Design Requirements

Sending us you artwork

Before you send us your designs they must be saved in PDF format. There are different ways of creating PDFs, either from within the native programmes or using a PDF Driver which is much like a Printer Driver. A press ready PDF is a document created on a high enough quality setting to print from. We recommend using the standard or professional editions of adobe acrobat which are available from www.adobe.com.

Positioning Artwork on a Page

It is important that artwork is positioned centrally on the page. Our pre-press system works from the centre of the page in aligning jobs for print.  If a job is off centred then potentially only a portion of the job will appear in the aperture and be printed!

It is also important that all pages in a PDF are all correctly oriented with the orientation of each page being the same. We strongly recommend printing proofs from the PDF you have created to your own printer prior to submission.

Bleed

Understanding the need for Bleed and a Quiet Border is vital if we are going to achieve our joint aim of an excellent finished print job. We require Bleed to allow for the tolerance of our guillotines.
If your image finishes exactly at the edge of your required finished size then these small deviations may produce unsightly white flashes at the edge of your print. By extending your background colour or image beyond the edge of your finished job the effects of the same deviations are not noticeable.
We recommend that elements intended to go to the very edge of your finished job should extend 3mm beyond the edge.

'Quiet Border’

A Quiet Border is the distance you should allow from the edge of your finished page size for text, diagrams or images not going to bleed. The reason for the border is again the tolerance in cutting. If you have a design where the text runs to the very edge then any cutting deviation will result in some of your text being cut off!!
With a very small Quiet Border even the smallest cutting deviation could result in the finished job looking uneven. We recommend a Quiet Border of at least 5mm around the edges of your job.

Fonts

When creating your PDF it is important to specify that fonts used should be embedded. This is normally a tick box in the PDF export area of the programme or an option in an external PDF creator. If fonts are not embedded this can lead to unwanted fonts substitutions and rejected print.

Colour

Throughout your design the colours used must be CMYK colours. There are a large number of variables which can affect the colour produced during Full Colour Printing. Simply looking at the appearance of colours on a monitor, especially if no Monitor Calibration has been carried out is unlikely to accurately represent printed colour results.

In just the same way an un-calibrated desktop printer, such as a laser or inkjet may well produce very different colours to those produced on a professional printing press.
Please note: Where you have a particular colour issue, for example a requirement to match to a specific company colour or a previously printed job, this MUST be brought to our attention at the order stage. Simply specify the colour to be matched to or that the job has been previously printed in the ‘Special Instructions’ section during the online ordering process.

If you have a swatch of the colour required please send us a hard copy. We cannot be held responsible if your printed work does not match your requirements unless those requirements are brought to our attention before we print.

Photographs

Photographs should be scanned at the size required in your artwork at 400dpi and saved as CMYK images. Monitor calibration is a big consideration when scanning and colour balancing. If your monitor is not calibrated the image you see on screen may differ from the image on the final print.

Graphics

Where designs are built up using a number of layers and transparencies it is important that these are ‘flattened’ before creating the PDF. Un-flattened transparencies are notorious for causing print problems. Flattening your work will ensure that the finished print is as expected without compromising the creative intent.