Desktop Publishing

For our purposes, it's not the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine. It's shorthand for desktop publishing. It can also stand for Direct-to-Plate, a printing method that bypasses the use of film to create printing plates. Doing DTP means doing desktop publishing. Dig into the short story of DTP.

No, not with a printer. With a pen or pencil (or crayon or marker)?

Cursive writing was once the norm in school. But with the introduction of print styles around the 1920s, the teaching of cursive handwriting has been on the decline. Even after learning cursive, many people prefer to print. Learn more about print handwriting and check out fonts for teaching print or for writing in the print style of others.

^{Image © Jacci Howard Bear; licensed to About.com}

It's dots per inch, a measure of the resolution of a printer. DPI is not image resolution although frequently used that way. Connect the dots of DPI.

Sites that have a category of fonts for Mother's Day usually round up some fonts with hearts and flowers or some nice script fonts. They aren't necessarily just for Mother's Day but they make lovely cards. That's true for the 6 free for commercial or personal use Mother's Day fonts I've gathered up. I've even written up some Happy Mother's Day messages to show how they might look in use. Grab them now and use them for any (appropriate) occasion, no mothers required.

Image by J. Bear

Excellent DTP knowledge prized by employers having to quickly fill vacant jobs.

That's a pangram that I wrote a few years back. At the time I was thinking of it in reference to jobs specifically for desktop publishing and design. Nowadays, it can apply to almost any type of job. Employers see desktop publishing skills as either a bonus or a requirement for office managers, secretaries, teachers, sales people, and many others. Discover how you can land a job and make more money by knowing more about desktop publishing.

Although many of us wait a version or two (or more) before upgrading, if you wait too long you may run into problems with opening and reusing your old project files if  you can no longer run the older software.

For example, in response to Anyone Still Using Corel Ventura?, reader Teuvo is unable to load old versions of Ventura and asks, "Does anyone know if there is a conversion program from Ventura 3 files into PageMaker or Word? Does the newest Corel Ventura 10 read these old files?" Read the full comment (scroll to end of comments) and reply with your advice.

It stands for Desktop Color Separations, and it's a special EPS format. It's not used as much these days but it's good to know about it for those instances when it is needed.  Learn a bit about DCS.

Whether it's for Mother's Day or some other occasion, when you make your own greeting cards you may be focused on the the images and fonts but you'll need some words to go with those fonts. About.com Rubber Stamping Guide Kate Pullen has rounded up sentiments for greeting cards of all kinds.

You might want to use some of these fonts for your Mother's Day words.  If you're making invitations for a wedding, set these Wedding sentiments in one of these traditional Wedding fonts.

More: Cards & Invitations

If you're looking for a way to smooth out the ups and downs of a freelance income, approach some of your clients about working on retainer. There are benefits on both sides beyond just the money.

Do you now or have you ever worked on retainer as a designer? Was it a good experience for you? Share your thoughts on the pros and cons of this type of working relationship in the comments, below.

Outside of desktop publishing, comp might be an abbreviation for compensation or complimentary. But for designer's it's short for comprehensive or composite and can refer to multiple things. A comp is used during several phases of the design and printing process but it's not the final product. Check out three meanings for comp.