The Big Picture - August 2012 - (Page 4)

insight by Gregory Sharpless www.bigpicture.net Gregory Sharpless Editor/Associate Publisher gregory.sharpless@stmediagroup.com Britney Grimmelsman Associate Editor britney.grimmelsman@stmediagroup.com Disproving the Illusion In baseball, a curveball – aka “the hook” or “the Uncle Charlie” – is a pitched ball thrown with spin, so that it takes a downward path or break as it approaches the batter. The amount of the break depends upon how much spin the pitcher puts on it. In baseball’s early days, the curveball became so e ective that throwing it was considered cheating and it was, for a time, outlawed. Eventually, however, pitchers just kept throwing it and so the curveball has become a standard in a pitcher’s repertoire. But even in the early days of professional baseball many believed that a pitched ball simply could not really be curving. Its so-called “movement” must somehow be an optical illusion, went the argument. So on a hot summer’s day in August of 1870, at the old Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn, New York, pitcher Fred Goldsmith – who possessed a wicked curveball – set up three poles in a straight line, then hurled a baseball to sportswriter Henry Chadwick. The ball, it was reported in The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper the next day, went to the right of the ﬁrst pole, to the left of the second pole, and to the right of the third pole. Then, he repeated the process several more times, just for the naysayers in the crowd. The curveball did indeed curve. Skip ahead to 1949, and the movement of a thrown baseball was again called into question. This time, it was engineer Ralph Lightfoot who used wind-tunnel tests to prove that the curveball actually curves. Now, it should be noted that it’s never been a ballplayer calling a curveball “an illusion.” It’s always been a bystander of the game who has questioned the possibility that a thrown baseball can move drastically in space. I suspect that if these bystanders had simply stepped to the plate, bat in hand, they probably could have seen for themselves. In recent months, several print providers have told me stories of clients who have simply refused to believe their warnings and cautions when it came to various aspects of projects. In nearly all of these jobs, the customer chose the least-expensive solution available to them versus what the shop was advocating. “We weren’t hard-selling them,” one shop’s manager told me, “we just knew the media-and-substrate combination they were after simply wouldn’t satisfy their client in the long run.” He was right, of course, and when the customer returned a few months later, he admitted he should have heeded the shop’s advice – it was certainly no illusion when the graphics didn’t meet client expectations. In an interview about the reality of a curveball, Hall of Fame baseball player Dizzy Dean famously once said, “Stand behind a tree 60 feet away, and I’ll whomp you with an optical illusion.” Laura Mohr Art Director laura.mohr@stmediagroup.com Marty McGhie, Craig Miller, Jared Smith Columnists Linda Volz Production Supervisor linda.volz@stmediagroup.com Lou Arneberg - East and Midwest US, Eastern Canada Ben Stauss - West and South US, Western Canada, Europe, Asia Business Development Managers Rick Bachelder, Kathy Boydstun, Terry Corman, Scott Crosby, Brandon Gabriel, Michael Garcia, Kirk Green, Robert Kissel, Tina McLaughlin, Craig Miller, Carmen Rad, Greg Root, Jared Smith, Mark Taylor Editorial Advisory Board Tedd Swormstedt President Steve Duccilli Group Publisher Christine Baloga Audience Development Director Kari Freudenberger Director, Online Media Subscription Services (847) 763-4938 tbp@halldata.com bigpicture.net/subscribe bigpicture.net/renew Single Copies/Back Issues Debbie Reed debbie.reed@stmediagroup.com 11262 Cornell Park Drive Cincinnati, OH 45242 tel (513) 421-2050 fax (513) 421-5144 THE BIG PICTURE (ISSN 1082-9660) is published 12 times annually by ST Media Group International Inc., 11262 Cornell Park Dr., Cincinnati, OH 45242-1812. Telephone: (513) 421-2050, Fax: (513) 362-0317. No charge for subscriptions to qualiﬁed individuals. Annual rate for subscriptions to non-qualiﬁed individuals in the U.S.A.: $42 USD. Annual rate for subscriptions in Canada: $70 USD (includes GST & postage); all other countries: $92 (Int’l mail) payable in U.S. funds. Printed in the U.S.A. Copyright 2012, by ST Media Group International Inc. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the consent of the publisher. The publisher is not responsible for product claims and representations. Periodicals Postage Paid at Cincinnati, OH and at additional mailing o ces. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: The Big Picture, P.O. Box 1060, Skokie, IL 60076. Change of address: Send old address label along with new address to The Big Picture, P.O. Box 1060, Skokie, IL 60076. 4 THE BIG PICTURE AUGUST 2012 http://www.bigpicture.net http://www.bigpicture.net http://www.bigpicture.net/subscribe http://www.bigpicture.net/renew

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Big Picture - August 2012

The Big Picture - August 2012
Contents
InSight
UpFront
Graphics on the Go
Flatbeds Forever
Color Jammed
The Hard Stuff: Rigid Media
Job Log

The Big Picture - August 2012