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Index of Tips & Guidelines

You can buy an easy to use scanner today for $100 or less and do a quite decent job yourself of getting your graphic source material on your computer and printing it with your inkjet.

At the other extreme, if you need an exceedingly high quality scan — perhaps for fine art reproduction — you can send your source material to a professional shop where trained and experienced operators can digitize your original using scanners costing $50,000 and more.

Anything that can fit on a scanner — even objects — can be scanned and incorporated into your work.

However, often there are better ways to show a scholar’s illustrative material on the printed or digital page. Many times scanning is merely a preliminary step in executing a design to complement a scholar’s work and the style of the publishing medium.

There are also usually multiple ways to achieve similar results. The determining factors are technical and ever-evolving. They include human factors, such as knowledge, experience, and talent; commercial factors, such as the availability of the technology (hardware or software) at any particular moment and place; and economic factors, such as market, scale, and costs.

How Can the Client Know?

As a potential client of graphic design, you need to know two things:

• What you have to begin with — i.e., what kind of source material do you have: is it old-fashioned typewritten text? graphics from previously published books? an illustration of intrinsic value? your own sketch? a map you pieced together from photocopies? etc.
• How you want it to end up — in a journal article? in your own book? on a poster? on a web site?

MetaGlyfix can then advise you on the best methods for your particular purpose. They may or may not involve commercial or professional graphic services, including those of MetaGlyfix.

MetaGlyfix can tell you as much or as little of the technical steps as you want to know, but we will advise you

• what you can do yourself,
• what can be done by other service providers, and
• what MetaGlyfix can do.

To Scan or Not to Scan

Each case is evaluated according to the quality of the source material, desired output, time schedule, budget, and many other factors.

Sometimes scanning (which itself usually requires cleaning and/or adjusting, and sometimes retouching) will be the best solution.

Other times, new drawings or other recasting of your materials will be a better solution — and a less expensive one, as well.

At this point, if your project is a feasible one for MetaGlyfix and we can achieve the results you want efficiently, the designer can quote an estimate and a realistic production schedule.

Many times you may not require the services of MetaGlyfix, and we will so advise you if that is the case.

Bear in mind that most jobs that MetaGlyfix accepts are complex, one-of-a-kind projects that require the convergence and integration of many techniques. Bear in mind as well that even the simplest-looking finished graphic may have entailed such complexity.