Feb
25
Why Does My Logo Look Fuzzy?
When creating or working with a logo — or any other non-photographic line art — a vector image will almost always look sharper on press than a raster (or bitmap) image. Why is this? • A raster image is made up of pixels or little dots. A pixel is the smallest element that can be individually processed on a display screen. Once an image is created in pixels, its resolution is set. So a raster image at 300 dpi, which works great for photographs, will not print cleanly and sharply (see above right). Even when imaged on a printing plate…
Feb
12
How the Heck Do I Type an Accent?
Need an em dash in your document? If you’re a fan of keyboard shortcuts, you could probably tap out Shift + Option + Hyphen in your sleep. A registered trademark symbol? Option + R, of course. Or maybe you prefer the Type > Insert Special Character flyout menu, which displays a handful of such commonly used marks. But what if you need an accent, a fraction or an umlaut (as in Mötley Crüe)? These special characters — or glyphs, as they are technically known — are needed for everything from financial documents to cookbooks. And there’s an easy way to…
Feb
4
How to Trim Your Postage Costs
Postal budgets aren’t what they used to be. But many messages are better received in a mailbox than an inbox. What to do? Think Standard Mail rather than First-Class Mail. Standard postage costs run about half of First-Class. This can generate significant savings, especially on large print runs. Of course, as with anything in life, there’s no free lunch. With Standard Mail, you need to build in a little extra time for your piece to be delivered — up to a week to be safe. USPS offers no guaranteed delivery schedule because Standard Mail is processed on a “time…
