Palomar College | Business Services

Print Services

Palomar Community College Print Services
1140 West Mission Road, Room GJ-6
San Marcos, CA 92069
(760) 744-1150
FAX: (760) 761-3561

Creative Services

We have 3 print-knowledgeable designers to help you with your project and save your department employees the time of designing. Each of our designers has over 20 years of experience in the design and print industry. We have the industry standard software for layout, design and illustration and the knowledge to use that software in conjunction with the press and copy printing workflow and output. With this knowledge we can help you get a successful print project in the shortest amount of time. We can also keep your project in line with the graphic standards so that we keep the Palomar look and branding as part of your printed piece. Submit your ideas to us with a previous printed piece sample, sketch and or a MS Word rough layout. We can show you proofs within a short amount of time because of our years of experience. We can then work with you to work out small details until we are both happy with the outcome. At sign off, we will then make sure the files are ready for our print department with few or no delays so that it is press ready in the shortest amount of time. You can submit your request for design work, with a Creative Service Work order, first through our lead designer Margie Adcock, she will then distribute the design work according to the job and time constraints. You can then schedule a meeting to go over your job specifics. Call Margie if you have any design or print questions, at ext. 3088.	Forms for download: ● Generic Letterhead If you need a file for custom letterhead, please submit a Creative Services Work Order.
When planning a publication, consider the following: What is the purpose? Who is the audience? What problem will it solve? How will it be delivered? What size will it be? How many pages will it have? How will it be printed? What type of paper will you use? What type of artwork will you use? What is the quantity needed? What is your budget? When do you need the work done? How much time is needed to complete my job? You also need to make sure to allow enough time for design work and proofing--1 to 2 weeks (depending on the type of job). Get an estimate of time needed to produce your job when you bring it in. After you have signed off on the design, the press room needs an additional 1 to 2 weeks to print the job. Digital files: Currently we are accepting your Microsoft Word and PowerPoint files. We import these files into page layout programs like Quark and InDesign (industry print standards) that work better with our print/press process. If you want the file to be copied or printed exactly like you designed it in your program it would be better if you saved it as a .pdf file and sent a hard copy of how it should look when we open it. Often a Microsoft Word document will reflow in unexpected ways when opened on another computer, PC to PC and especially PC to MAC. We primarily use Macintosh computers in this office because they work best for our graphic production demands. Fonts are usually the biggest issue because PC fonts don't work on MAC computers and visa-versa. Luckily, we have a large selection of fonts in our department and are usually successful in matching your font. There are always the basic fonts like Times, Helvetica, Arial, Palatino, Garamond, Gill Sans, etc. that have the same name in the the PC and MAC worlds. MAC's are designed to accept PC files so it usually isn't a problem opening your files, but to make sure it is the way you want it always send a hard copy printed from your computer. You don't have to overly format a file when you send it to us because we will usually reformat it in our layout program. With your instruction and the subsequent proof process to help we will get the layout looking the way you desire. Do not use any correction/history (that you might be using with larger committees when writing copy) before you send the text to us. We need only the finished version of your text. Creating PDF's from Microsoft Word The frustrating experience of submitting Word files that don't print the way they looked on the original computer can be alleviated by using Adobe Acrobat. We are working on some step by step instructions on how easy that conversion is to do! And... a link to a website with a freeware program to create pdf's with!!Check back soon! We have an extensive file of graphics in our department that are all print ready. We can work together to get just the right graphic for your job. We are also capable of creating graphics to meet your needs. FYI, web graphics that you might have downloaded off the internet are at too low of resolution for print although it might give us an idea what you would like. Bitmap files need to be at least 300dpi for print at 100%. Vector files from Illustrator, Freehand or Corel Draw are usually fine at 800 dpi at 100% and can be enlarged.

Palomar Community College District | 1140 W. Mission Rd, San Marcos, Ca 92069 | Tel: 760-744-1150