Emma Case Photography

The lovely, bubbly Emma asked me to print some CD cases for her photography, she loved the idea of them printed on brown craft card as she's eco friendly like me, we really struggled to find Cd cases in craft card in the UK so we ended getting some from STUMPTOWN PRINTERS. I did look into getting some made but this was going to be small print run of a 100 so not feasible unless I wanted a 1000. I say a small print run :) big to me!! 3 colours my biggest print run yet!
Emma already had designed her artwork but I tweaked it a little changing a few of the fonts, especially the 'BABIES' as the thin stroke could cause some problems in inking and the plate making. The 16 gauge type high mounted plates came from Centurion and for those who are unsure about the making and sending of files I've outline my process below...

Logo drawn to size in Illustrator CYMK and fonts outlined, a thin red stroke was added 6mm away from the edge of the type, to allow room to grip the plate in the making process. The logo was then copied 3 times and the corresponding colours left on each plate, all the outlined type was then changed to 100% black. The thin red stroke was left red to show where I wanted my plates to be cut, doing it this way would help with registration as all the blocks would be exactly the same size. allowing all the furniture in my forme to remain and I just changed the plate.

1. Make sure you are working in CYMK and not RGB so your black is 100% black
2. Make your artwork the required size, charges may occur if you want it made bigger or smaller
3. Give clear instructions with your design and speak to your plate maker, they are very helpul and won't bite :)
4. If possible use a program like Illustrator, InDesign, CorelDRAW etc for type, it is possible to send files done in Photshop but make sure your files are 1200dpi.
5. Make sure all your files are outlined or rasterized.
6. Thin lines - keep them to a min of 2 pt
7. PDF is the best format to save and send your files, other formats are accepted such as jpegs, eps, tiff

Printing on my Kelsey went like a dream apart from I had to add tape to my roller bearers and file down the corners of my plates as the rollers were catching, though this was down to the block being slightly higher than type-high. I didn't even need to alter anything for registration I'll post the results here as soon as Emma has received her parcel ;) she was a dream to work with and check out her fantastic retro work, just love the Photo Booth idea, sooo much fun ;-) http://emmacasephotography.blogspot.com/