The 21 Design Tools Every Print Provider Must Have

Mark Rugen

Mark Rugen, director of product marketing and education at Mutoh America (Booth 4404), brings the tools of his trade to this dynamic session covering what are the must-have design tools. “This session, which takes place Thursday, October 24^th at 1:00pm in Room C146 is all about sharing the tools I actually used in my own shop and have collected over the past 30 years in the business,” says Rugen. “One of the most stressful issues of owning a shop is working with customers who have little idea about how a project is manufactured. Customers will bring you an idea, but may supply artwork that is small, low quality and difficult to work with. They will ask us to remove complex backgrounds or match a color or resize and image from inches to feet, never realizing that what seems a simple request is actually a difficult task to accomplish.”

Rugen’s collections of tools are designed to improve workflow by addressing specific design needs, such as enlarging low-resolution images, finding and identifying fonts in seconds, tracing color low-resolution images with ease and perfection, removing complex background without using Adobe products, removing items form a photo and replacing it with content that looks natural, and much more.

“In this session we are going to show some real world, actual files from customers and use tools that will make re-creating or even using the original file easier to work with in the layout process,” explains Rugen. “While many of the techniques used in this session can be accomplished with software such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign etc., we will also show plugins and stand-alone programs that could be a lot easier to use and in the long run cheaper to use. It’s all about making the workflow in a shop faster and more efficient so we can go home at night knowing that we got the job done in the most efficient manner and have a new satisfied customer who will spread the word about our shop.”

Attendees will be given the opportunity to download a PDF copy of the presentation that will have all the links and websites where they can further investigate these useful tools. Actual examples will be shown using all of these tools discussed.

“Most of us are creatures of habit, so when we learn how to fix an image in our software, we tend to stick to that method, even if there are easier, and faster ways to get it done,” notes Rugen. “That’s why folks should attend this session. Maybe just one or two tools might be just the method needed to get more done. These are tools that do not require a lot of learning so any level of designer or production person is welcome and will walk away saying ‘WOW. That guy just saved me hours of work!’”