Mephisto Genetics Any budding graphic designers? Mephisto needs you!

[DudeLaRue]

 

[DudeLaRue]

 

[DudeLaRue]

 

[DudeLaRue]

 

[orrganic]

Would a PDF of graphite sketches work?

 

[DudeLaRue]

 

[KapScot]

Since many may have aspirations in design, (without ever having designed for print), I thought I might add a few helpful guidelines for those who don't work in design normally.

I have a lot of experience of merchandising and print and also shepherding those new to the trade (x college tutor) << which is after all what we do at AfN. So these are just some suggestive considerations (nothing worse in a great idea that can’t be used).


I've scanned over the stickers I have from previous Mephisto gear to hand and apart from a very early one all are printed CMYK Digital.


Which means ....

Colours :

So you can use any colour you want (cough). Well almost, a lot of blues, greens and reds will print quite differently than you see on your RGB Monitor (unless it is calibrated for CMYK or you use something like Photoshop that allows for CYMK previews). In any case it doesn't matter really - if the design is good a decent printer or someone like myself can wipe-it's-arse and make it work. In general all the colours Red Green Blue in their purest monitor colours cannot be reproduced using Cyan Magenta Yellow and Black in print - all will appear duller and muted. Likewise at the pastel end of those primary colours there can be a significant variation in colour (see gradients below).

Gradients are also problematic and can produce noticeable banding when converted from RGB (hint adding a little random image noise in gradients can help prevent this). There can also be a colour shift in gradients especially when fading to white or very pale colours. Every ink printed (unless you use a CYMK file to start with) will contain four print colours - each colour has pretty much a +/- 4% coverage when it hits the vinyl. So a 4 colour print fading to white might show a colour hue towards the edge depending on which colours were -4% and which +4% - again use noise along the edges to help prevent this. If you can design in CMYK then by reducing the number of colours used in gradients and adding noise you can virtually eliminate banding.

Resolution (Image Size) :

Digital Prints in the formats requested should ideally be 300dpi [that means for every inch of the printed image you need 300 pixels] - so allowing for bleeds n trims (see below) if I started an image at 1200x1200 pixels I could slightly downsize and produce a good 3 1/2 " Sticker similar to some of the larger Mephisto round stickers. But we don’t know how big the stickers are yet lol...

The Bleed Edge : NO NOT THE BLEEDIN' EDGE << THAT'S BREXIT

When we print any colour to the edge of a design we need a Bleed Edge. The bleed edge is a little bit extra on the dimensions of your image to allow for the edge of your design to be 'trimmed' typically 3mm max - 1.5mm min extra around the edge of your design. This becomes an important consideration when using type to avoid text becoming too close to the edge once a design has been trimmed.

The Trim Edge : I’m sure you can guess that one folks…. Snip.

The Safe Zone : This is a visual guide within which text should ideally be placed otherwise it may appear too close to an edge when Bleeds are taken into consideration.


Hope this helps avoid disappointment and Happy Designing folks, and remember until we get some more info we don't know shape or size - or if it's a free for all.

Some questions for @mephisto :

Do you have a more specific idea what you want to use the stickers for? Perhaps if we had a bit more info. Like for some of your stickers you use custom cutter guides (are these allowed). Or are you looking for something more uniform that can be used on seed packs.

If you do have something specific in mind size wise I could make up a template people can use if they want.

 

[KapScot]

@ orrganic - there's no reason why a PDF or Scan of a sketch wouldn't work.

(hint for scanning charcoal or pencil work) scan at a higher resolution in full colour and de-saturate any colour cast as required - while working with Black and White/Grayscale Images there is only one colour and for a rich black colour we still need other colours in our print - so avoid Black and White and deal with black within a colourspace << does that make sense lol << just had a bong (never had this problem in college - except perhaps immediately after lunch lol).

 

[KapScot]

Oh and one last thing looking over the images posted so far.... consider the final size of the sticker and estimate the size of text on the final image. Some of the examples would leave large swathes of text and or image illegible (think making everything a bit bolder).

eg While I get the idea of the Ripleys OG design I think at print size Ripley might start to look a bit like a lobster because we'd be loosing some of the facial definition around the Lifter that makes it 'Ripley' (perhaps choose one pincer and zoom in on the face - just my thought).

With the exception of the Illuminautos stickers all the Mephisto gear is pretty bold - try to think about simple designs that are uncluttered.


One of the things we always used to say to design students was KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid (it's human nature to over design and engineer).

 

[DudeLaRue]