When designing for print you must ensure that you create your artwork in the correct document format.

We've laid out the standard page sizes to the right, along with the document size including 3mm bleed on each edge.

If you create your artwork to the correct size with bleed, you will drastically reduce any potential delays.

When sending files to print we require your artwork to include 3mm bleed on each edge of the document

Bleed refers to the extension of any blocks of graphics or colour that you want to run right up to the edge of the cut sheet.

Without a bleed you can sometimes end up with a white border around your artwork, where you haven't carried your design far enough into the bleed area.

You can download a template which shows our print sizes with the bleed added

The No1 cause for delays in printing can be attributed to files being sent without bleed.

CORRECT DIMENSIONS - ADDED 3MM BLEED ON ALL EDGES?

All our print products are printed full colour Lithographically. Your Document is printed using a four colour process (CMYK - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Keyline Black).

It is important you design your documents in a CMYK colourspace. When you begin setting up your document, always select CMYK, if you have been working in RGB for web design don't forget to convert your colours to CMYK before sending to the artwork to us.

Traditional printers often use Pantone Spot colours when printing work. Like paint, spot colours are mixed specially and each colour is printed one at a time. As we use Process Colour, all Pantone Spot colours should be converted to  CMYK equivalent before your file is sent to us.

RESOLTION ATLEAST 300dpi

If you are creating your artwork in software like Adobe Photoshop we require an absolute minimum of 300dpi, you can send 450dpi or even 600dpi if you prefer, the later two sizes dramatically increase the file size of your document. As a general rule 300dpi is adequate.

To ensure a crisp print on items such as text we strongly recommend creating all artwork in software like Adobe Illustrator or Adobe In-Design, these applications output text as "Postscript" data which means the text information will print crystal clear.

You can export PDFs from Photoshop, but please check that text layers have been preserved and fonts are embed.

SAVE AS A PDF

To get the best results we highly recommend submitting your printing in PDF format.

The advantage of saving as PDF is text can be preserved as text layers, this will result in a much higher quality finish than flattened text which you may find in JPEG.

It is important that you check your setting when exporting as PDF as some settings for creating small file sizes can result in a file which is simply a JPEG inside a PDF.

If you are designing your artwork in Microsoft Word we recommend using a Primo PDF  plugin for exporting your design as a PDF.

BLACK

If you are using big areas of black in your artwork eg. a black background - we recommend setting your black as C 30%, Y 0%, M 0%, K 100% instead of just K 100%. On screen this colour will look slightly blue but in print will appear black.

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