Designing a vinyl book cover...

[lunabeetlegirl]

Hi! I was searching the web for info about this when I stumbled across this forum-- this is great! Although it is allowing me to procrastinate even more than I was before... :)

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone could help me out. I have a kind of assignment I am doing to design a vinyl book cover. When I was given the assignment, it seemed that one person was about to tell me that there are things I'd need to keep in mind when designing it because of the vinyl-- but the other person stopped her I think maybe because they want to see if I wil figure it out on my own...

So, does anyone know what kind of restrictions there might be? It is a two-color project. I had a school project once where we designed vinyl banners and each color had to be cut out of the vinyl so we avoided gradients and such, but in looking on the internet it seems that sometimes they print directly onto the vinyl and sometimes it is screenprinted on...

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

[D-Frag]

Yes you are correct about vinyl being able to be printed on, there are materials like scrim vinyl (banner material) that you can print right onto, then there is the trimmed vinyl, like doing vinyl pinstriping, or lettering...etc. I would probably say for this project your going to be designing onto actual scrim vinyl (or like material), but I would double check what kind of output material just in case. If you are designing onto scrim, don't worry about seperating, most likely it will be printed on a large format digital press, and would be a max res of 300dpi, vector, rastor, it doesnt really matter, just make sure your colors don't shift, they tend to dull on vinyl, and since its digital you have no plates so no need to sep. Only other thing you need to know about vinyl, is that some of it stretches, so make sure you build bleed in on your book cover (As you would with a normal book cover) but I would say keep your type at least a 1/4 inch in, double what the standard is.

Did I confuse you yet? Welcome to the gdf, im sure others will help out along the way, its kinda slow here on the weekends.

http://www.pillargraphicdesign.com/dfrag/dfragsig.jpg

[D-Frag]

p.s. ive never heard of a vinyl book cover : )

http://www.pillargraphicdesign.com/dfrag/dfragsig.jpg

[PrintDriver]

D-Frag, I'm gonna hit you if you call it 'vinyl scrim'.
At the very worst, scrim is mesh or fabric of some kind.
A scrim is actually a theatrical term for a mesh you can see thru when it is backlit and is opaque when front lit.
Designers call all digital fabrics scrim for some reason and never tell me what they mean. There are scores of different fabrics that can qualify as 'designer scrim'. GRRRRrrrrr.
The dpi at max is 150 to 200 at final size.

As for the vinyl book cover...
For a 2-color vinyl job such as is cut by a plotter, you need to work in vector. You need to make sure that all of your shapes are whole shapes with no other lines thru them. A plotter will follow any line you tell it to and will cut shapes in half if you aren't careful.
All stroked lines need to be outlined. Plotter won't read point thickness on a stroke. All fonts need to be outlined. Text should be at least 1/4' 'n' height or 3/8' cap height but that can depend on the plotter. Ours is calibrated very often and can cut the small stuff. Usually. Fine serifs and those lovely script fonts are a bitch to weed (removing the vinyl you don't want to apply). Brush scripts tend to lose their itty bits if the weeder isn't careful and many look like butt at large scale anyway.
Will post a trick jpg in a few.

PrintDriver is a large format digital print dude. His advice/opinions may not apply to the 4color/offset/web world of printing

[PrintDriver]

You may or may not be able to open this in Illustrator under CS to check it out.

I got a little carried away and included a split for a CNC setup on example 4. Left it in anyway with the shorter version under it.

If you have problems with getting a shape into outline (like a brush stroke or a pattern) try Expand. Doesn't always produce cutable results right off the bat but at least it's a place to start.

There are printed cut vinyl plotters out there. Edge prints are a good example. Files are set up the same way though as the printer has to trap the colors. Edge prints will do halftoned gradients but not raster artwork. There are other larger printers out there that do print raster artwork and trim to a vector outline. Talk to a sign shop. If they don't have one, they can either outsource it or tell you where to find it.

PrintDriver is a large format digital print dude. His advice/opinions may not apply to the 4color/offset/web world of printing

Post Edited (PrintDriver) : 8/1/2004 12:03:47 AM GMT

[lunabeetlegirl]

Thanks for the help!