Anyone interested in designing well for print should not be without a fantastic print design resource from NewPage called the ‘Ed Books.’ If you’re a print designer and you haven’t seen the Ed Books before, be prepared for a treat. NewPage, a paper company with a focus on sustainable paper manufacturing, created the books as a marketing piece to showcase some of their paper selections, but what they ended up with was a phenomenal 500 page resource covering just about every subject that could concern a print designer.
From metallics, quadtones, coatings, foil, you name it, they’ve just about covered it. However, what is really nice about these books is not the breadth of coverage, but it is something that you’ll never find in a textbook. These small volumes are actually chok-full of actual samples of what they are educating the reader on. You want to see a microfoil over an illustration? Well, they’ll give you the before and after. How about polypropylene laminate vs. UV coating on the same image? They’ve got that too.
Best of all, last we checked, the Ed Books were still free to all graphic designers. To learn more about the Ed Books and get a list of titles, visit www.EdLivesHere.com