Apr. 11, 2005—Whitney Houston once sang, “I believe the children are our future,” a sentiment one New York print shop has taken to heart. Litho-Art is a full-service, 24-hour printing facility—including prepress, printing, and retouching—located in lower Manhattan. The company has teamed up with the New York City-based School of Visual Arts (SVA) to offer students an up-close look at the production process.

“[We are] ex tending their education,” said Litho-Art President Joe Cashman. “There are great careers in this business, great opportunities...”

Litho-Art works with one of the instructors at SVA, Skip Sorvino, to bring undergraduate students to the print shop’s facilities as a field trip. There, Mr. Cashman spends more than an hour with them, taking them on a tour of the facilities, showing them every stage of the print process, from file preparation and prepress to the actual print process and finishing options.

However, Litho-Art’s involvement does not end with just one visit. Students are given a class project—to design a promotional piece for the printing firm. Ideas are tossed around with Mr. Sorvino in class, and the students create comps, which are sent to Mr. Cashman to approve.

The pieces can take any form, including three-dimensional or foil embossing. All the students are asked is to be creative, and keep in mind the image that Litho-Art wants to project to its clientele: trust, high technology, and a high level of craftsmanship. Once final designs are created, a panel of outside judges will review the them and choose a winner. The winning student will have his or her design produced by Litho-Art for their portfolio.

Real-World Experience
“What happens between [creating a design] and print is an abstraction to them,” said Mr. Sorvino. “This makes them aware that they aren’t operating in a vacuum.” The program encourages students to explore creative designs, but at the same time, forces them to think about print parameters, such as bleeds, trim size, and resolution. These are all concepts that have never been a consideration for them before, and so they not only have a chance of getting a high-quality portfolio piece, but every student comes away with knowledge of how print and design go hand-in-hand.

Because the program is not limited to just one field-trip, students get the full effect of how production works, starting with the design, through prepress and preflighting, all the way to printing and finishing. They see and touch the machines, watch materials being handled, and are shown why certain print requirements are necessary.

“One of the biggest questions for them is resolution requirements,” said Mr. Cashman. They do not understand the difference between 72 dpi and 300 dpi. [We show them why] resolution requirements should be one of the first questions they ask.”

How a job is printed “effects them technically...and design-wise,” said Mr. Sorvino. He explained that they must understand the printing limitations between what they see on the screen and what a final piece will look like.

According to Mr. Cashman, Litho-Art would like to see this program expand, and even gain adoption among other New York print shops. “I would like to see other printers get involved—sort of like a sponsor-the-highway program with other schools,” he noted.

In addition, he hopes to get vendors involved, such as paper companies to donate the media to print the winning project on. Mr. Cashman stated that participating in a program like this is just part of being a member of a community, and being involved in that community.

The program is in its first semester, with this inaugural group of students acting as the model for how future semesters will function.

A partnership like this has major benefits all around. Mr. Sorvino noted that you never know which student may be a potential client—one might need printing at a future job and remember Litho-Art specifically, or as they move forward as designers, they will be able to provide cleaner files that will move through the print system faster. “Some of these students might be employees or clients one day,” Mr. Cashman agreed. This prompted them to give students a full, well-rounded scope of what happens.

For the students, Mr. Sorvino noted that the top two concepts he hopes they take away from this experience are how a document is prepared for press, and how a job is actually put on a press and run once it leaves a designer. He believes that grasping these two functions will make them better, more effective designers in the long run. “School attempts to imitate what goes on in the real world,” Mr. Sorvino pointed out. “Seeing real-life situations is a big deal.”