Make-ready sheets are something that are most likely as old as printing itself. When setting up a press and adjusting details like ink levels and paper alignment, it is wasteful to use precious blank paper. As a practical measure, printed sheets that have been used to set up previous print jobs are used for this part of the process, again and again. These are called make-readies.

This printed sheet's history started three years ago as a notecard. It was then used to test a print of a Shew Design idea book cover, and finally Chocolate Necessities chocolate bar wrappers were printed on top last week while setting up the print run.

This overlap of inks and shapes can often create printed sheets that are quite beautiful. If you’re lucky, a few are worth pulling and hanging up on your inspiration board. If you’re really lucky, the overprinted inks, shapes and impressions solve a design problem or spark a creative idea for a new project.

Colors and textures often overlap in interesting and unexpected ways.

Testing how text reads printed over multiple colors can be a useful reference for future projects.

The world of make-readies is not made up entirely of accidents, however. This part of the printing process is a great chance to experiment with paper and ink combinations. Want to know what light blue looks like on a burnt orange paper stock? What it looks like overlapping a green ink? Ending a print run and having a chance to use the plates and ink that are on the press at the moment is a great time to experiment with other projects in mind.

Chocolate bar wrappers for Chocolate Necessities were printed on a soft white paper.

Thinking ahead for future projects, kraft paper was used at the end of the print run so see how a natural paper stock would interact with the colors and design. Being able to show the client these samples - actual inks on actual paper - is invaluable.

Make-readies are really about the experience of printing and strange harmonies that emerge when you put two unrelated things on top another. As a printer, they give me the opportunity to try out some unusual combinations of colors and impressions and I feel more confident about taking on unusual jobs. I’m also struck by how paper interacts with design. Again and again.

Paradoxically, I save the creative make-ready aspects of the project for the end of a print run – the desert of sorts. What traditional printers would initially do and throw away is now considered the heart of a print project. Happy accidents, indeed.

Pantone is a system that designers, printers, interior designers, and similar creative professionals use to talk about color in a measured way. Each color has a number. PMS 138 is bright orange and its recipe is 14 parts yellow, 2 parts warm red and ¼ part black. Mix those Pantone base inks in those proportions and you will achieve that exact PMS color. PMS 2945 is dark blue and has its own recipe. Pantone 17-1463 is Tangerine Tango, the 2012 color of the year – at least according to Pantone. I haven’t chosen a “color of the year” for 2012, but we did choose a tangerine orange for Mt. Baker Planned Parenthood’s “Tango and Tapas” fundraiser event last Fall. Charming coincidence.

What is amazing to me is that until Pantone added 566 new colors to their PMS collection almost two years ago, the PMS pallet had remained virtually the same for almost 50 years. Certainly color trends came and went, but were printed using the existing Pantone palette of colors.

It’s an amazing system for having lasted so long, but it’s not without its frustrations.  The green section of my old swatch book is faded and tattered from my continuous search for a green without too much blue or too much yellow. The red section is almost as worn from looking for a rich but still vibrant red.  I saw and loved these colors in my designs but there was no equivalent in the Pantone swatch books, and so no option for using it on an offset press with spot inks. It was a bit like a phantom limb.

The new Pantone system  includes new GEO inks, and suddenly it’s as if the lights have turned on. There are many of the missing colors I’ve been looking for and designing for. Thousands of new colors to use. Of course, not every printer uses the new color set (we will have to purchase more inks for our press to mix these formulas) but it’s truly wonderful to be able to use color combos that match the colors I want and see.

I thought The Devil Wears Prada had a wonderful insight into the culture of design and the mindset of designers. You may be able tell at a glance that I am somewhat a stranger to fashion, but there was much of this movie I could relate to – none more so than the scene above.

I think the reason I could so easily relate is I feel that, fairly late in life, I made the transition from being like the Anne Hathaway character to being like the Meryl Streep character. I can see this scene from both character’s point of view.

Here’s a design / branding version of the Meryl Streep’s cerulean sweater, and it comes from another “devil” of sorts: Martha Stewart.  In just over ten years, a distinctive type family linked with her personal brand went from iconic status to something nearly despised by some as the “next Papyrus.” Here is how this played out.

Archer back in 2000 when it first emerged. It is quintessentially "Martha."

Archer is what’s known as a slab serif, a type of typography that is industrial in a graceless masculine way. It would be at home in 50s and 40s boy scout manuals, US army paperwork, electronics kits, and hardware catalogs. I speak in generalities because there are many exceptions. Hoefler and Frere-Jones rethought the concept of a slab serif, preserving the sturdiness of it but adding an element of grace. From a type nerd point of view, it was like something totally new under the sun, a brilliant reconciling of two opposites: boiling, frozen water. This was in 2000. The font was Archer, the client was Martha Stewart Living magazine.

Archer is a graceful, beautiful slab serif type family

And it suited her to a T. The typeface was a masterpiece – versatile, beautiful, tough as nails, smart, smart, relentlessly smart – just like Martha. And (so far as I could see) possessed by her and her alone. It was used brilliantly, and part of that brilliance was that it was invisible to all but a few. You’ve doubtless heard of Martha, but this is probably the first you’ve heard about her typography – yet it continues to be a powerful presence in her brand.  Archer is her font.

I coveted it and  searched for it for years until I stumbled on an announcement of its release as a “new” font from H&FJ. Later, I figured it out that type families are commissioned for private use and then often later become available to the public. That was in 2007. There were seven years between Martha’s use of this font and it’s public release.

You can surely guess the rest of the story. Now Archer is everywhere and designers of a certain type are starting to roll their collective eyes in horror of it all. I guess they’re right. Archer has become the go to font that buttoned up organizations are using to create a home crafted, earnest, but still sophisticated voice. Once this goes stale, they will move onto the next thing.

Twelve years later

Enough already

I look forward to that cycle – including the inevitable backlash among the designers – finishing soon. This type family can then enter into a cultural equilibrium, joining the pantheon of wonderful, time honored type families that designers use (and use sparingly) for years to come. This will only happen in the distant, distant future when all recent goings on have long faded from memory. Say 2016.

Maxell

Volkswagen. Original text: “Think small.”

Guinness. Original text: “Have a Guinness when you’re tired.”

iPod, Apple.

Bethlehem Steel. Original text:  “New York. Brought to you by Bethlehem Steel.”

Pepto Bismol

Smokey the Bear. Original text: “Only you can prevent forest fires.”

Keep America Beautiful anti-litter campaign

Marlborough. Original text “Marlborough Country”

Nike. Original text: “Just do it.”

Family Planning Association. Original text: “Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?”

The Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Original text: “This is your brain on drugs.”

Tootsie Pop. Original text: “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? The world may never know.”

Raid.

Ajax

Adding  warmer colors to the design would break the brand concept. Not optimal. Instead, we applied a very light branded  green to the background. This slight, almost imperceptible change didn’t seem to break with the brand and made the end result that much warmer. Problem solved.

The cause of the issue lies in the nature of how print vs. screen. I think it’s the nature of reflected light, which is inherently richer and more complex than light emitted from screen, especially when reflected by an organic surface such as paper.  Printed through high end production process on quality paper, the design that seemed crisp and inviting on print, seemed stark on screen.

The take away was for us to think about the subtle message carried by the background, and how creating a quality product is being sensitive to those details. More importantly, it is another example that observing the spirit of a thing is more important than observing it to the letter. In this case, we adjusted our pristine white paper brand concept to accommodate the realities of computer monitors.

Just as an architect designs buildings to “breathe”, to respond to wind by swaying back and forth, or a carpenters builds furniture to accommodate how wood shrinks and grows with temperature, good branding is about building systems that flexibly (and usually invisibly) accommodate different circumstances without being breaking down.

Often what seems like an obstacle in a creative project ends up inspiring brilliant designs that would not have been explored were the obstacle not there. In Michael Bierut’s case, the challenge was to create 15 foot tall signage on the exterior of the New York Times building in Times Square without obscuring the staff’s view from inside the building. Below are images of the result. Narrow strips making up the letters you see were cleverly added to the building’s current white ceramic rods used to shield windows from the sun. The result is a successful and unique branded presence for the building.

Being handed a project that is open ended in terms of time, budget or scope will often initially feel like a project full of freedom. Without the structure that these restraints provide, the project can soon become unfocused and will often take longer than traditional projects, as the team struggles to reign in messaging and design concepts. Often the lack of constraints is actually a symptom of an organization’s lack of specific goals related to a project, or their reluctance to fully commit to an idea or project.

We have run across this challenge before -  with our own self promotional projects in particular. Often the best solution is to add constraints where there are none. Creating a schedule and a project deadline where there is none is the simplest way to do this, but adding rules such as limiting the amount of colors used in a design or the number of messages being conveyed can add immediate structure to a project.

Some of our most creative projects have come about when we had limitations. With logo designs, it makes practical sense to design for just two or three colors. Print production is the deciding factor here. Not many want to splurge for full color letterhead, or multi-color embroidery on hats or shirts. Designing with this simplicity in mind has lead to a lot of great logo designs.

Consider this as you discuss your next project or create an RFQ. Creating limitations often goes hand in hand with creating focus, and everyone benefits from that.

Even a simple campaign benefits from this approach. Here is a poster we recently designed for Pickford’s unofficial Oscar event.

Our “toolkit” is comprised of

• a simple typeface treatment enclosed in a circle,
• a halftone filter very subtly applied to photos to give it a slight newsprint quality
• a cropping concept of only including portion of the face (this last concept was inspired by the camera work in Rosemary’s Baby, which torments you by hiding critical details from view)

These elements were later used to create a series of screen ads, a few of which are shown here.

By making simple choices, the resulting system plays well with others – in this case Mark Michael French’s excellent photography.

Striking images of local people having a great time, playing with the concept of Oscar in a tongue and cheek way is a far better emotional draw than any logo or type concept. The best design strategy, therefore, is one that supports – instead of interferes with – the story told by the photography.

In this way, consistent use of a few simple elements allowed us to quickly create additional designs that were instantly recognizable as being part of the same event. Additional materials could be easily made that would follow these simple rules. Try taking this approach for your next event. The ability to include both variety and consistency in designs should satisfy any team, from large to small.

Randomly selected among those that got 100% right was Craig Margaret. Nicely done! We will be sending him a $50 gift certificate go Amazon.com in addition to a set of our hand printed coasters.

Stay tuned for our second contest – titled William Shakespeare, marketing copywriter – to be delivered later this month!

In case you wanted to know the answers, they are 1: The Matrix, 2: The Godfather, 3: Harry Potter, 4: Twilight, 5: The Lord of the Rings, 6: Star Wars, 7: Woody Allen.