Seeing Red? Seeing Green?
After printing in full-color on premium matt paper, I was finally able to see just how this is all going to look. As Apple says, what's changed? Everything! If it was hard to read, or impossible to read, I've marked it in blocks of red. If it's changing due to feedback, after now being printed, it's been blocked in green. Take a look below. Leave yourself time to make changes after you've seen your layouts in printed full-color. What I thought looked clear and amazing on screen, in print was mostly, or completely, unreadable.
Michael - this was an interesting process for you, wasn't it? Printing in color is really important, and that is why viewing "page proofs" (from your desktop printer, and then from the lithographer) is an important step in the pre-press process. Since it's a bit of a guessing game to determine what will be less readable in hard copy (and thus a potential problem) - my only suggestion is to always play it safe. Make sure there is MORE contrast than you need between important elements. Push the contrast by shifting the VALUE of the colors away from each other. Even printing in b/w can help us make smart changes – but of course, color printing is the best.
ReplyDeleteSo – are you planning to upload some color-revised pages here? I look forward to see what shifts you have made.
Some additional thoughts – after looking closely at your previous post:
ReplyDeleteI’ve noticed that the feature article “The Next Green Revolution” (which is blue) doesn’t seem to have the impact not success of your other feature. Maybe it’s because there is too much text without breaks, or the photo without a focal point. Not sure… but after looking at this, and the 2 department articles that directly precede it (Future of Farms and Underused & Overlooked), I have a suggestion for you to think about…
… Because I feel like the department articles seem to have competing imagery and the next spread has a very calm image that doesn’t seem to enliven the spread too much – how about re-imagining The Next Green Revolution instead as a sub-section under The Future of Farms? It would sit on just one page (pg 9) and its image would not compete with the farmer crouching on his soil. You would need cut at least ½ of the verbiage, OR allow this to flow onto a 3rd page (pg 10) which would now sit across from Underused and Overlooked (moved to page 11).
The point to all this would be to allow each spread to work together in the best ways possible – and allow the visual hierarchy to work well on the whole spread (not just within pages).
Lastly – I know you are about to shift the body copy color (and maybe other colors) within The Next Green Revolution. That is a good idea… after your initial subdued approach to these pages (for your audience) I question your blue on blue approach. AND, it really doesn’t work well with the photo. I know you are trying to avoid green… but maybe you can instead consider a more neutral organic color that will blend well with the colors we see in The Future of Farms (if you take my suggestion about combining the text). That’s it – and this should keep you busy thinking, adjusting, and re-evaluating.
Thanks Coni for all the feedback. I'm about to post the changes I made based on the color printing I've been doing throughout the day. I can't say for sure that I've addressed all the issues you've mentioned above, but will keep them in mind as I tweak final changes over the next two days.
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