Uploaded September 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Long-time preflighting and FlightCheck advocate, Dr. Harvey Levenson, professor from Cal Poly and printing industry expert, took time to discuss the importance of quality assurance in print and design. Why should printers perform preflight checks? Dr. Levenson responded, “It's a matter of surviving or not surviving” for print-shops to preflight or not. It’s a serious matter, but the good professor shares many real-life, workflow examples of how print problems can ruin a job, without proper preflight.
One of the questions relating 100% to printers is the importance of preflighting for creators. Preflight and quality of the print job all starts with the creatives. You can make a mistake in copy, within InDesign, Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, or have a file preparation issue. Or you might place a low resolution image, pantone color, Type 1 font, etc. in the print PDF. That mistake may not show up until the print job is ready to be folded and cut and long output! And a mistake at binary often means starting all over again. Not to mention days of wasted time.
It's imperative that creatives, graphic designers, and print buyers also understand the importance of coordinating what they're doing with prepress, what the printer does, and so forth. The right font sets should be available to the printer that the graphic designer is using, understand color issues such as RGB versus CMYK, understanding percentage of color printed on different substrates, what you can do and what you can't do, in terms of maintaining quality on printing.
Designers have to know this and much more, in some cases. DTP and designers have to understand this and they should coordinate and communicate with the printer, during every step of the workflow, to make sure that there are no issues with the layouts or graphic designs. Communication is key, and FlightCheck helps to connect the printer to the designers.
One mistake can ruin an entire job and this involves the designers, the creatives. Unfortunately, many graphic arts schools are not focusing on the technicalities of coordinating with prepress, printers, and printing technology, which designers must know about. They might focus a bit more on items related to aesthetics, without providing the student and the industry with knowledge of preflighting and standards required to produce a good quality print job.
There'd be a lot of commercial print companies out of business, if preflighting (with FlightCheck and other prepress software) did not exist. Print buyers look at printing as a necessary evil, says Dr. Levenson. When something is looked upon as a necessary evil, the client wants it today and cheap. Anything in the printing workflow that goes wrong, that is a step backward, an error and costing of course time and money. Preflighting and the proper use of FlightCheck usually means the difference between being profitable on a job or not being profitable and losing real money on the print work.
Dr. Levenson goes into much detail on preemptive quality assurance, preflighting, and FlightCheck for printing and for graphic designers. To download a 30-day, full-working version of FlightCheck, see:
markzware.com/products/flightcheck
More info for educational and academic programs that want FlightCheck and stand-alone preflighting for their classrooms, see:
markzware.com/academic-program
Watch the preflighting 101 video, "Preflight Basics for Graphic Designers” here:
youtube.com/watch?v=lBOkZL8jsL0
This is from the book Harvey co-aothored with John Parsons, an Introduction to Graphic Communication, which is a real must-have for graphic designers and printers a like!
Where did the term preflighting for print come from?
Loosely from FlightCheck, but more specifically from Chuck Weger. Watch:
youtube.com/watch?v=daOKtnBfe1A
Harvey R. Levenson, Ph. D.
Professor Emeritus, Cal Poly
Phone and Text: 805-801-6025
Email: hrlevenson@thegrid.net
Website: hrlevenson.wixsite.com/hrlevenson
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#print #graphicdesign #creatives
Professor on Preflighting in Print and Design - Harvey Levenson, Ph. D.
Long-time preflighting and FlightCheck advocate, Dr. Harvey Levenson, professor from Cal Poly and printing industry expert, took time to discuss the importance of quality assurance in print and design. Why should printers perform preflight checks? Dr. Levenson responded, “It's a matter of surviving or not surviving” for print-shops to preflight or not. It’s a serious matter, but the good professor shares many real-life, workflow examples of how print problems can ruin a job, without proper preflight.
One of the questions relating 100% to printers is the importance of preflighting for creators. Preflight and quality of the print job all starts with the creatives. You can make a mistake in copy, within InDesign, Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, or have a file preparation issue. Or you might place a low resolution image, pantone color, Type 1 font, etc. in the print PDF. That mistake may not show up until the print job is ready to be folded and cut and long output! And a mistake at binary often means starting all over again. Not to mention days of wasted time.
It's imperative that creatives, graphic designers, and print buyers also understand the importance of coordinating what they're doing with prepress, what the printer does, and so forth. The right font sets should be available to the printer that the graphic designer is using, understand color issues such as RGB versus CMYK, understanding percentage of color printed on different substrates, what you can do and what you can't do, in terms of maintaining quality on printing.
Designers have to know this and much more, in some cases. DTP and designers have to understand this and they should coordinate and communicate with the printer, during every step of the workflow, to make sure that there are no issues with the layouts or graphic designs. Communication is key, and FlightCheck helps to connect the printer to the designers.
One mistake can ruin an entire job and this involves the designers, the creatives. Unfortunately, many graphic arts schools are not focusing on the technicalities of coordinating with prepress, printers, and printing technology, which designers must know about. They might focus a bit more on items related to aesthetics, without providing the student and the industry with knowledge of preflighting and standards required to produce a good quality print job.
There'd be a lot of commercial print companies out of business, if preflighting (with FlightCheck and other prepress software) did not exist. Print buyers look at printing as a necessary evil, says Dr. Levenson. When something is looked upon as a necessary evil, the client wants it today and cheap. Anything in the printing workflow that goes wrong, that is a step backward, an error and costing of course time and money. Preflighting and the proper use of FlightCheck usually means the difference between being profitable on a job or not being profitable and losing real money on the print work.
Dr. Levenson goes into much detail on preemptive quality assurance, preflighting, and FlightCheck for printing and for graphic designers. To download a 30-day, full-working version of FlightCheck, see:
markzware.com/products/flightcheck
More info for educational and academic programs that want FlightCheck and stand-alone preflighting for their classrooms, see:
markzware.com/academic-program
Watch the preflighting 101 video, "Preflight Basics for Graphic Designers” here:
youtube.com/watch?v=lBOkZL8jsL0
This is from the book Harvey co-aothored with John Parsons, an Introduction to Graphic Communication, which is a real must-have for graphic designers and printers a like!
Where did the term preflighting for print come from?
Loosely from FlightCheck, but more specifically from Chuck Weger. Watch:
youtube.com/watch?v=daOKtnBfe1A
Harvey R. Levenson, Ph. D.
Professor Emeritus, Cal Poly
Phone and Text: 805-801-6025
Email: hrlevenson@thegrid.net
Website: hrlevenson.wixsite.com/hrlevenson
Like this Video & Subscribe to our YouTube channel:
youtube.com/c/Markzware
Markzware Store
markzware.com/store
Follow us on Social Media:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/markzware
Facebook: facebook.com/MarkzwareSoftware
GETTR: gettr.com/user/markzware
Pinterest: pinterest.com/markzware
Tumblr: markzware.tumblr.com
Twitter: twitter.com/markzware
Visit our Website:
markzware.com
Read Industry Articles:
markzware.com/blog
Get the Latest Markzware News:
markzware.com/support/mailing-list
#print #graphicdesign #creatives
Professor on Preflighting in Print and Design - Harvey Levenson, Ph. D.
