraordinary.

The silkscreen was a struggle for the silkscreen overlay anchoring and having little time for drying. We had to put all the covers in individuals panels to aid drying. Especially black pads that were in danger of not being anchored. Here is a short video that shows the silkscreen process.

The binding process it was very slow because the cover is very delicate and all the stuff had to use gloves to avoid any stain.

When a very special project, which has filled many hours and discussion and emails and tests … is over you can’t avoid to feel some kind of sadness … because I wish there were more of these.
it have been worth every effort put into this work only seeing  the  Dani and Alex happyness. When people you admire, congratulates you it means that we are closer that we are fighting for.
Be at its height.

One of the distinguishing skills between printers 
is the ability to do Pantones. Plains inks. 

Although you can buy directly, often you have to make yourself.

 
The process of the Pantone is complex and depending on which, it can become a long and laborious. 
We like working with Pantone and most make them ourselves. We only buy those that repeat many times (some corporate color.) We like the textures and tones. Many times we find out  that the tones veer with exposure to light or only the drying and finally we have a pantone a bit off what we wanted. So the best thing is to prepare the day before and see what happens. 
We also work with these pantones that are very “white” so that forces us to work with opaque white paint and varnish or stained to achieve them. 
Each Pantone is a world and requires a different treatment according to media, mass printing, downstream applications (depending if is laminated or not can  get a little more red or not) or manipulation (keep in mind that cost a lot of dry metallic and will need much “care” in handling or cut). 
Often, the documents that we recive, we don’t see paid much attention in the way to use it and configure it.. It is very important to the printing run that when you apply a plain ink to know what’s the difference bettween  -in the SAME pantone- offset or coated

With that being always recommended to always use the range “C” when it comes array coated papers and “U” when offsets. If one observes the same Pantone in C and U will see that there really is a pretty big difference.

this trick to check the saturation level with pdf