DISREGARDING FUNDAMENTALS
Sometimes it is better to come out with the frank, brutal truth. In a great many instances, poor newspaper reproduction is the direct result of some executive’s marked preference for a certain artist or a certain technique, regardless of whether the man is qualified to draw for this field, or whether the technique is fitted for the purpose.
On the other hand, there is, unquestionably, a strange, well nigh inexcusable disregard of certain fundamentals of the business. There is too much swivel-chair composure; too much beatific reassurance, when proofs are submitted on good paper, from a flat-bed engraver-house press. A newspaper series is very apt to look 100 per cent when presented on the final electro sheet, or bound into a neat booklet for the dealer and printed on coated stock. These are ostrich methods!
In certain advertising agencies there is a standing rule in the matter of newspaper plates that all proofs must be pulled on newspaper stock—and a very inferior grade. A newspaper press is used, an entire series coming off at once. There is no make-ready to speak of.
By this process no one is deceived. You see exactly what will happen, or nearly so, when the series fares forth to newspapers all over the country.
The executive mentioned above had collected newspapers, big and little, from the four points of the compass. And he had collected a liberal number of perfectly satisfactory newspaper advertisements of the illustrated variety. Blacks were clean black, Ben Day tints held their own, there was no congestion, no smudging, no mishap of any sort.
If certain rules are followed, any newspaper advertising illustration can be made “fool-proof.” You can be absolutely certain of a printable result, despite all exigencies, all drawbacks, all hazards.
Failure usually follows a desire to attempt something beyond that which has been tried and is wholly practical. For the present, at least, users of newspaper space must bow to the inevitable. They must realize that there is a well-defined limit to what can be done mechanically. They must not defiantly experiment, although the desire to “do something new” and to be original is entirely praiseworthy.
THINGS YOU CAN’T DO
If you use half-tones, have them made very coarse screen—nothing finer than 60 line. Stop out whites and eliminate backgrounds. The high-light half-tone is a modern development with many virtues. If a portrait is used, take out all background.