Print Handbook looks to educate the uninitiated

A new guide book aims to "remove the confusion and guesswork" designers face when moving between screen and print, reports The Drum.

The second edition of the Print Handbook, created by Warwickshire design agency The Media Collective, has been written for both designers and students alike.

Despite it's small size (just 24 pages), Media Collective will be looking to replicate the success it had with its first guidebook. It not only sold over 6,000 copies, but a number of these were snapped by international print novices in Vietnam and Russia.

Media Collective designer Andy Brown's improved edition includes an introduction into the world of overprinting, paper sizes, paper folds, an explanation of the golden ratio and also gives examples of what colours look like on coated and uncoated stock.

Mr Brown thought of publishing the book after he found that there was little information about which sort of rich black would work best for a particular project of his at the time.

Jez Currin, creative director of The Media Collective says that the new Print Handbook will limit the number of mistakes creatives make before their projects hit the graphics printers.

"We've found that university can only teach design students so much, and in certain situations you just need to see things printed out to learn from them."

"The handbook also came out of a desire to give designers some examples so that they don't need to experiment on client projects, and enable them to be confident when sending files to the printers," he added.

Other questions the book answers include: "what dpi can I get away with?", "how faint can I make some text and still be readable?" and "what's the best file type to use?" explains PrintHandBook.com.