Most reprints are caused by four avoidable artwork problems. Get bleed, resolution, colour mode and fonts right and your job goes straight to press without delays.
Nearly every delay we see on a print job comes back to the artwork file, not the press. The good news is that four checks cover almost all of it. Here is what to look for before you send us anything.
1. Add 3mm bleed
Bleed is extra artwork that extends past the final trim line. Printed sheets shift by a fraction of a millimetre as they are cut, so if your background stops exactly at the edge you will get thin white slivers on some pieces. Extend every background colour and image 3mm beyond the trim on all four sides.
Just as important: keep text and logos at least 4mm inside the trim line. This is the safe zone. Anything closer risks being clipped.
2. Use 300 DPI at final size
An image that looks sharp on screen can still print blurry. Screens display around 72 DPI; presses need roughly 300 DPI at the size the image will actually be printed. A 1000-pixel-wide logo is fine on a business card but will look soft across an A3 poster. For logos and text, vector artwork (AI, EPS or vector PDF) is always better — it stays sharp at any size.
3. Work in CMYK, not RGB
Screens use RGB light; presses use CMYK ink. Bright RGB blues, greens and oranges simply do not exist in CMYK and will shift when converted. Set your document to CMYK from the start so you are designing with colours the press can actually reproduce, rather than being surprised at proofing.
For deep blacks on large areas, use a rich black — around C60 M40 Y40 K100 — instead of plain K100, which prints as a washed-out dark grey.
4. Outline or embed your fonts
If we do not have the font you used, your file will open with a substitute and the layout will move. Either convert text to outlines before exporting, or export a PDF with fonts embedded. Outlining is the safest — but keep an editable copy for yourself, because outlined text can no longer be edited.
The ideal file to send us
A print-ready PDF, CMYK, 300 DPI, with 3mm bleed, crop marks and fonts outlined. If you have that, your job can go to press the same day it arrives.
No design file? No problem
We handle artwork in-house every day. Send whatever you have — a photo of an old card, a Word document, a rough sketch — and our team will rebuild it properly for print and send you a proof to approve before anything runs.
