Designing for Print with Color-Logic

Sara Hoida, owner of Adioh Creative, relies on her relationship with Color-Logic to make her designs really stand out. Using Color-Logic enabled her to develop deep ties with Xerox and its Iridesse press, and with other presses like the HP Indigio and those made by Ricoh.

Sara Hoida runs Adioh Creative, a web-based graphic design agency based in Green Bay, Wis., with clients around the world. Talking about the nature of her business, Hoida says, “The current crop of graphic designers logically gravitated toward website design and social media during their training, so I found that a knowledgeable and experienced focus on print made my design practice really stand out. In today’s market, designing for print is a skill that businesses often have difficulty finding, so I’ve made print my focus. And I find that smaller customers — like beauty salons, restaurants, small manufacturers, and even nonprofits — like dealing with a single, diversified designer that can help them with everything from business cards to trade show booths.”

Hoida’s emphasis on print has also brought her clients such as paper and other substrate companies. “Paper companies like to work with designers that understand how to make their papers look good, using both digital and offset printing, and my experience runs deep on both of those platforms,” she says. Similarly, Hoida found that printing press manufacturers value her press knowledge, since they seek advertising examples that can be produced on their presses, and can showcase press capabilities that younger designers neither appreciate nor understand.

Her focus on print — and her relationship with substrate and press manufacturers — led Hoida to rely on Color-Logic (Booth 10564), a software package that enables graphic designers using tools such as Adobe Creative Suite to quickly incorporate metallics and other specialty embellishments into their designs. “Using Color-Logic enabled me to develop deep ties with Xerox (Booths 12345, 12541) and its Iridesse press, and with other presses like the HP (Booths 6407, 6416) Indigo and those made by Ricoh (Booth 7001),” says Hoida. One of her clients — Kernow (Booth 6908) — makes metallic substrates specific to various manufacturers and the processes their presses employ, so they need to showcase their material with designs that are subtle yet graphically brilliant, and to demonstrate how the designs look when actually printed.

Talking about the time savings that accrue from using Color-Logic in her designs, Hoida says, “Because I have been doing design for more years than a few, I remember the incredible difficulty cutting Rubylith masks for jobs. I still have my X-Acto knife, but I’m not crazy about using it to make masks, particularly since I realized how Color-Logic enables me to execute the complex masks necessary for many metallic designs in just seconds, with just a mouse click or two. I never cease to be amazed at how graphic designers steer clients away from complex metallic jobs simply because they are unaware of the tools available.”

She continues: “Often a client will come to me with a predetermined decision about which printer will execute the design I produce. In many cases, that is a mistake. Color-Logic metallic files may only be printed by licensed Color-Logic printers, and while Color-Logic provides a detailed list of qualified and licensed printers for their process, many customers insist on using the printer they began working with long before digital printing and advanced design software were available. Those clients are not availing themselves of the technology available today, and severely constrain the designers they choose. It is a shame, but slowly those clients are learning that graphic design and the final execution of those designs are deeply related.”

“Color-Logic,” says Hoida, “has an amazing array of video tutorials that designers can watch to learn how to execute metallic designs. Color-Logic is always ready to help designers with complex design issues, including how to choose just the right printer for a particularly difficult job.”