Tips on flightchecking files for printers please.

April 25, 2006 6:42 AM

Tips on flightchecking files for printers please.

A friend of mine has an interview and practical test for a job in a print shop where she will be doing some design, layout and DTP, which she is comfortable with, and also prepping received files, with which she is a little less so. I have some experience with this, but from a few years ago.
Can anyone give her some tips on what she might expect, have to remember, or just say to impress these people enough to give her the job. Some links that cover the topic clearly and simply, perhaps providing checklists, would also be good.
She will be using mainly Indesign on OSX I believe, and I know Indesign has built in flightcheck, but they may give her an Illustrator, Freehand, Quark or who knows what file in the test.

posted by aisforal to work & money (4 comments total)

This guidefrom printing.com is a good resource for people supplying artwork, which will obviously inform someone trying to get into the printers head.
posted by godawful at 7:03 AM on April 25, 2006

Though reading it hasn't helped me form grammatical sentences, or get my apostrophe's right.
posted by godawful at 7:22 AM on April 25, 2006

Oh wow. That printing guide is great for me. I've been prepping newspapers for print for a year now, but I never knew why certain problems occasionally cropped up in the final product—this guide pretty much explains why.

Thanks, godawful!
posted by limeonaire at 8:45 AM on April 25, 2006

(sorry about the anecdote, but..)

At the company where I did my internship years ago I was responsible for these one page overview sheets for high profile completed projects. They were done in page maker, and some of them had harvard graphics pie charts imported using cgm files (yes, it was a long time ago). One day I had a bunch of tested good files printed off at a new shop.. The pie chart segments had all fallen, as if gravity suddenly affected the cgm file.
posted by Chuckles at 9:15 AM on April 25, 2006