FAQ

Q: How much does it cost?

A: How much do you want to spend? We do not have a cookie-cutter pricing model. We work with your individual budget, goals, and objectives to do what's best for you. We can build the Cadillac or we can build a scooter to get from point A to B. We do not get into the "bidding game" Our clients use us because they like working with us and trust that we will work towards common goals. We usually produce better-looking graphics than the other guy as well as cheaper products, if you're comparing apples to apples. The size, shape, style, and quantity can greatly alter the end price. The other guys say what they will to under-bid a project, but we'll work with you to make the best overall knowledgeable choices.

Q: What do you need to start!

A: First, a meeting helps. We get a feel for what you want, a general timeline and a cost. Next, depending on the project, the following is helpful: A copy or example of your past marketing material if available. A general list of what you want communicated to your audience. This may range from a basic tag line or mission statement, to a complete list.

Q: What does T&T stand for?

A: Well, it started a long time ago as something not very serious and grew into a corporation before we could ever change the name. T&T represents Todd & Tammy Hollingsworth. Graphic designers, husband and wife, CEO and CFO.

Q: What's with gold guy on the logo?

A: It's an art deco sculpture of Prometheus, by Paul Manship, that graces the fountain in Rockefeller Center, New York City, NY. In Greek mythology, Prometheus was the Titan god who gave fire, and the arts it controlled to the mortals.

Vocabulary

 

General Terms

Cross Platform:

When something is cross platform, it is compatible between different types of computers. For my clients generally we mean Windows, Macintosh. Some examples of cross platform in the web context are HTML files, PDF files (if the computer in question has Acrobat Reader installed), and JavaScript program applications.

Vector Graphics:

Vector graphics (also called geometric modeling or object-oriented graphics) is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and polygons, which are all based upon mathematical equations to represent images in computer graphics.

Raster Graphics:

A raster graphics image, digital image, or bitmap, is a data file or structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of colour, on a computer monitor, paper, or other display medium.

Typography:

Typography is the art and techniques of type design, modifying type glyphs, and arranging type. Type glyphs (characters) are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques. The arrangement of type is the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading (line spacing) and letter spacing.

Fonts / Typefaces:

In typography, a typeface is a coordinated set of glyphs designed with stylistic unity. A typeface usually comprises an alphabet of letters, numerals, and punctuation marks; it may also include ideograms and symbols, or consist entirely of them, for example, mathematical or map-making symbols. The term typeface is synonymous with font.

Serifs / Sans Serifs:

In typography, serifs are non-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols. A font that has serifs is called a serif font (or seriffed font). A font without serifs is called sans-serif, from the French sans = "without".

Megapixel:

A megapixel is 1 million pixels, and is a term used not only for the number of pixels in an image, but also to express the number of sensor elements of digital cameras or the number of display elements of digital displays. For example, a camera with an array of 2048?1536 sensor elements is commonly said to have "3.1 megapixels" (2048 x 1536 = 3,145,728).

FPO:

For Position Only. Anything used temporarily, for layout or example, to be replaced at a later date.

Industry Standard:

The term used to describe anything generally expected and expected within our industry.

  • Macintosh Hardware and Software are the "industry standard" for print and graphic design. -PC's and PC programs are generally not!
  • CDs, DVD and E-Mail are acceptable file transfer formats. -Floppy disks are not!
  • TIFF, EPS and properly formatted PDF images are expected by most printers, manufactures and publishers. GIF, JPEG and low resolution web images are not!
  • Quark, Illustrator and Photoshop are acceptable applications - They are the "industry standard". Freehand, Powerpoint and Microsoft-anything are not!
  • Adobe Fonts are "the industry standard". -True Type, Special, Custom and "Fun Fonts" are not! (Both screen fonts and printer fronts are expected to be submitted with all files for print).

Media:

Any format used to transfer information. (CD, DVD or e-mail, Zip disk or Floppy no longer acceptable)

Photo Image Retouching:

At T&T Designs, this means the digital enhancement of a photo or digital image. This may include things like, sharpening, brighting, or converting and image from RGB to CMYK. It would also include things like adding grass to new home, clouds in the sky, or removing unwanted aspects like a hose left in a yard or wrinkles in a face.

Specifications:

We refer to "specs" as any detailed production information used to communicate precise, technical, and/or industry specific information, to any outside source.

 

Print Terms

Desktop Publishing:

Desktop publishing combines a personal computer and page layout software to create publication documents on a computer for either large scale publishing or small scale local economical multifunction peripheral output and distribution. Users create page layouts with text, graphics, photos and other visual elements using software such as QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, the free Scribus, Microsoft Publisher, Apple Pages and (to some extent) any graphics software or word processor that combines editable text with images. For small jobs a few copies of a publication might be printed on a local printer. For larger jobs a computer file can be sent to a vendor for high-volume printing.

CMYK:

CMYK (short for cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (Black)) is a subtractive color model.

Spot Color:

In offset printing, a spot color is any color generated by an ink (pure or mixed) that is printed using a single run. Technicians around the world use the term spot color to mean any color generated by a non-standard offset ink; such as metallic, fluorescent, spot varnish, or custom hand-mixed inks.

PMS:

Pantone Inc. The company is best known for its Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color space used in a variety of industries, primarily printing, though sometimes in the manufacture of colored paint, fabric and plastics.

DPI:

Dots per inch (DPI) is a measure of printing resolution, in particular the number of individual dots of ink a printer or toner can produce within a linear one-inch (2.54 cm) space.

Bleed:

Bleed is any printed colors that extend past the edge of a page. To accommodate a bleed, the printer must print the bleed area larger than the final trim size. The page is then trimmed through to bleed area. Bleeds require more paper and production time, thus, printers charge extra for this service.

Direct to Plate:

Producing printing plates directly from digital files without film or negatives.

Gain:

The effects of: ink spreading out, darkening of color, or closing of detail associated with printing on uncoated or newsprint like paper. Some paper, such as the stock used in yellow pages ads, has quite a "gain" on press!

Halftone:

An image made up of small dots whose variation and size create an image or illustration of varing tone.

 

Web Terms

HTML:

Abbreviation for Hyper Text Markup Language. Contrary to common belief, HTML is technically not a programming language, but just a way of describing documents that contain information to be shared between different computers. These documents are known as web pages.

Domain Name:

This is the name of your website, as in Whatever-You-Want-Dot-Com. You have to pay an annual fee for a domain name (even if you never set up a server for it).

Server:

A special high speed computer with an "always on" connection to the internet which houses your website. When someone types in your domain name, the server sends the web page to their computer's web browser.

PPI:

Pixels per inch (PPI) or pixel density is a measurement of the resolution of a computer display, related to the size of the display in inches and the total number of pixels in the horizontal and vertical directions. This measurement is often referred to as dots per inch, though that measurement more accurately refers to the resolution of a computer printer. PPI may also be used to describe the resolution of an image scanner or digital camera.

RGB:

The RGB color model is an additive model in which red, green, and blue (often used in additive light models) are combined in various ways to reproduce other colors.

Web Browser:

A Web browser is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network. Text and images on a Web page can contain hyperlinks to other Web pages at the same or different website. Web browsers allow a user to quickly and easily access information provided on many Web pages at many websites by traversing these links. Web browsers format HTML information for display, so the appearance of a Web page may differ between browsers.

Some major browsers include Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Netscape.

PHP:

The abbreviation PHP is a recursive initialism PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. PHP is a reflective programming language originally designed for producing dynamic web pages. PHP is used mainly in server-side scripting, but can be used from a command line interface or in standalone graphical applications.

XHTML:

The Extensible HyperText Markup Language, or XHTML, is a markup language that has the same depth of expression as HTML, but also conforms to XML syntax.

CSS:

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML.

 

Programs

Adobe Acrobat:

Adobe Acrobat Reader is free application that reads PDF files. PDF is a cross platform file format. PDFs are often used in email exchanges due to their generally small file size. We also use them for our digital proofs. Click here to download.

Adobe Illustrator:

Adobe Illustrator is a vector-based drawing application. We often use it in constructing plat maps and other graphics that require scalability.

Adobe InDesign:

Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing application. Adobe InDesign is primarily used by large publishing houses to produce the kinds of complex page layouts required by magazines, newspapers, catalogs, and similar printed materials. It is one of two products (the other being QuarkXPress) that dominate that market space.

Adobe Photoshop:

Adobe Photoshop, or simply Photoshop, is a graphics editor. It is the current market leader for commercial bitmap and image manipulation, and is the flagship product of Adobe Systems. We use this to create almost all of our images.

Coda:

Coda is a shareware web development application for Mac OS X, developed by Panic. It was released on April 23, 2007. It won the 2007 Apple Design Award for Best User Experience.

QuarkXPress:

QuarkXPress is a desktop publishing application. QuarkXPress is primarily used by large publishing houses to produce the kinds of complex page layouts required by magazines, newspapers, catalogs, and similar printed materials. It is one of two products (the other being Adobe InDesign) that dominate that market space.

 

File Formats

PDF:

The Portable Document Format (PDF) is the file format created by Adobe Systems, in 1993, for document exchange. PDF is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a device-independent and display resolution-independent fixed-layout document format. Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a 2-D document (and, with Acrobat 3-D, embedded 3-D documents) that includes the text, fonts, images, and 2-D vector graphics that compose the document.

EPS:

Encapsulated PostScript, or EPS, is a DSC-conforming PostScript document with additional restrictions intended to make EPS files usable as a graphics file format. In other words, EPS files are more-or-less self-contained, reasonably predictable PostScript documents that describe an image or drawing, that can be placed within another PostScript document.

AI:

Adobe Illustrator Artwork (AI) is a proprietary file format developed by Adobe Systems for representing single-page vector-based drawings in either the EPS or PDF formats. The .ai filename extension is used by Adobe Illustrator.

GIF:

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is an 8-bit-per-pixel bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability.

JPEG:

In computing, JPEG is a commonly used method of compression for photographic images. The name JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the name of the committee that created the standard.

TIFF:

Tagged Image File Format (abbreviated TIFF) is a file format for storing images, including photographs and line art. TIFF is a popular format for high color depth images, along with JPEG and PNG. TIFF format is widely supported by image-manipulation applications like Adobe Photoshop, and by desktop publishing and page layout applications such as QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign, by scanning, faxing, word processing, optical character recognition and other applications.

PNG:

PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a bitmapped image format that employs lossless data compression. PNG was created to improve upon and replace the GIF format, as an image-file format not requiring a patent license.

PSD:

The .PSD (Photoshop Document) format stores an image with support for most imaging options available in Photoshop. These include layers with masks, color spaces, ICC profiles, transparency, text, alpha channels & spot colors, Clipping paths, and duotone settings. This is in contrast to many other file formats (e.g. .EPS or .GIF) that restrict content to provide streamlined, predicatable functionality. Photoshop's popularity means that the .PSD format is widely used, and it is supported to some extent by most competing software.

RAW:

A raw image file (sometimes written RAW image file ) contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of a digital camera or image scanner. Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed and ready to be used with a bitmap graphics editor or printed. Normally, the image will be processed by a raw converter in a wide-gamut internal colorspace where precise adjustments can be made before conversion to an RGB file format such as TIFF or JPEG for storage, printing, or further manipulation.