Color Your World

Color is a wonderful tool to have when preparing a print publication. Understanding the relationship between colors when mixing and matching is key to creating a professional layout. 

Primary colors are red, yellow and blue. When you combine two primary colors, you get complementary colors. For example, yellow and blue make green and blue and red make purple.

So, how do you know which colors you can mix and which combinations you should avoid? How colors complement or clash with one another can be explained by viewing a color wheel.

Adjacent colors, or those that appear next to one another on the color wheel, generally work well together. An example is yellow and green, which often look good together. However, adjacent colors can appear washed out if there is not enough contrast. In other words, if you pick a strong green, use a lighter yellow as your complementing color. This gives you colors that work well together but still have enough contrast. The same is true with blue and purple. They are adjacent colors and should work well together. However, in their purest hue, blue and purple are too alike. Using a hue of one color and a shade or tint of the other, however, can create a very attractive color combination.

Colors separated by another color on the color wheel are referred to as contrasting colors. Contrasting colors, such as orange and purple, are often too vibrant to be placed on the same page. They compete with one another and decrease readability.

Finally, colors directly opposite one another are the color wheel are clashing colors. However, even  with the negative connotation of the name, clashing colors, such as blue and yellow can be used together in the correct tints or shades to create high visibility. 

RGB vs CMYK

The appearance of color on your computer screen versus what your final printed bulletin looks like can be different. This is because computer screens use three colors to generate the screen image: Red, Green and Blue (RGB). You may notice that colors can even appear different from monitor to monitor depending upon contrast and brightness set by each user. The color model for printing is CMYK, which refers to the four colors used: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. These four colors mixed together  create all the colors that appear in your printed document. Both RGB and CMYK have limitations as to how “truly” they represent color. And ink has limitations as well. Oranges and Reds are typically the most difficult to match.

Because of the variation of color models, you may notice slight variations in how your bulletin looks on screen versus the printed copy you receive. This is normal and to be expected. It may take time to experiment with shades and tints to achieve the desired effect in your printed bulletin. When selecting colors, be sure to choose from the Pantone® color wheel rather than the standard color wheel. Your printed bulletin will most closely match Pantone®, or process colors, as those colors correspond

more closely to ink colors.

Saint Snippets

What do you know about the saints? Chances are you can learn something about more than one hundred saints if you put weekly “Saint Snippets” in your Sunday bulletin. These charming little features provide a one-line biography and quote from a Saint or Blessed whose feast day falls during the week of the current bulletin. You’ll also see an eye-catching (and lovingly whimsical) portrait of each saint to go with the bio and quote. There are familiar saints and obscure ones, new ones and old ones, and plenty of opportunities to find out a little something new about each one.

What’s more, these brightly-colored items are intended to be cut out of the bulletin (hence the name “Snippets”) and collected together or posted on your refrigerator as a reminder to pray to the saints every day. Loving grandparents and aunts and uncles can cut them out and send them to grandchildren and nieces and nephews.

You can find a Saint Snippet (or Recortes de los Santos) in English or Spanish on every Sunday in the J.S. Paluch Subscriber Resource Center (SRC). Just scroll down until you see them on your screen (they’re hard to miss). They are also available in black and white for those bulletin pages that require it. And if you want to see the Snippets all at once, just go to the Mary/Saints tab on the ribbon at the top of the page and click on Saint Snippets.

Put a Saint Snippet in your bulletin today, and start snipping!

What's In a Name?

Certainly Shakespeare said it best when he penned "What's in a name. . . ?" Dare we be so bold as to imitate this literary genius to call attention to the importance of the name given to your bulletin file? We do dare! 

How you name your file is vitally important to our production staff being able to process your bulletin quickly and correctly. When saving your PDF bulletin to transmit for printing, please be sure to use your unique, six-digit bulletin number. 

This number helps route your file to the correct printing facility. It helps us match your ad page to your copy page(s). The number accompanies your file from pre-press to printing press, and then it assists us with shipping the file back to you. 

An inside peek to the production department will show you files received with names like "bulletin" or "22nd Sunday." You can see how these naming conventions put a halt to our work flow as we have to put on our detective hats to figure out which "bulletin" belongs to which parish. 

Remember that when you transmit your bulletin via the upload site, you do key in your six-digit bulletin number. This is merely a "login" screen and that number does not travel with your file. The name that you use when converting your bulletin to PDF, however, does travel from transmitting to shipping. So please be sure to put that six-digit bulletin number in the name of your bulletin. Shakespeare would approve!


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Why So Serious? 

Who says everything included in your weekly bulletin has to be so serious? This year, more than ever, it seems we could use something to giggle over. Wouldn’t it be great to include a religious-themed cartoon like Pastor Al or The Little Ones to give your readers a chuckle?

These lighthearted cartoons can be found on our Subscriber Resource Center at www.jspaluch.com. Simply click the COMICS tab on the ribbon to explore the funnies. 

Additionally, one of each of the comics series is pre-selected for each Sunday and can be found on the regular Sunday page (just keep scrolling as they are typically toward the end)

Titles of Mary

Sometimes when you are looking for just the right thing to put in your bulletin, it’s good to offer something from the vast tradition of the Church. One of the gems that we offer in the J. S. Paluch Subscriber Resource Center is a collection of images and articles about the many titles of the Blessed Mother.

There are, in fact, 49 images, each with a matching brief description (usually just a couple of sentences, available in English and Spanish) explaining that title of Mary. That’s one for almost every Sunday of the year! The simple line-art drawings and descriptions can be used together or separately.

You can find these resources by clicking on Mary and the Saints, and then selecting Titles of Mary in the drop-down box.

The images and descriptions are listed here in liturgical-year order, starting with the December feasts. You can connect the images and descriptions by matching the number that appears in the file names. So, for example, the image mary42.tif goes with English or Spanish article e-mary42.rtf or s-mary42.rtf.

Looking for Mary on or near a particular date? Hover your mouse over the image and look at the keywords that appear in the pop-up preview. The date associated with that image is listed among the keywords. Similarly, you can see the date associated with a particular article by clicking on (Preview).

Take some time this week to browse through this collection of information about our Blessed Mother. You never know what you (and your parishioners) might learn!