At the Jersey Awards ceremony, held at The Grove in Cedar Grove on Wednesday, June 5, Robin Kantor, Business Development and Design Specialist for Newark Trade was elected to the NJ Advertising Club’s Presidency for the 2019-21 term. Robin has been involved in the Ad Club for over seven years. She started by working on the Jersey Awards Committee and joined the Board of Directors two years later. Her term as President starts in July 2019 and runs for two years.

Robin got her BFA in Communications Design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, worked at various positions in NYC, such as Fairchild Publications and National Benefit Life Insurance where she was an Assistant Art Director of their in-house Art Department. Later she was the Art Director/Graphic Designer for PIP Printing in Verona, which she co-owned with her husband, Michael, for over twenty years. She has been a part of the Sales Team at Newark Trade for over nine years.

Among other organizations she has been involved with, she was a member of the PIP Printing National Image Steering Committee, is a Past President of the Verona Chamber of Commerce, and is currently a member of the Morris County Chamber of Commerce’s Women in Business and Women in Golf Committees.

By Bob Wislocky

In the words of Walt Disney; “Never label a movie as educational” or kids won’t watch. Instead, “say it’s a true-life adventure”.

The Museum of Printing in Haverhill, MA is truly an adventure for the whole family. Kids and adults will experience the history of printing and graphics in real-time. Kids can experience the creation of hot metal printing from start to finish. They start by selecting brass dies called matrices from a case to assemble their names in a “composing stick”. A print craftsman will then insert the stick into the Ludlow display type caster. Hot metal is then squirted against the dies to create a line of type with the person’s name on it. That line of type can then be taken to another workstation where another craftsman working on the Vandercook proof press will print a “Certificate of Attendance” for that child. This experience truly proves to be an interesting “true-life adventure”.

Amazingly, many of today’s children have never seen a typewriter. At the MOP they can compose some “texts” on typewriter paper to give the message to their friends when they get home. Hitting the “send” button is certainly much faster.

The Museum isn’t a static place; it is alive with history where attendees can participate in working with technologies that were state of the art for over 500 years. Kids have fun sampling the older technologies as they compare their iPhones, Macs and PC’s to the way it was previously done.

All communication devices that we use today can have their roots traced back to Gutenberg; from his invention of moveable, metal hand type all the way to the Mac, iPhone, PC and beyond. Connecting the dots along the graphic communications timeline can truly serve as an “Aha Moment”.

So if you are visiting New England this Summer, Fall, Winter or Spring, be sure to stop by the Museum of Printing in Haverhill, MA for an experience you will not forget.

Here’s the information to contact the Museum of Printing:
Museum of Printing
15 Thorton Avenue
Haverhill, MA 01832
Email: info@museumofprinting.org
Website: www.museumofprinting.org

PS – Below are two photos. The first photo was taken at the MOP in 2007 of my granddaughter and me sitting down at the Mergenthaler Linotype line-casting machine. She was 4 months old. (My cousin Bob was standing behind us.)

 

The second photo was taken with my granddaughter in March 2019 at the same Linotype machine at the MOP. My granddaughter is now 12 years old.

By the way, she had a terrific time at the Museum with me.

The NJ Business & Industry Association (NJBIA) helps businesses with advocacy, advice, networking, health issues and other benefits. Newark Trade has been a member since 1964!

They recently reached out to our Business Development and Design Specialist Robin Kantor to be a guest on their every-other-week podcast/video which is recorded in their Trenton office. Robin talks about Newark Trade’s past history and future endeavors. Click on either link below to take a look or a listen!

Podcast: https://www.njbia.org/category/other-peoples-business/
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UXlx7cIlEo

Newark Trade was recognized during the New Jersey Ad Club’s Jersey Awards on Wednesday evening, June 5, 2019. The annual event was held at The Grove in Cedar Grove, with over 300 people in attendance.

The creative team brought home three First Place Awards in the Self-Promotion Website Design; Collateral: Rack Brochure; and Photography Still Life categories.

Newark Trade also received four Second Place Awards in the following categories: Collateral: Calendar; Direct Marketing Package with High-Impact Premium Item; Direct Marketing: Not-a-Self-Mailer, Single Piece; and Identity: Newsletter Campaign.

Newark Trade was additionally recognized with an Award of Excellence in the category of Identity: Logo, Consumer.

In other news, Business Development & Design Specialist Robin Kantor, who has served on the Jersey Award Committee for six years as well as the Board of Directors, was elected to serve as President of the NJ Ad Club for a two-year term starting this July.

By Gary D’Atrio

The human eye is amazing. It can distinguish up to 10 million different shades of color. This range of color is known as a gamut and it’s pretty wide compared with what can be displayed on a screen or a printed page. That’s the reason why, as graphic designers, we use color spaces when working on digital and printed material.

There are two basic color spaces that you will deal with: Red, Green and Blue (RGB) and Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK). Which color space you should work with depends on your final product.

RGB refers to mixing light and is the color space that your computer monitor, TV, smartphone and tablets use to display images on screen. RGB is the color space that you should use for web design or video.

CMYK is what printing devices use in the form of color ink or toner. As you can see from the illustration, the gamut of that color space is much smaller than RGB. As well, the gamut varies depending on the device. Digital toner-based printers and commercial ink-based presses using only four colors (CMYK) will reproduce fewer colors than some inkjet printers using eight ink colors (Cyan, Light Cyan, Magenta, Light Magenta, Yellow, Pure Black, Medium Black and Light Grey).

So how do we manage all of these color spaces and ensure that what we see on screen is close to what we will get on paper? ICC profiles are the answer.

But we will save that subject for another time.

By Paul Carracino

Almost everyone over the age of 30 has one, a large box in the attic or basement stuffed with old printed photos. Sadly, those old printed photos don’t last forever. Many cherished prints may be scratched, torn, dog-eared, and faded from years of enjoyment. If this sounds familiar, don’t worry, there’s hope.

For this blog article, I’m not going to go into the fine details of image restoration. Instead I want to just touch on the basic steps to follow that will allow you, the user, to drill down into each step until you are comfortable editing images on your own.

Generally speaking, there are a few basic steps required to restore old photographs that apply to most of them.

First step; you need to digitize the old paper photos so your computer can understand them.  This process can be done using a regular desktop scanner. If you don’t have a scanner, you can take a picture of the image with a digital camera. If you don’t have a scanner or a camera, you still have hope.  Today, thanks to modern, powerful smart phones, you can use a scanner app which has lots of special tools to help you get the best possible shot of your photograph to work with.

Second step; once you get a good digitized copy, you will need to open the image in Adobe Photoshop or any one of today’s advanced photo editing programs.  For example, I will use Photoshop, but most image editing programs work much the same way.  Always keep the original image as a reference. This is important because it allows you to have something to compare any edits you do to your final image. Photoshop allows you to create a second layer within the single file which lets you toggle between edited and original image, this technique helps when editing to see which changes improve the original and which changes don’t.

Third step; It is best to straighten the image before doing anything else. You will use the CROP tool to do that. This tool will allow you to select the image and rotate to it to square.  At the same time, you can also crop the raw image to trim off any unwanted areas using the same CROP tool. This step is very straight forward and simple, but great care should be taken when deciding how an image will be cropped to get the best possible effect.

Fourth step; you will use the CLONE tool. With this tool, you can retouch spots and scratches found on most old images. Sometimes large sections of the image are damaged or torn, these can be tricky but with some practice on the CLONE tool, anything is possible. The DUST AND SCRATCHES filter is also very useful for overall image noise and small scratches. The SPOT HEALING tool is very good to help remove the occasional spot or image defect.

The final step is to color correct the final composed image. The COLOR BALANCE and HUE AND SATURATION tools are good for overall color adjustments.  If you want to fine tune small areas within the image, you will need to create selection areas and apply edits using the CURVES tool. This step has many, many nuances. Entire books have been written describing methods for proper color correction, so it’s really up to you how far you want to go. You can find a myriad of YouTube videos that go into greater detail than I described in this blog.

Once you get the image to where it looks the way you want, don’t forget to save the final image in your preferred file format. Most digital photographs today are saved as .jpg or jpegs.

Congratulations, you just edited your first photo.

By Robin Kantor

Promotional products are the most highly regarded form of advertising¹. Some random thoughts on the subject…

There are plenty of recent news stories about plastic bags no longer being given out freely when you are shopping. Promo products to the rescue! People have started carrying reusable bags with them, and that is a great place to show off your logo. How many eyes will see it? How many times will it get used? In the US, bags generate more impressions than any other promo item.

People LOVE to use (and re-use) mugs! I have one I have been using for eight years! Do you know anyone who doesn’t need that morning coffee or tea? Enough said.

The best value: pens! In the US, the cost per impression is about one-tenth of a penny. And you know how often people use pens. I bet you have at least one within arm’s reach right now! And if it writes really smoothly, you are going to keep mentally thanking the person who gave that pen to you.

Promo factoids: 85% of people recall the advertiser that gave them a shirt or hat, or (fill in the blank!). When asked what types of advertising consumers like best, people 55 and under prefer promo products. The average American owns and uses 10 promo items right now! A simple reason: people love free useful products!!

Newark Trade is an ASI-certified distributor. We would love to help you find a product giveaway that will keep your company in the memory of others! Give us a call or email.

¹Thanks to ASI for all their terrific research!

By Joe Tallman

Over the years, I have found the most successful printing projects are well planned by developing a schedule that is created with the priority placed on the printing and finishing needs for your piece.  Basically, work backwards in developing the schedule. Listed below are 8 steps for managing a successful print project.

Step 1:
Create requirements that identify your audience, your message, and your goals.

Step 2:
Identify your resources for the project. Your resources may include marketing, creative, content writers, project manager, proofreaders/quality control, printer, and mailing. A dedicated project manager will help ensure a successful project and will be the center of communication between internal teams and printer while tracking chargeable hours, timeline, and costs.

Step 3:
Develop a project plan that includes timeline, project tasks, and project milestones. If the project is complex, you may want to schedule stand-up meetings that can be held periodically for 15 to 30 minutes to allow each team member to quickly identify completed tasks, what tasks will be worked on next, and any possible risks to the production schedule.

Step 4:
Talk with your printer while you are in the planning and design stages of the project. Discuss timeline, file preparation, color space, proofing, bindery and finishing capabilities, mailing and/or delivery if needed. You may also want to discuss bleeds, image resolution, and safe text margins.

Step 5:
Create a checklist.

Step 6:
Have everything proofread after every iteration. Check all press proofs carefully.

Step 7:
Spot check the finished piece before mailing or delivery.

Step 8:
After the project has been completed, review the project’s success and any customer feedback. This will help make the next project even a greater success.

By Gary D’Atrio

You’re planning the latest print project for your company, but have you thought much about how the job will get bound? Let’s explore your bindery options.

For a brochure with few pages, the most inexpensive way to go is saddle stitching. It is a method of binding in which the sections of a publication are inserted inside each other and secured through the middle fold with wire staples. Many brochures, catalogs and magazines are bound this way. A disadvantage is that the closed or open brochure will tend to “pillow” out instead of laying flat.

The second option is comb binding. This method uses round plastic spines with 19 rings or 21 rings and a hole puncher that makes rectangular holes. Comb binding is sometimes referred to as plastic comb binding or spiral comb binding. The plastic comb is available in a variety of color and sizes to fit 12 to 200 pages. Although it isn’t a very elegant solution, it is cost effective and allows the book to lay flat when open.

The next option is wire-o. With this binding method, punched pages are inserted onto a “C” shaped spine and then a wire closer squeezes the spine until it is round. Documents that are bound with wire binding will open completely flat on a desk and allow for 360-degree rotation of bound pages. The wire-o material is available in several colors and metallic finishes to complement the printed piece. Plastic coil binding is similar, although it is a bit bulkier than wire-o and is also available in various colors.

The fourth option is perfect binding. This is the most expensive of the four methods. But it is ideal for pieces with a large number of pages. The pages are bound together with an adhesive and wrapped in a cover of heavier paper stock with a square, flat spine. The result is a very professional presentation.

At the start of your next project, contact the knowledgeable staff at Newark Trade to discuss the best binding option to fit your image and budget.

By Paul Carracino and Matt Olivas

Each year for the last 15 or so years, Newark Trade has taken the opportunity to design and print a promotional holiday calendar. It’s a small gift for our clients as a “thank you” for their business that also shows them a sample of our creative design, print, and fulfillment capabilities.

For our 2015 calendar project titled Enticing your Appetite we decided to do something a little different from previous years. The focus was to design and print a curated collection of high-resolution images, and combine them with a newly released augmented reality (AR) technology.

Newark Trade’s on-staff designer and photographer collaborated to produce the calendar and decide on a theme: an (AR) cookbook.

In order to bring this vision to life, the team used common and exotic fruits and vegetables as the photographic subject matter. The produce was carefully composed for artistic appeal and combined with the AR menu displays in real time, using the specific ingredients from the images for each month’s recipe.

The technology is rather simple: a viewer scans the monthly picture with their smartphone using the AR Layar app, and a virtual menu appears on the user’s screen. Newark Trade employees offered their favorite recipes that helped bring the photos of ingredients to life.

To plan for the photo shoot, Newark Trade ordered about 20 different color sheets of custom paper from a local art supply store. The sheets had bright vivid colors with subtle shades and flecks thoughout and served as excellent backdrops for each piece. The cost for these supplies was minimal and had amazing visual impact.

For the subject matter, we visited the local Whole Foods and bought a wide variety of beautiful, exotic, and colorful fruits and vegetables. Among our finds were bright red and green peppers, stunning whole cloves of garlic, ripe strawberries, onions, apples, and oranges. We also found lemons, watermelons, Asian apples, and wide variety of mushrooms.

The items were carefully posed and arranged in still life, against different colored backgrounds which helped accentuate and compliment the portraits, adding to their visual impact.

In total, over 1,250 images were captured. Each image was carefully examined, compared, and pared down to the 15 final images to be used in the calendar. These images were then adjusted for white balance, color correction, shadowing, hue and saturation, contrast, spotting, and final retouching to prepare for the final design.

Distribution

In total, Newark Trade printed 300 final calendars along with several other additional pieces for the project, including a Holiday card, an instruction sheet, notepads with additional shots from the photo shoot, and a beautiful jet black tote bag with the calendar cover picture printed on the bag. Our fulfillment department assembled all 300 packages for delivery.

Newark Trade received awards in two categories from the The New Jersey Ad Club: one for Photography and the other for Calendar Design.