Color Makes You Key

You may see the letters CMYK mentioned with regard to the printing process. They refer to printing ink, and while it may seem to be an acronym for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black, on closer inspection you’ll note it does not.

The obvious issue is the letter K which oddly enough stands for the key as in the key plate. Just as with a keystone, the key plate is a crucial part of color reproduction.

In the subtractive color model, the three colors of cyan, magenta and yellow are used in varying amounts to create a gamut that more or less represents all the colors of the rainbow. This is done by the inks subtracting reflected light off the substrate which in our case is white paper.

In theory if you were to combine equal amounts of those three colors what should appear is black, and smaller percentages of equal amounts would create shades of gray. In practice, the impurities of mass-manufactured printing inks will reproduce a dark color, but one that is rarely close to what we would all agree is black.

This is where the key plate comes into play. In printing, the key plate is used with black ink. Since this ink is a purer black than the three process inks can produce added together, images reproduced on press will have richer contrast and darker areas will look neutral

Black ink can be manufactured less expensively than cyan, magenta and yellow so when color separations are made, the three colors are often replaced with certain amounts of black which is an added benefit.

Black ink is also used for type. This has the advantage of producing sharp type with only one impression on press which is a technical challenge if using the three color inks as minor changes in alignment will make a blurred effect that can be hard to read.

So next time you see the letters CMYK, you’ll be a little wiser as to how key the letter K can be in making a good impression in your printed bulletin or newsletter!

Time for “Spring Cleaning” of your bulletin

Spring is here—time to spruce up your house, get rid of clutter and get things organized. But this year, go beyond your home and yard when you do your spring cleaning and look for ways to rejuvenate your bulletin. And springtime is as good a time as any to take a fresh look at your bulletin. So consider these suggestions:

* Dispose of things that aren’t working. Whether it’s a burnt-out computer, a non-vacuuming vacuum cleaner, we all own things that are no longer useful. And the same may be true of some areas of your bulletin. Look through your bulletin from the cover to the last page. Can you utilize the space better?

* Get rid of duplicates. If you went through everything in your bulletin, you might find several items that do the same thing. Do you really need a staff directory on the cover and also on the inside pages? If you took it off the cover, would you have more space to add a new photo to the cover? Or if you keep it on the cover and remove it from the inside page, you might find you do have room for that fundraiser article you just didn’t have room for before. I mean, how many radios do you really need and do you even use them? If you looked at your bulletin in this same way, you might be surprised to find some redundancies. Always look for ways to diversify your information and get your readers attention.

* Put things back in order. Over time, and inadvertently, the spaces in your home can get “out of balance.” Perhaps you have too many chairs in one corner, your flat-screen television is crowding out your family pictures, or your new desk takes up too much space in your home office. With some rearranging, however, you can usually get things back in order. And the same need for rearrangement may apply to your bulletin, which might have become unbalanced with all your articles looking exactly the same. Restore your bulletin to its proper balance—use consistent size headers but have an article go across the whole bottom of the page instead of just two columns running up and down the pages or simply rearrange a few articles and add some new clip art.

Spruce things up by designing a new front cover. And if you need help with this new look, contact our designers at your local LPi service center for some additional help and ideas.

Spring cleaning really puts a smile on your face. I think it’s because we know that summer is right around the corner but a fresh new look to your bulletin can too. By giving your bulletin an annual spring cleaning, you can help make sure it reflects the current needs of your church community. And you won’t even have to get near the dust cloths or furniture polish.

Spread the Word

With Ash Wednesday coming up on February 13, 2013, many churches are preparing for the onslaught of questions about Mass times, Lenten penance and prayer services, Friday fish fries, and other events.

So take a few minutes now and save your members’ some time, and yourself a few (dozen) phone calls. Make sure schedules are updated and made available everywhere possible: bulletin, voicemail, outdoor sign, Facebook page, website, Seek And Find page. The following link shows three different ways to add this information to your listing, so pick the one that makes the most sense for your community: http://SeekAndFind.com/about/blog/387-do-they-know-when-to-find-you.

Is Anyone Reading Your Church Bulletin?

What is the life span of your church bulletin? About as long as the service, and then you find it in the garbage can outside? Breathe new life into your bulletin and make it an effective communication tool for your church. Think of it as a mini-newspaper, packed with need-to-know and need-to-grow information.

An attractive bulletin will draw readers. Is your bulletin wall-to-wall typewriter type, or is the print easy to read? The fewer typefaces (or fonts) you use, the better, so when you begin to add text, choose two or three at most that complement each other.  It’s best to mix serif type, (those with small lines on the end of letters, like Times Roman), with sans serif type (those with no small lines, such as Helvetica or Arial).  Always use the serif type for body copy, as it is easier to read when there are many words. Save the more elaborate artsy typefaces for short headlines or subheads—and remember, use three at most. Too much type in any font makes the page look too gray, and people won’t want to read very far.

Find different ways to break up the text. Add graphics to your church bulletin.  Just go to http://www.portal.4lpi.com, Liturgical Publications Inc Art & Media Portal. Pictures, photos, illustrations and clip-art are eye-catching and draw the reader into the text. Use moderation and choose graphics that create visual harmony.

Put only the most important information in your church bulletin.  If there’s too much, you’ll overwhelm today’s too-busy-to-read person.  Worse, they’ll end up reading it during the sermon!  Keep it brief, and refer readers to your website for more information.

The bulletin is the best and easiest way to help attendees, especially newcomers, know what to expect in the service, and to educate members on small groups, ministries, prayer groups and other activities that define your church. Include information that is important for your congregation to get through the week ahead.

You should include:
•    Ministry news
•    Small group meeting information
•    Approaching church events and outside events like concerts or trips to local amusement parks
•    Recap past week’s important events, and use names. People love to see their name in print
•    Excerpts from books or periodicals that relate to real life issues, such as parenting, relationships, finance and other topics that will provide spiritual growth
•    Pictures, if possible.  If you have the scanning technology to reproduce a high-quality photo, use it!  You’ll have more success in this area if you start with a photo that has good contrast and brightness. As much as people like to see their names, they like to see their pictures even more. (Don’t forget to have the individuals in the photos sign a release to use their images in the bulletin).

And finally, ask your congregation what they’d like to see in the bulletin. Add a simply survey or questionnaire. By giving them a simple survey, which can be collected during the offering or at the end of the service, you’re conveying your desire to meet their needs better. They’ll be glad you asked and so will you!

Virtual “Meet and Greet” with LPi’s Milwaukee Prepress Department

LPi held an open house this fall at our Milwaukee, Denver, Cromwell, and Cuyahoga Heights locations.  Many fantastic customers toured our facilities, attended seminars on a variety of LPi products and services, and met other local editors and advertisers.  A big THANK YOU to everyone who joined us!

For those who were unable to attend the event, here is a quick behind-the-scenes look at the Milwaukee center’s prepress department.  Consider it a “virtual open house.”
Prepress is responsible for making sure your publications are printed and delivered on time.  We have several different roles in this department:  customer service, tech support, design and processing.

Customer Service

Customer Service is our first point of contact for new customers, and also your source for information on scheduling, delivery, quantity, account changes and hardbound books.  Our customer service representatives are cheerful, outgoing individuals who love to chat with and assist new and existing customers.

Tech Support

Technical Support Representatives are our problem solvers, ready to jump into action with a friendly phone call and the click of a mouse to help resolve computer-related issues.  They provide training and assistance on a variety of programs and software.

Graphic Design

Graphic Designers are the creatives who work with fonts, colors, and graphics in order to lay out beautiful templates, directories, special covers and flyers to fit your needs.

Processing

Processers are the magic-makers behind the scenes, working directly with tech support and the press operators to ensure that your files are received after you submit them to us and adjusted when necessary to print correctly.

Milwaukee Prepress Contacts 2012

Now that you know a little more about our prepress team, we’d love to get to know you better as well!  Please don’t hesitate to call or email to touch base and introduce yourself.  Looking forward to connecting with more of our editors and advertisers as we work with you to “Connect Your Community.”

Setting Tabs in Microsoft Publisher

One of the most convenient ways of keeping an even structure in Microsoft Publisher is to use tabs in your margin bar at the top of your document. This makes placing detailed information more visually pleasing and easy to understand.  Pressing Tab by default gives you a gap of about a quarter of an inch in a document. Generally, this can cause a text box to unevenly place text.

(As a side note, it’s always best to set up your tabs FIRST Before placing in text. But for this demonstration we will use already placed text for visual purposes. if you have already placed text and want to use tabs, simply highlight all the text you want to use tabs with!)

 

 

 

 

Let’s organize this text by spacing out this information using tabs.  Since we have three segments of text we will tell publisher to space out the text by pressing tab between segments. For this example we want text to appear to the left, the center and to the right of our text box.  To set this up once we have clicked on the text box, choose where you want your first tab point to begin.  In this case we want to line up the left hand side, so we will double left click in the ruler icon at the top of the page all the way to the left. (as indicated by the red highlighted dot.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This will bring up a menu where you will  choose which tab your trying to set up. (Left Tab, Center Tab and  Right Tab). You can also choose to have dots appear in between your tab spacing by choosing an option in the ‘leader area’.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once you have set your first left hand side tab, repeat the process by double clicking on the ruler in the center of your text by and clicking in the  ’Center’ bubble. Then double clicking on the right hand side of your tab and clicking in the ‘Right’ bubble.  The end result should look like this (with the red highlights showing specifically where we clicked for our Left, Center and Right tabs.)


 

 

 

 

 

As you can see with the final result, the information is laid out evenly, and is a lot more intuitive to find the information your looking for. These tab settings are completely customizable to whatever project your working on. Tab spacing and the amount of tab sections can all be adjusted to suit your needs.

- By Jeff Pelletier

Bright Ideas – Master Pages

Working with master Pages By Jeff Pelletier

A Master Page in Microsoft publisher allows you to  have a repeating   image or text  on every page of your document  as you choose. For example let’s say we wanted a washed out background image on a few pages in our document.

The most convenient way of reaching the Master Page is to hit the following keys together Ctrl+ M you will notice a yellow background fills the pasteboard, this lets you know you are in your master page.

There are two ways of viewing Master Pages

1.  hit Ctrl+M to enter the master page view or Ctrl+M again to leave it and return to your normal editing screen.

2. Under View click on Master Page to activate the master page view an orange check mark will appear next to this once it’s activated. To Get out of the master Page View, under View, click Master Page again.

Master page content can only be edited from the master page View. This allows you to work in your normal view without having to worry about the content you placed in your master page view.
You can control where your master pages are used simply click on the page where you want your master page to either be turned on or off, and then in the left hand menu change to Master page A or Ignore Master

Master pages can be used to place repeating design pieces &, repeating time/date information, and anything else you would like to have consistently through your document!

Holiday Schedules – and Blessings

Many editors call and ask why LPi changes their transmission times for holidays by two weeks or more. That means some editors may have to send a bulletin twice in one week!

We understand how confusing this can be for some of you, and it’s necessary for us to accommodate our printing and shipping schedules so we can ensure everyone gets their bulletins on time.

For example, because we are closed on Thanksgiving Day and the day after, we begin two weeks before Thanksgiving so by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, we are all home enjoying our dinners, knowing all our customers have their deliveries and can enjoy their holiday as well.

These transmission changes only happen a few times a year so we are grateful our customers understand our schedules and abide by them. We appreciate your help and understanding in getting your bulletins and/or newsletters to us in a timely matter. We count you all among our blessings!

We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season!

Sending your Bulletin File Early??

 There may be times when you need to send your bulletin file weeks prior to when the file is due because of a vacation or holiday. LPi Express makes it easy for you to do this.

  • Simply go through your normal steps to send the bulletin file, however, when you get to the Publication Option screen in LPi Express, Stop and Look at the Calendar; under Distribution Date.
  • Click the Date on the Calendar that the bulletin is needed for. For example, if your bulletin is intended for Sunday, October 21st, select October 21st on the calendar. The date will then be graphically represented in Red.
  • Click the Next button in the lower right corner to continue the process of sending your file. Once your file is submitted, it will be held until we print for the week of October 21st or unless other arrangements are made.
  • Sending your bulletin to us correctly will ensure that it will post accurately to your Seek and Find web page, and that you will get your bulletins printed and delivered in a timely manner.