ARTWORK

Although we do have some alternate options we highly recommend that you do your own artwork and supply us with print ready files. We will go through artwork specifications in more detail below. The process of you suppling correct print ready artwork eliminates the need to go back and forth with regards to proofing and signing disclaimers etc. It also means that we can save loads of time and basically get your jobs onto runs as soon as we get them.

However from years of experience we can say that most problems that occur in the printing process are artwork related, so it is imperative that we are both on the same page and take extra care in getting this part of the process right!

When making plates for litho offset printing some errors can take place if the artwork is not set up properly. We will go through this in more detail in the artwork guidelines paragraph, but to help with these problems we offer a free days training in our art department for whoever is responsible for artwork on your side. Please make use of this service as a little time spent now addressing the things that can cause the errors to take place, will save you thousands in the long run. We will show you what design functions cause the problems as well as how to ensure that the artwork has been set up and saved for print that eliminates these problems.

We also advise that you implement the system we use with our end user customers in Flyerz. You send your customers a disclaimer and ask them to sign it. On this disclaimer it asks them to double check the artwork with regards to aforementioned problems.

ARTWORK GUIDELINES

This is a basic overview of artwork guidelines when setting up litho print ready artwork.

  1. All RGB's and Pantone colours must be converted to CMYK.
  2. No Overprints on any layers. If this is done it cannot be seen by ourselves and will only be noticeable on the plates or print run.
  3. Please keep all information at least 5mm away from cut lines.
  4. Please include a min of 5mm bleed all-round the job.
  5. Artwork must be supplied in the size that print job is required. example: please don't provide A5 artwork floating on a A4 page.
  6. Please don't step up artwork. Just provide artwork by itself, we have the templates to step up jobs together with all the other jobs on a run.
  7. Corel Draw and PDF's – All lenses and drop shadows must be compressed to high resolution bitmaps. Yet again these are things that cannot be seen on screen on our side until plates have been made.
  8. Text must be converted to curves / paths.
  9. JPEG's Artwork exported at minimum 400dpi CMYK with 5mm bleed
  10. No Word, Publisher or PowerPoint files (Nor PDF’s from these programs as they are still all in RGB).
  11. CANVA – If this program is used the only way we can use it is if you export it as a High resolution JPEG.
  12. Where possible avoid using all four colours CMYK in making up solid black. This causes lots of ink on the paper and drying problems occur, as well as set off – where the ink marks the other side of the page. Using solid black and a small % of the other colours gets the same effect without so much ink.