Students of Four Winds
Waldorf School in Warrenville received high marks and unexpected
rewards—from Copresco.
Copresco was
honored with the Achievement in Print Excellence
Award from the Printing Industry of Illinois/Indiana Association and a
Xerox Printing Innovation Award for a distinctive
yearbook project.
The yearbook combined a
unique blend of design creativity with the benefits of digital printing.
“Since Four Winds is not a typical public school,
the yearbook had to showcase the creative spirit of the private educational
institution,” says Copresco president Steve
Johnson. “Cost control was essential since the book was to be used as
a fundraiser.”
The teacher and yearbook designer
worked closely with Copresco’s digital color staff to come up with a piece
that exceeded all expectations.
The students became actively involved in the production phase throughout the project. “The kids all received A’s from our staff. They became competent print buyers, selecting the paper stock and binding style. They also visited our plant and even helped with the manual portion of the book binding,” Steve explained.
“Sales of the yearbook surpassed 100% of
the goal, and fundraising results surpassed expectations,” Steve added.
“Since copies could be reprinted on-demand, there was no need to overrun
the initial print run and, therefore, no waste.”
The
marketing department of the school came up with another big benefit: the
yearbook turns out to be a great marketing tool.
Copresco president Steve
Johnson joins students and teachers
of Four Winds for presentation of
plaques for the yearbook project.
Q.
I followed last month’s suggestions for embedding
fonts and checking for missing fonts when I
created my PDF file for print, yet Copresco tells me my PDF is still missing
fonts. The type looks fine to me, both on screen and on my printer. So
what’s the problem?
A. This is really two
questions. First, if fonts aren’t embedded, why does your proof look
acceptable? Second, why didn’t fonts embed when you took care to do so?
We’ll answer the first question, then tackle the second question
next month.
You said
your proof “looks” okay. Remember, embedded fonts will always be used
by the PDF. If a font isn’t embedded, the PDF next looks for the missing
font on your computer.
So far, so good, but if it
can’t find the font (or if the Use Local Fonts option has been disabled),
the PDF reaches into its bag of tricks to do something quite unique.
Acrobat is actually designed to mimic missing fonts.
Using two built-in “faux” fonts, it strives to maintain the size and
spacing of any missing font as best it can. How well it does depends upon the
characteristics of each missing font. Some examples: Frutiger, Overnight
Lite’s headline typeface, is unreadable when faked in a PDF. Esprit, which
you are reading now, can by faked legibly. Today’s most common fonts,
Helvetica, Arial and Times New Roman, synthesize well enough, so anyone less
than a font connoisseur may find the substitution visually
undetectable.
Q.
But if it looks good to me, isn’t that good enough?
A. That is a matter of personal taste. Acrobat
makes the best of a bad situation by rendering text readable even without
proper fonts. But remember that in long documents, such as books and manuals,
the imperfect spacing of the mimed fonts will be more tiring to the eye than
the real thing. A printed piece is very different from an e-mail message.
If you approve Copresco’s proof and instruct us to
proceed, we’ll print with the “faked” fonts. Our preference,
though, is always to give you the award-winning quality you expect from
Copresco.
Next month we’ll
explain why some fonts resist embedding despite your best efforts, and how to
overcome this.
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