Welcome to Giclée Bible

Giclée Prepress Becomes Giclée Bible

© Douglas Mesney2011

We're restarting the clock for our favorite book and blog, giving both a new name: Giclée Bible - The Art of Printing

Why? We'll come to that but first...

We'd like to wish printing aficionados everywhere a very Happy New Year with all the best in 2011.

Here at Vashon Island Imaging our New Year's resolutions are the same as last year's... 240 dpi for giclée printing and 300 dpi for laser.

Now, as to the 'why and wherefore' behind the new name...

Anyone who follows this blog has heard me whine over and over about my identity crisis. Well, not mine... the book's... but it might as well be me.

© Douglas Mesney2010
Nobody knows what the book's title means.
It's a subtle technique that I learned in Sweden
where everyone tries to be förnuftig (clever).

I've written a blog about the identity crisis suffered by my book and blog, because of their ill-conceived name. [The blog is at the old blog or www.mesney.com]

In that blog I explained how people think that a giclée is an exotic French omelet, a sort of soufflé... And how anyone under 50 is unfamiliar with the word 'prepress' or what it means.

'Prepress' could be a form of squeezing, as far as young professionals are concerned. I could have as well named my book Soufflé Squeezing, eh? That's my theory.

I knew there was a problem ever since the book launched last May, but couldn't come up with a new name until just recently when suddenly it hit me...

Giclée Bible - The Art of Printing

The new name is so simple and so logical that now I wonder about my own two wits that it took so long to come up with. Then again, good things take time, eh?

I tested the new name on a few friends and colleagues first, then on a few random 'strangers'. Everyone who heard the new name immediately said without any detectable hesitation whatsoever they 'got it'. Compare that with a big Zero (out of ten) when I was surveying people about the word 'giclée' and the term 'prepress' at the supermarket last summer, trying to identify the source of the branding problem.

The new name accurately describes what the book and blog are all about... They cover much more ground than 'just' prepress. The entire process of making giclée art is their turf... a place I call 'The Zen of Gicée'.

In the book, the giclée work-flow is divided into 13 steps from concept to finished art hanging on the wall. Everything about giclée printing and finishing is in there so it really is a 'Bible'.

The prepress 'commandments' in my Giclée Bible apply to all forms of printing, because every printing machine and process has the same problems printing your pictures. But you already know that if you have followed this blog.

So out with the old, in with the new.

Stay tuned for the next exciting chapters in the life and times of this island-bound giclée printer. It's the true grit of printing...Like the script for a 'reality' show with 'Survivor' twists. Or maybe So You Think You Can Print. Whatever...

On with the show!