Production

- [Instructor] Production is the final phase of the creative process and it's the part where all of those software tools come into play and you turn those ideas into actual artwork, ready for printing or digital delivery. Artwork in the graphics world is how the final files are referred to. And the term artworker that you may hear is someone who primarily builds production files. As people have become more multi-skilled these days, it's common to hear the term creative artworker used to describe people who both design and prepare artwork.

Artwork production is a skill all of its own. It's as meticulous as it is exacting. It's also the part of the process that can go horribly wrong if you're diving into it without learning some very important fundamentals. While most digital projects are relatively straighforward, designing for print is not so. For a good look into the intricacies and pitfalls associated with print production, you could do a lot worse that checking out Claudia McCue's course, Learning Print Production after watching this course.

She's got a wealth of production knowledge and she delivers it with good humor, so you'll enjoy it and it'll be time well spent, trust me. I'm being completely honest when I tell you that being on good terms with printers and learning to understand their role in the end of string production process has saved my neck on more than one occasion. I had a slight insight, as I actually started out as a printer, but I moved from the shop into the studio. It wasn't that I was a bad printer, but my heart wasn't in it, because I longed to be on the creative side.

I just didn't have the advantage some of my friends did and I had to get a job straight from school and earn my way into an education. But that part of my life and career paid dividends so don't avoid learning more about print production. In the final chapters of this title we will work through some common tasks in production software that you may come across frequently in your career and hopefully you'll have an enjoyable experience that will lead you to learning more and more as time goes on. But don't stop at this introduction. You'll need to learn a lot more and continue to do so throughout your career.

There is always more to learn.