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Gotham Printing Weekend Happenings June 26, 2009

Welcome again to Gotham Printing weekend happenings!

NYC

Aerosmith plays Nikon at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh with special guest ZZ top at 7:30 pm Friday. Admission: $41-207.50  www.livenation.com

HIKE away

• Hikes along the "shon gum" ridge in Mohonk Preserve and Minnewaska state park

• The Gunks offer some of the best climbing in the East, and are about two hours away by car

http://www.nynjtc.org/region/shawangunk-mountains-region

Scene-ic Driving

You can drive the scenic roads of the Hudson Valley almost anytime of the year. Drive the Palisades Interstate Parkway along the west side of the river in New Jersey. The Parkway will take you to Route 9W and many of the Hudson Valley's highlights... you can tour orchards or vineyards and horse farms with rugged and rocky terrain as the road twists around precarious turns!

BOSTON

Saddle UP

The 2009 New England Wild West Fest is a one of a kind Western themed festival full of great food, family fun, and world class rodeo action. The Fest is the signature fundraising event of the Spirit of the American Cowboy Foundation, a Boston, MA based non-profit organization dedicated to raising money for children's cancer research.

http://www.marshfieldfair.org/

Sources: GORP, Boston.com

What's my color?

What is color? Merely a reflection of light...how do we control it?  We have 2 popular ink sets in offset printing, four color process and the Pantone set, each acting differently. 

High quality offset printers control and monitor their internal color systems to ensure accurate results. Accurate results to what? Here lies the problem...

You, the valued customer, your color specification is your monitor and an ink jet or laser printer, guess what...they probably won't match your vendor's color.

• Your monitor is not a color specification
• Your desktop printer is not a color specification

Inks used in a desktop printer are not the same as the CMYK we use in a pro print shop. We also calibrate and operate by the "numbers" (more on that later). 

The most popular color specifications that print shops use in various degrees are: 

• SWOP - (NOT A STANDARD, a specification of a process)
• GRACoL - (NOT A STANDARD, a specification or methodology)
• Pleasing color - (NOT A STANDARD, developed by Joe Printer)

Color predictability produces productivity & productivity produces profitability. We suggest purchasing color guides set to a color specification your printer adheres to. So ask your printer, What's my color???

Additional resources:

Color guides: http://www.pantone.com

http://www.gothamprinting.com

Gotham Printing Weekend Happenings June 19, 2009

Welcome again to Gotham Printing weekend happenings!

NYC

CONGO-GO

The Bronx Zoo is going ape today as it kicks off five consecutive Fridays and Saturdays celebrating its Congo Gorilla Forest exhibition and habitat. The Bronx Zoo is open from 10:30 am to 5:30 pm on Saturday. Adult admission is $15, children 3-12 pay $11, under 3 are free! http://www.bronxzoo.com

PJs for PEACE

Want to give peace a chance? Show up at Central Park for the 40th annual Bed-In, celebrating John Lennon's famous 1969 mattress-side press conferences protesting the war in Vietnam. Bring a guitar and blanket and recline for the cause of your choice on Sunday at 1 p.m. at Central Park's Sheep Meadow, 67th St and Central Park West.

BOSTON

Father's Day Class and Wine Lunch

Perhaps dad is a wine connoisseur? Even if he's a vino novice, he'll enjoy this Father's Day wine and dine event at the Boston Wine School. Sip during the introductory red wine class and savor the wine pairing lunch to follow. Sunday 11:00 am to 2:00 pm. http://www.bostonwineschool.com

Sources: NY Post, Boston.com

Send me your tired, your poor PDFs - Part 2

Fonts: To embed, or not to embed.

Guess what, the choice is not yours. Adobe has made that choice for you. Here's why.

I'm assuming that all of you have heard by now, that it is always recommended that you embed fonts when creating a PDF. This is so any viewer of the PDF, on any platform will see the same thing that the author of the document saw when creating it. 

There are some caveats to this. More and more people are using a PDF viewer other than Acrobat. If you've ever used one, you would immediately know why. They open the PDF in a moment, as opposed to the long drawn out process when in Acrobat.

In addition, Acrobat does not embed the fonts that it installs on your system, (the logic behind this is: if someone is looking at the PDF, they must be using Acrobat, which means they have the same fonts installed on their system.) But as I already said above, if you are using a different PDF viewer you're out of luck.

If you get a little carried away, and that designer in you, starts to creep into your documents, you may be tempted to use fonts, that are on your machine, but not included in the standard set that are installed when you installed Adobe Reader, Acrobat, or Distiller. In that case, you have to be certain that the fonts you have are licensed, and that you have the right to distribute them. If not, Acrobat will not be able to embed them when you save the document.

You could check to see if your fonts have been embeded by opening the Properties dialogue box, under the file menu, clicking on the fonts tab, and checking to see if the word "embedded" or "embedded subset" is next to each font name.

A collaborative series by the The Pope & Michaelangelo @ Gotham Printing

 

Check back often for more updates regarding the launch of the NEW Gotham Printing website.

Send me your tired, your poor PDFs - Part 1

Why I Hate PDFs

Maybe if Adobe works on it, for another 20 years or so; and maybe if "The PDF" is included in school curriculum from 1st grade through High School, right along side reading, writing, and arithmetic, I won't have anything to gripe about, but I'm impatient. So this will be the first in a blog mini-course on how to save out a PDF for a commercial printer. All you cubicle denizens pay attention. I'm only gonna go over this once.

Lesson 1 - Resolution (you really don't know what your PDF looks like)

Here's why. By default, Acrobat is set to smooth text, line art, and images. Take a minute and go to Acrobat preferences.

Change the pull down menu, next to Smooth Text, to None, and uncheck the boxes for Smooth line art, and Smooth Images. Now take a look at what your PDF really looks like.

So, stop saying "It doesn't look like the PDF."

A collaborative series by the The Pope & Michaelangelo @ Gotham Printing

 

Check back often for more updates regarding the launch of the NEW Gotham Printing website.

Gotham Printing Weekend Happenings June 12, 2009

Welcome again to Gotham Printing weekend happenings!

RICO SUAVE!

More Puerto Ricans live in New York City than in any other city in the world (about 800,000), so Sunday's annual Puerto Rican Day Parade is sure to be a popular and festive event -- a couple of million people usually line the parade route along Fifth Avenue from 44th to 86th street. Floats, marchers and musicians start the fun at 11 a.m. and guitar-playing ex-Yankee Bernie Williams, Daddy Yankee and José Feliciano are among the stars on parade.

SMOKE AWAY

It's the pits. Barbecue pits, that is, when Madison Square Park (Madison Avenue between 23rd and 26th streets) turns into Pitmaster Park for the annual Snapple Big Apple Barbecue Block Party. Fifteen of the country's hottest barbecue bosses -- from rib-tickling hot spots like Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, North Carolina and even New York City -- turn the park into a sizzling spot where tasty dishes of ribs, pulled pork, smoked sausage and more go for $8 a plate. Plus there's blues, soul, country and any other kind of live music that goes with barbecue. The pits are cookin' tomorrow and Sunday from 11 a.m to 7 p.m. For further details, go to bigapplebbq.org 

Source: NY Post

Gotham Printing Weekend Happenings June 5, 2009

Here we are, ahhhh the weekend. This is our first installment of the Gotham Printing weekend happenings...nothing planned? What if you could travel to Montauk, Long Island for a poolside fiesta on Solé East's expansive Montauk lawn, on one of two complementary refreshment stocked buses???

 Each party will be fueled by a DJ and eats from Solé's Backyard (skirt steak sammies, Angus beef sliders, Long Island duck taquitos...), a full bar pouring free premium tequila, plus 34 wines, custom cocktails like cherry-pepper Bloody Mary. The two no-fee, 30-capacity, bathroom-equipped buses depart Manhattan at 11am and noon...so jump on, grab a drink, pass a business card and network with your new pals!

Highlights of the property:

• New pillow-top king size mattresses
• High Thread Count Italian cotton linens
• Poolside & garden-side cabana suites
• iPod docking stations in each room
• High-Speed wireless internet service property wide
• Poolside food and drink service
• Hammocks and outdoor seating throughout gardens
• Sound system property wide
• Beach Badminton court
• Fleet of beach cruisers (bicycles) for rent
• 3-minute bike ride to beach
• Wood burning fireplaces in lobby and restaurant
• 200 sq. ft. wine cellar with huge inventory

Parties June 6th and 27th, July 11th and 25th, August 8th and 22nd at Solé East: 90 Second House Road, Montauk; 631.668.2105

Welcome To The Gotham Printing Blog

Welcome to the Gotham Printing blog. In the next few weeks we’ll be launching our site: www.gothamprinting.com. Our effort was in not just creating another online print site but instilling our core practices which set us apart. In our blog each week, we'll incorporate our 4 core practices into an informative, yet funny delivery of blog speak.

Our 4 core practices:

           Charitable – We offer the choice, with each purchase you make, for Gotham Printing to donate part of the proceeds to a charity of your choice. We like to say “Do a little good, each time you do a little business.”

High Quality/ Low Cost - Next, we deliver the highest quality printing at the lowest cost. We can’t help ourselves. We’ve managed to combine the best of both worlds. Old school craftsmanship, and pride in what we do, with the most modern equipment, quality control, and automation. We still have people with years of experience checking your job at every stage, to insure the best 4 color printing you can get. 

            East Coast - Third, we borrow a line from Real Estate. Location, location, location. Now don’t get me wrong, I would love to live in Montana, but I don’t want to order my printing from there. Gotham Printing is a Northeast, Greater New York area printer. We are on the Hudson River in Peekskill, New York. That means faster delivery and lower shipping costs to the region.

            Green - Fourth, we are eco-friendly. We don’t just talk the talk. We all benefit from the following practices:

·      The paper we use to produce all of our products is recycled/ and or FSC^® certified and ordered in bulk to reduce deliveries.

·      Our inks are vegetable oil based low in Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs).

·      The processes we use to develop and clean our machinery and plates are water soluble and chemical free.

·      We recycle 100% of our scrap paper, which reduces our carbon emissions, but also saves natural resources used in milling virgin paper. We save millions of gallons of water and kilowatts of electricity in the process.

All of these reasons are why we like to think that Gotham Printing is:

“The smartest way to print online”

Dean Medico

President/CEO