China Flag Makers Blog

As the term implies, a copyright protects from having their work copied or plagiarized. Literary material (printed works, books, etc.), music, art, film, video, and drama are common examples of works protected by copyright. In the U.S., a copyright is in effect for the life of the author or producer, plus 50more years after his or her death. All printing displays, table cloths from China Flag Makers are authorized by original author or producer. In graphic communications or printing, you should be primarily concerned with copyrights on printed matter. For example, a textbook will have the copyright information on the title page or on the page right after or before the title page. The copyright should say “copyright” or use the symbol “©” followed by the name of the copyright owner and the year the work was first published. When someone brings in materials (sign, poster, ad, etc.) and asks the printer or copy service to reproduce it, they may be asking the printe...

In the last blog we’ve explained 6 trade customs. Still, the following content will continue to help us know some trade customs that both printer and customer are supposed to know. 7. PRESS PROOFS: unless specially provided in printer’s quotation there will be an additional charge for press proofs. An inspection sheet of any form can be submitted for customer approval, at no charge, provided customer is available at the press during the time of make-ready. Any charges, corrections or lost press time due to customer’s change or delay will be charged for at current rates. 8. COLOR PROOFING: because of differences in equipment, paper, inks and other conditions between color proofing and production pressroom operations, a reasonable variation in color between color proofs and the completed job shall constitute acceptable delivery.China Flag Ma...

What are trade customs? Trade customs are understood rules or implied laws used in the printing industry. After something has been in use for a long time, it has the same effect as a law. A trade custom does not spring up overnight. Just because an act is done over and over does not make it a custom. The act must be recognized by all parties as a contract and that rights and responsibilities are established by the custom. Printing trade cutoms Trade customs have been backed up by the courts as binding agreements. At times, specific contracts are issued when other additional terms are desired. Printing trade customs Trade customs have been in general use in the printing industry throughout the United States of America for more than 50years. Especially in our custom printing industry of table cloths , feather flags and banners, some customs are well established. 1. Quotation: a quotation not accepted within thirty days is subjected to review. Materials are quoted b...

Ink And Ink Manufacturing A consideration when selecting an ink is the eventual use of the printed item. For example, food packages should be printed with an odorless ink, ink on canopy tents used outdoors must be able to withstand the weather, products that will be handled by young children must be printed with non-toxic inks, ink printed on table cloths should hold up under repeated washings.  Printing ink is transferred from a plate or stencil to paper or some other material during the printing process. The ink forms the image on the printed product. Over two thousand years ago, the Chinese made and used inks to print from wood blocks. Most printing inks consist of pigments, vehicles, and modifiers. Pigment is the ingredient that provides the color of the ink. Many pigment colors are produced from rocks and clays. Others can be traced to plants, sea life, or even insects. Several pigments may be blended together to obtain a desired color ink. The vehicl...

Elements Of Design The basis for most graphic design is typography. This involves the selection and arrangement of visual images(words and illustrations) to make a pleasing presentation. Especially for ad table cloths   with your logo on it, it is important to design your logo or emblem or crest so as to obtain a successful display or advertisement. These visual images have impact upon the viewer; therefore, it is essential to develop a good layout of visual materials. To succeed as a graphic designer, you must apply the fundamentals of design. The basic design elements are:lines, shapes, mass, texture, and color. Lines. The first design element, lines, can take many different forms. Sometimes, the lines are loops and free or they can be straight and sharp. Lines can be used to denote a specific meaning. Repetition of lines also creates patterns and this adds an emotional impact to the visual image. Lines can be used to give the printed image a “personality”. ...

Today we will continue to give some useful tips in design. Let's start with optical and true centers. Optical and true centers. Printing located at the vertical center of a piece of paper appears to be low. Major type or illustration elements should not be placed at the true center of a page. Instead of they should be raised approximately one-tenth the distance from the true center to the top pf the page. This position is know as the optical center. It is the part of the page that the eye sees as being the center. Thus, if you happen to have a print work for your logo or emblem, it’s better for you to put your logo artwork at the optical center on the table cloths graphics for better vision. Contrast. Contrast provides emphasis to a word, a series of words, or an illustration. Contrast can also be used to relieve monotony in a printed message. Rhythm. Eye movement across a printed page may be slow or swift, left or right, upward or downward, flowing or je...

What is a design? A design is a plan, a means to an end. When you selected your cloths this morning, you were designing. You made certain choices probably based on how you wanted to look, feel and act today. Choices must also be made to select and arrange type and illustrations that make up a printed product. Understanding the principles of good design will help you make intelligent choices. Principles of design Certain principles are basic to understanding graphic design. These include proportion, balance, contrast, rhythm, unity and color. These principles provide guidelines for developing a successful printed product. Proportion.  Proportion refers to how parts of a whole relate to one another and to the whole. Page proportion.   Before a job can be printed, its general size and shape must be decided upon. Usually the product itself will determine this. For example, a business card must be easily carried in a wallet or shirt pocket. A poste...

In this section we explore the implications for the printing industry and for printers based on the information on current trends in imports and exports and printers’ own perspectives on foreign competition. Given the current environment and the expected future directions, what are the strategic and competitive implications for U.S. printers? What can you do to hold on to your customers in this environment? You should be pursuing the same tactics that you use to complete against your domestic competitors. These include a relentless pursuit of efficiency and cost reduction, a focus on strong customer relationships, assisting customers in removing cost and time from the overall print logistics supply chain, and adding various ancillary and print logistics services to further cement your relationship with your customers. The six strategic and competitive actions listed below can help U.S. printers remain viable in the new global marketplace: 1.Increase efficiency, ...

Based on recent trends we offer a 10-year projection on direct offshore production of U.S. print consumption. Our view is that total direct U.S. printing imports, which totaled over $4.9 billion in 2005 may grow to around 12~15 billion in 10 years or by 2015. This projection is based on a 10% growth rate, which is above recent growth rates. This amount would probably comprise about 6%-7% of total U.S. print consumption in 2015 given recent trends in overall growth. In isolation the outlook for direct printed imports from China is for the total volume to grow from $1.23 billion in 2005 to perhaps around $10-12 billion in 10years (2015). This growth assumes that almost 25% growth rate from 2004 to 2005 will continue. At that level, Chinese printed imports would comprise just over5% or so of total U.S. print consumption in 2015. However,a...

By product. Here are the printed product categories that have shown significant increases in foreign production over the last few years: Books are by far the most import-threatened product category. The largest sales categories are in children’s picture/coloring books, technical and scientific books, and textbooks. The second most threatened print category is miscellaneous printed materials such as basically general commercial printed materials such as  advertising flags and banners , posters, calendars, etc. Labels are the third largest category of printed imports. Another category with a lower weight-to-value ratios and longer shelf life is greeting cards. By run lengths. Which print run lengths may be most suitable for offshore production? Conventional wisdom suggests that mid-run lengths may be the most likely candidates. Short run lengths are more likely printed for “just-in-time” distribution so may be more easily produced domestically. This is especi...

Future directions: outlook for offshore production of U.S. print consumption As demonstration above, the U.S. print market is primarily a domestic industry with relatively small components of imports and exports. What about the future? Will print remain primarily a domestic-based industry? Let’s look at some underlying factors that influence domestic versus offshore production. One factor is the weight-to-value ratio. Products with relatively high weight compared to the values are somewhat less conducive for shipping over long distances. Printing is typically a manufactured product with a relatively high weight to value ratio, so this factor supports domestic production. Another factor supporting domestic production is the production cycle and “time to customer.” The nature of most print (but not all) is such that it has a relatively short production and distribution cycle, so this factor again supports domestic production at least for much of print. Excluded i...

ADVERTISING PRINTING Advertising printing stands for about 40percent of the total printing market. For the advertising printing it is typical that that the print buyer and the target group for the information are not the same. The print buyer pays the printer and distributor for delivering advertising material to the target group. For the advertising market it is most important to develop distribution channels where the advertisements meet their target groups. It is known that the increase of TV channels has lead to changes in behavior of the viewers. When the consumer has many commercial channels he tends to change channel when there is a commercial break in the program. This means that the commercial will lose its effect, and at the same time the TV channel will lose its viewer. Thus the increase in TV channels has a negative effect on TV media. The effect of digital TV is not yet seen, but experience with increasing number of commercial channels has affected i...

The development course of electronic publishing in China Transferring an image from one material to another is called printing. This process plays an essential role in visual communication. Many great leap forwards have been experienced by China printing and publishing industry for the past 20years. The development of the internet has offered a superior condition for the highly integrated newspaper turnkey solution. The manuscript is stored in standard XML format. Users can access the workflow through the internet at any place. When the general editor of Guangzhou Daily were once in the united states, he used internet to access the workflow of his newspaper office, which surprised his foreign colleagues. Today, printed material is produced by eight basic processes. Relief or letterpress printing Gravure or intaglio printing Planographic or lithographic printing Heat transfer printing Xerographic printing Ink jet printing Screen-process...

Developing Communication Technology Writing is an essential part of graphic communication. It enabled our ancestors to communicate with others without the need for direct contact. Writing allowed them to record their history, their art, their science, their knowledge and their skills. It allowed our ancestors to communicate with future generations. To advance the communication process, limitations had to be overcome. Ways had to be found for reproducing several copies of a message without having to rewrite the message each time. Writing and printing materials, such as inks, had to be invented and developed. Graphic Communication Graphic communication use printed images to convey message. Newspapers, books, magazines, catalogs, greeting cards, labels and business forms communicate graphically. A sender must convert his thoughts and ideas to visual form in order to communicate graphically. Symbols, drawings, and photographs are available for this purp...

HOW PAPER DEVELOPED Ts’ ai Lun, a Chinese court official, is credited with the invention of paper. He did this nearly 1900 years ago in the year 105A.D. Before the invention of paper, people wrote on a variety of materials. For example, animal skins called parchment and vellum were used by the ancient Greeks. And papyrus, a writing surface made by pounding a woven mat of papyrus reed into a thin, hard sheet was used by the ancient Egyptians. The word paper, in fact, is derived from the word papyrus. In the tenth century A.D. techniques for making paper by hand were introduced to the western world. North African moors discovered papermaking while trading with the East. In conquering Spain, the moors brought papermaking to the West. The first paper mill in America was established in 1690 by William Rittenhouse. It was located near Philadelphia. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, hundreds of paper mills had sprung up throughout the country. However, it w...

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GRAPHIC COMMUNICATION Even before primitive man developed spoken language, he was able to communicate by grunting, laughing, frowning, screaming, and by using physical force. In these and other ways he made his message clear to others. As time went on, man developed other ways of communication. He learned to mark trails with piles of stones or cuts on trees. He discovered how to control fire and use smoke to signal others. He learned to communicate through a spoken language. And then he learned to write. THE EVOLUTION OF WRITING Writing made it possible to record information. It also made it possible to send message over great distances without direct contact. Most important, though, it enabled man to transmit knowledge to future generations. PICTOGRAPHS.  Evidence of man’s early attempts at writing can be found on the walls of caves 3000years old. The writing was in the form of pictures painted on cave walls. These paintings...

Graphic communications also referred to as visual communications, can be defined in simplest terms as any form of communication that relies on visual cues to transmit a message to people. However, the complex nature of how graphic communications are interpreted by viewers has greater implications than this. The creative minds that create graphic images make use of colors, textures, contours and shapes that communicate not just messages but also emotions, attitudes, experiences, lifestyles and concepts. Like art, graphic representation has the power to reach beyond language, class, sex, education, geography and age so as to reach a much larger audience. Graphics are also easily identifiable and memorable, often leaving a lasting impression on viewers that words alone are unable to compete with. Graphic representation is one of the most powerful tools available to communicate ideas, concepts, messages and instructions. In any given day a single person will see hund...

There are two components of “global printing” in the United States. First, there are direct exports and direct imports of printed products. These products are either produced by foreign printers and imported into the United States(printed imports). Or produced by U.S. department of commerce and we will refer to them as “direct exports and imports.” A second category of “global print” is more difficult to track. This category of “indirect imports and exports” includes the value of print production included in other exports and imports. For example, this may include packaging an downers manuals of those products that are imported or exported. The U.S. department of commerce data does not distinguish the value of this type of printing in its data. According to U.S. Department of commerce data, both direct printing imports and exports have been growing since 2000. Total exports of printed materials increased from &4.508 billion in 2000 to &5.169billion in 200...

IMPACT OF ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION ON PRINTING INDUSTRY A key trend, if not the defining trend, in the 21st century economy is globalization-the growing integration of previously autonomous national economies. Almost no area of the world, industry, or business if any size is immune from the forces of globalization. The printing industry is just beginning to undergo rapid changes from globalization forces. Over the past few years the share of print production moving between countries has increased much more rapidly than purely domestic production and consumption. Many printing firms have become global in the sense that they have production facilities in multiple countries. Printers’ customers, increasingly, are looking for at global sourcing for their printing. The purpose of this report is to define, measure, and take stock of current global trends impacting the printing industry and to examine where these trends may take it in the future. Also, we look at the s...

It was not before the electronics were introduced in phototypesetters and scanners in the sixties of 20th century, the rapid development in the printing process started. At the beginning the prepress process was still manual, using film in the process to combine text and pictures. The development in digital communications at the end of the 20th century has been a big challenge for the conventional information industry. Satellites have made TV broadcasting global. The introduction of digital TV will again multiply the supply of TV channels. Internet offers the possibility to access publishers files without having any physical printed media or CD-ROM. This makes worldwide distribution easy, and offers the consumer unlimited possibilities for real time information supply. Digital printing developed in the last decade of the cen...