Peter's Design Corner

Color Streaking on Xerox Digital Prints

Peter's Design Corner — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 05:07:18 +0000

For all you beginner digital operators on Xerox machines. When you are printing a job and everything seems to be going well, no jams and the machine seems to be running fine. Then you go to grab your finished job. All of a sudden you see random long streaks of color across your nicely finished job. Your job is due that day. You can call the Xerox tech, but what if they can’t make it that day. Not to worry my digital operators, this is an easy fix.

Cyan and Magenta Streaks

Change Your Color Drums

Even if your machine says your color drum is ok or at %70, more than likely it’s dirty. All you have to do is change the color drum that has the color streaks. For example, if you have cyan streaks, then you change the cyan color drum. If you have magenta streaks, then you change the magenta streaks. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments section.

A dirty magenta catridge

Cosplay Fever is “Raising Their Glass”

Peter's Design Corner — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 02:17:10 +0000

I came across this interesting and very creative video from Cosplay Fever. These guys are from the UK and has made a book full of people in awesome Cosplay. What is Cosplay you ask. It is basically people who dress up as their favorite characters from popular media such as Cloud, Batman, Wonderwoman, and so on. Anyways, Cosplay Fever did a video of people doing Cosplay lip-syncing to “Raise your Glass” by Pink. It’s a fun and creative video seeing everyone as their favorite characters lip-syncing to Pink’s song. It looks like it would be a lot of fun to shoot the video for it. Check it out and hopefully their creativity will inspire you to go out make your unique video.

Haywire Trailer

Peter's Design Corner — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:15:23 +0000

So, I feel bad about my post on the Haywire posters only to be taken down. So here’s a little treat, a full trailer for the Haywire movie. I actually think it looks like a good popcorn flick. I didn’t realize there were so many actors in it. Well, this is Gina Carnano’s film debut as the main actress and it doesn’t look too shabby. What do you guys think? Was the trailer designed well enough to make you go see it?

If it doesn’t, then Gina is going to come out and armbar you if you don’t see it when it comes out in January 2012.

CS5 Keyboard Shortcuts

Peter's Design Corner — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 01:55:01 +0000

CS5 Keyboard Shortcuts

Hello everyone, sorry I’ve been MIA for a bit. Well, I came across a site that has common short-cuts on CS5. These are in PDF, so you can easily print it out on letter size paper. Shortcuts are extremely helpful and cuts down on design time and these are good references. They also have other program short cuts like Final Cut. The site is www.nobledesktop.com. Here’s a direct link to their shortcut page: Noble Desktop Shortcuts page.

Happy Shortcutting,

Peter

Hand Mounting and Cutting Giant Posters on Foam Core

Peter's Design Corner — Sun, 29 May 2011 21:48:36 +0000

Hand mounting and cutting posters on foam core can help you save some money. Some printing companies charge an arm and a leg to mount your poster. I will show you the way I’ve been doing it and hopefully this will help you make your own mounted posters.

Materials

Poster
Utility Knife (exacto knife can work, but you might have more difficult time cutting)
Adhesive Foam Core (trust me, adhesive foam core is much easier especially on bigger posters)
Large heavy ruler
Scissors
Cutting Table (conference table and a large piece of glass works too)
Good music

To Bleed or Not to Bleed

I normally like to put a border around the poster at it’s exact size or have no bleeds on the poster. Having no bleeds on the poster means that I would do a dead cut on the poster. The main reason for this is because rulers are usually not long enough to give you a guide when cutting. Then you’re left with bleeds and crop marks. This makes extremely hard because you’re guessing where to cut since the ruler is not long enough to reach both crop marks.

Step By Step

Below is a gallery of how I recently mounted some 40 x 48 posters for work. Each picture should give you an idea what to do, but I’ll give some tips that will aid in this gallery.

When mounting, always start from the middle and smooth the poster to the outside
Don’t pull the adhesive out all at once. If this is your first time, start slow, like 2 inches.
Take your time. One mistake can lead to a redo.
When cutting, fresh blades are ideal
Don’t worry about not cutting straight through the foam core during the first cut. You can always go back and go over the first cut, cutting any loose ends.

Questions About Foam Core Mounting and Cutting

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask!

2 Frustrating Digital Printer Jams

Peter's Design Corner — Mon, 23 May 2011 03:29:50 +0000

If you ever decide to get into digital printing or wanted to expand your design business by adding a small commercial color printer, like any other printer, you will run into paper jams. It can be an easy fix or you can end up pulling out your hair and randomly screaming. There are two types of unusual paper jams that will do this to you. These particular paper jams, I’m assuming you ran jobs on the same paper and didn’t have any problems before. Then all of a sudden on this new job, it jams every two seconds or the printer does not even feed the paper.

Full Color Cover Print Jobs

The Reason for the Jam

Running a job that has color that covers the whole page especially if you are printing front and back, sometimes causes the paper to become heavier than the paper setting on the printer. The full coverage of ink on the paper makes it heavier.

The Solution

This is an easy fix. Normally putting the paper on a higher setting on the printer will solve this problem. If this doesn’t solve the problem, try running one side at a time instead of duplexing (running the front and back on the same run) the job.

Solid Black on the Layout

The Reason for the Jam

A book with a black border.

The printer’s sensor actually thinks there’s no paper when going over the solid black area. This causes the printer to jam because it thinks the paper misfed somewhere. To the right, you can see an example that would cause this problem. This is a book that I ran front and back. When it printed the black border and then when it duplexed, so it could print the other side, the sensor thought there was no paper, stopped printing, which causes the jam.

The Solution

This one is actually a little tricky. You put a piece of paper (not black of course) covering a quarter of the sensor. This will make the printer think everything is going normal when the black area goes over the sensor. Make sure the paper you insert is stable and won’t be able to move or come loose. If the printer still thinks there’s a jam, after inserting your paper, just slightly move the paper you inserted, so there’s less coverage of it on the sensor. Below is an example of this solution on a Xerox Docu Color 260.

Music Video / Movie Trailer Hybrid?

Peter's Design Corner — Wed, 11 May 2011 08:29:10 +0000

Normally in trailers you see get a glimpse of movie just enough to spark your curiosity to go see it. Sure you get some background music, but it usually changes or doesn’t stay within the whole trailer. I actually like this new trend of trailers, which to me, are like a hybrid of a music video and a movie trailer. If you go on You Tube, you can see many user created music videos as movie trailers. You just have to type in the movie of your choice and have the word music video follow after it.

For example, you type “Serenity Music Video” and you might find something like this. A fan made music video by theonenewb.

Now, you’re thinking, what’s so creative about this. All you do is select background music and throw a bunch of clips together. Which, at it’s core that’s basically it, but its much more than that. You have to tell of enough of the story to get the audience interesting while creating a balance with the background music. For me, I have seen two types of this hybrid trailer. One is where the background music takes center stage and the action of the clips tell the story with little or no dialogue.

Here’s an example for the movie Sucker Punch with the song “Panic Switch” by Silversun Pickups.

The other type I’ve seen is where the story happens and the background enhances the mood. Here’s a popular trailer of the movie Social Network with the song “Creep” by Scala and Kolacny Brothers.

With good editing and some creative choices you are able to make some very interesting trailers. I’ll admit, even though I hear nothing, but bad reviews about Sucker Punch, after watching the trailer above, it makes me want to watch it anyway. Same goes with the movie Social Network. I didn’t want to want watch a movie about a person that made Facebook, but after I saw the trailer, I was blown away. The music “Creep” fits in perfectly with the mood of the trailer.

So what do you guys think? Do you guys like this style of trailer? Is it effective? Does it make you want to try your fan made trailer?

New Promo Poster for Haywire

Peter's Design Corner — Fri, 06 May 2011 20:46:31 +0000

I caught this new poster for Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming spy movie Haywire, which stars MMA fighter Gina Carano. I thought it was really interesting with the use of the title as a walkway to nowhere and how they masked Gina’s face in the 3-d typography. Makes you wonder who is this character running off the title plank up in the sky and if Gina’s character is chasing this person. Or if Gina is just chasing herself. Either way I like the mystery the poster gives you. It also, gets you thinking out of the box. They could have easily put Gina in a sexy outfit holding a gun with the title beneath her, but that would just be too cliche and uncreative.

There are more pics at Gina’s Official site. What do you guys think about poster? What could be done to make it better? Does it make you want to go see it? Well, if it does, it comes out in August.

Here’s the storyline from IMDb :

Beautiful freelance covert operative Mallory Kane is hired out by her handler to various global entities to perform jobs which governments can’t authorize and heads of state would rather not know about. After a mission to rescue a hostage in Barcelona, Mallory is quickly dispatched on another mission to Dublin. When the operation goes awry and Mallory finds she has been double crossed, she needs to use all of her skills, tricks and abilities to escape an international manhunt, make it back to the United States, protect her family, and exact revenge on those that have betrayed her.

*UPDATE* Promo Pics got taken down. Apparently somebody leaked the promo pics from the studio and they have asked to be taken down. Sorry folks.

http://www.gina-carano.org/wp-content/gallery/haywire-photos/haywire-promo-pic-5.jpg