Note to Printer: This is a simple explanation of what clip it, sources for clip art, and how the customer can save money by either providing his own or looking through your clip art file. You can bring this file into your word processor and edit and print your own version. The filename is CLIP.TXT. Clip Art And It's Sources Clip art is a marvelous way to dress up your printed pieces, and, it costs little if any more to use it. The one most important thing to remember about clip art is that you always want to use crisp black and white illustrations. Most photocopies are not sharp enough, but can be used for most basic quality quick printing. If you have an illustration you would like to use, except it is not the right size, you can still use it. The printer has the capability of increasing or reducing the size of your clip art. The charge for this service is minimal. Where Do I Find Clip Art? First of all, there are scores of services who provide clip art for every conceivable use. Your printer has entire clip art books devoted to such things as hospitals, animals, religion, food, sports, automotive, borders, business forms, etc. In addition, we have what we call our "swipe file" which is a collection of things we have collected over the years that were either printed by us or by someone else. The best place for you to look for your clip art is in the various magazines you subscribe to, product literature and catalogs from your suppliers, newspaper ads, Yellow Page ads, etc. If you see something you like in the way of an ad or flyer, save it and bring it to your printer. We can reproduce a similar piece tailored to your requirements. Things To Remember About Clip Art! Never, ever, ever write on your clip art. If you do, you have ruined it. Never cut your clip art close to the image area. Leave that for your typographer to do. Never staple through your clip art. Use paper clips or put it in an envelope. Always use a photocopy of your clip art to mark your copy on, keeping the original clean. Remember that black on white paper is best. We can generally get acceptable results from Yellow Page ads. Remember that the camera sees red and black as the same. Red printed over black will appear as a solid black. Remember that some colors can't be photographed without very expensive special handling. Among those are light blue, yellow, light green, gold, and any pastel colors. Normally thermographed or "raised printing" does not photograph sharp. A previously printed piece can normally be used as original art. We have, on occasion when the author lost his originals, reprinted an entire book using a previously printed copy of the book as artwork. A major savings can be made using previously printed business forms under certain conditions. First, any screens will not normally reproduce sharp. Minor changes in type are acceptable, but if there are any changes of any kind in the vertical or horizontal rules the form must be entirely reset. Very important is to remember that anything you save for your "swipe file" (that's what we call our collection of clipart we find in magazines, Yellow Pages, other printed pieces, etc.) will only reproduce as well as the original. If there are marks or spots on the original, those marks or spots will reproduce. Look at it carefully and only keep ones that are very sharp. Letting Your Printer Find Your Clip Art Your printer will be happy to attempt to locate a piece of clip art for your work, however you might want to consider saving what could be a substantial amount of money by finding it yourself. When you pay for the camera ready copy for a piece that is to be printed, what you are paying for is the typographer's or artist's time. Our typographer's time bills at $45 per hour. If the typographer has all of the elements that are necessary to put the camera ready copy together and doesn't have to look for anything, it can go very fast. However, it may take a half hour to several hours to find just the right piece of clip art or even more time if that art must be created. In our library, we have literally tens of thousands of pieces of art that can be used to create your camera ready copy. You can save substantial cost on the finished product by looking through our clip art library and selecting the pieces you wish to use, or bring the pieces in from your own "swipe file." The most dramatic example recently was the 1990 redesign of one of the national network's logo (I think it was NBC). The network's advertising agency spent hundreds of hours in the design of the logo and the final bill was in excess of $120,000 for the finished piece of art. When it was introduced, a small midwest radio station brought it to the attention of the network that the network's logo was identical to their own. They had paid a local printer about $100 to design their logo. It took the printer only a couple of hours to come up with a design the small station liked and approved.