The Habitual of Preflight
Preflight checks, on your digital art or document platform are like preflight checks in an airplane. Without them, all your work could come crashing to the ground. Now, I understand that I may be a little on the over dramatic side here, however, is it not true of flying? Wouldn’t you want to know, with confidence, that every single flight you went on was pre-flight checked? I know I am not much of a fan of flying, so I would!!! Yes, documents for work are not nearly as life threatening, but the life of your career and your work, as a designer, are certainly at risk if you persistently send work off without being checked and corrected. This would get old to your boss and to the clients, and no one would want to see your work after a while, thus, determining the end of your work life in that regard.
Making sure your work is well checked on digital art platforms is actually not hard at all. There just happen to be several steps to them, and this is the challenge. To not forget any of the many steps a pre-flight check contains. For this discussion, we are to bring up three of the steps and discuss what we would do to make sure our work is presentable for printing because without these, an error can become a very expensive regret later on.
I propose that not one of the preflight check steps is more important than any other. As there are many aspects and elements to your work, so must the check be complete to make sure each element is right (experts, 2018).
The very first thing I would do for the preflight check of my work is look closely at typography. This is my first step because this will be the most blaring error seen, on the whole, as well as make you look the least capable, if present. A misspelled word or grammatical error reflects more poorly on ones work than the wrong color mode for sure. So I would start with rereading my work to make sure all errors were nonexistent. No misspellings, no grammatical inaccuracies, and no incorrect usage of wording. It is not only important to spell correctly, but what you say and how you say it can have a positive or negative effect too. Just look at some of the horrific misjudgments of advertising out there that spelled everything correctly and used all grammar well, but didn’t pay attention to what they were saying before sending to print. No one wants to get an ill thought out email after a shooting at a marathon stating, “you survived!!” Just one simple thought towards what was being said in the email in light of recent events would have turned up the deafening issue of insensitivity when there was a shooting at the Boston Marathon. Once I had spelled everything correctly, fixed all grammar issues, and made sure what I was saying was right and good, I would change every one of my words into outline form. This offsets any problems with typographical licensing or missing fonts immediately, and if it is a habit, you never have to think about that issue again. It is easy too, just select each typographical box with the selection tool, and then hit shift/command/O at the same time (shift/control/O on windows,) and this immediately makes it an outlined shape instead of typography. Since you already checked everything for errors, your inability to edit typography is not a concern. Make sure, however, that before you change everything to outlines, you save this native file under no-outlines name so if you have to go back and change things later, you can (Wheeler, 2017).
The next thing I would do to make sure everything was pre checked and correct is look at my images to make sure they are going to show up. It is entirely a possibility that once you send in your work for printing, the images could be missing, and this would ruin the whole work. If your images are embedded, there could be a missing link and to avoid this you would want an image that is not a link. Nothing in the additional articles and citations that I found to support this post said to not have embedded or linked images, but it is good advice here. In fact, it is a sublime idea as this too takes all the guesswork out of whether there are going to be locatable image files for the printer. All you have to do is open the image as a separate document in Illustrator or InDesign, then copy it and paste it to the document in which you want it. At this point, it ceases to be a linked file, and now is looked at as an image with no link to any other outside connection or link. Almost like turning your images to outlines like you would your typography. This is a very helpful step to take for your preflight file before printers see it so you know it will be there (staff, 2020).
The next thing I would do is make sure the color mode is in CMYK, and not in RGB. This is important so that the colors do not look different when printed and so that the colors you chose will be found. All you have to do for this is go to the file tab, and to document color mode and switch the color mode to what you want it to be; RGB for screen, and CMYK for print.
Next, the bleed is an important aspect to make sure you have on your printed work as any cutting could reveal white if the color does not go out to the edges. This should be taken care of when you open the file and not afterwards.
The last thing I would do for the preflight check is to make sure there are no straggling images or elements, off the artboards, clogging up the work. Only what should be printed for the job should be present, so it is very clear what is to be printed. The other thing I would do is eliminate any extra unused colors in the color panel and name everything in the layers panel too, so it is clear what everything is in this file. Not only is it important for everything the printer sees in this file to only be what should be printed, but if you ever have to share this file with anyone else in a collaborative effort to work on it, you will want only what is used in the file to be present and anything present to be clearly marked.
A very prolific Japanese proverb states, “Vision without action is daydream, action without vision is nightmare.” If you want a great experience in the creating, collaborating, as well as printing aspect of any job, it is imperative you make sure these preflight habits are repeated every single time, so you are in the habitual practice thereof, and the right preflight always happens. To create habits early in your career means you will less likely be sending unready and unfinished files to the printer. The nightmare of sending these less than perfected files to a printer will be dreadfully apparent in the cost of having to reprint everything, likewise having to pay for it all. Make the habits part of your routine now so you never have to have, “that nightmare” (van Driessche, 2012).
Bibliography
experts, A. (2018, October 15). "Preflight files before handoff". Retrieved from Adobe: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/preflighting-files-handoff.html
staff, D. (2020). "How to Preflight Your Job File". Retrieved from DES WA.gov: https://des.wa.gov/services/printing-mail/printing-services/resource-center/how/how-preflight-your-job-file
van Driessche, D. (2012). "HELPING YOUR CUSTOMERS - AND YOURSELF ". Retrieved from New Format: https://www.newformat.se/documents/atomyx/atomyx-collaterals/newformat-atomyx-web-based-preflighting-dvd-spw-article-2012-10-01.pdf
Wheeler, S. (2017, May 18). "Pre-flight Checklist for Printing". Retrieved from Medium : https://medium.com/@shannelwheeler/pre-flight-checklist-for-printing-e004205a18fa