Question: What Does a Keyliner Do?
These days a keyliner is a production artist responsible for page layout and prepress — basically, doing desktop publishing.
Answer: In traditional graphic design a keyliner was the paste-up artist who took type from a typesetter, graphics, and other page elements and assembled the pages onto camera-ready mechanicals, did proofing, made corrections, and prepared color separations. Depending on their level of expertise and position in the company, the keyliner may be involved strictly in production or may work in conjunction with the graphic designer to come up with good page designs. Today the term keyliner is not commonly used but may still be encountered in some job descriptions.
Check out these keyliner definitions:
- Printing Keyliner - this PDF describes the traditional keyliner position using typesetting machines and other pre-desktop publishing tasks (see page 2, especially, for details).
"...preparing and laying out graphic materials into camera-ready form for reproduction of printed materials..." - Paste-Up Artist - describes this occupation known alternately as keyliner and mechanical artist.
"Assembles typeset copy and artwork into pasteup for printing reproduction..." - Keyline - one of the jobs of the keyliner was preparation of the keylines, or key plates, as described here.
"...a red keyline on the black line art marked the outline of solid or tint color areas."
All the FAQs: Career & Business | Software | Design & Layout | Graphics | Type & Fonts | Prepress & Printing
