About the author & site
The articles featured on Digital-Engineer.net focus on a small but important part of graphic design; the part between creating a design and getting the entire job to the printer. If you’re looking for information because you need to do your own pre-press you’ve come to the right place. You won’t find many articles about ‘how to design’, but Digital-Engineer.net will show you ways to properly make artwork print- or press-ready.
My name is Marco Kramer. I’m a graphic designer living in the Netherlands, in a small city a little bit over an hour’s drive from Amsterdam. I’ve studied graphic design in the nineties and have worked with art directors, graphic designers, pre-press departements, printers and freelancers worldwide since day one.
I spend most of my days working for a design and communication agency and I specialize in the technical side of graphic design. Of course I do my own designing, but most of the time when a specific job lands on my desk an art director, visualizer or designer has created a rough new logo, a corporate identity, brochure, website, packaging or concept and they need me to work with that concept and create an entire line of communication-tools for a company. Or I’m required to take the digital comp a client approved and create whatever communication is required. I also try to find ways (like new work-flows or software) in order to get the job done faster and to keep out-performing the competition.
A lot of the times an initial comp was made to convince the client. After that I’m the guy that makes sure whatever was promised can also be delivered. The last thing anyone in my position needs is a printer screwing up the job because I failed to either provide him with correct artwork or because I somehow failed to communicate the job properly. Communicating with your printer is something you need to do for yourself, creating press-ready artwork is what I talk about on Digital-Engineer.net. Apart from that, whenever I feel the need to I’ll also post articles related to graphic design. What you won’t find on Digital-Engineer.net is me talking a lot about myself, my cat, or whatever. I’m much to busy to chit-chat and I hope you are too, because if you’re not, you’re not making any money for yourself or your boss.
There is one more thing: Because I’m talking about technical issues a lot please make sure you read my disclaimer. There is only one person responsible for what you do and that’s you. Not me, other authors, other websites or Internet sources, institutes, Adobe or whatever. If you don’t exactly know what you’re doing please communicate with your printer. They’ll be glad to help you out and they can focus on your specific job or problem. I can’t. I might be able to help you out a bit but in the end you are responsible for your own actions and artwork you provide to your printer. But of course you already knew this. I just needed to spell it out for the people that I call ‘double-clickers’. You know, the ones that receive a file (like an ICC-profile) and immediately start double clicking on it instead of actually reading the text in the accompanying email.
