We all seek creativity and excellence in our print communications. But digital design, production and printing have blurred traditional roles and responsibilities between printers and their customers. We hope to clarify some steps in the total process from planning to printing with the goal of saving you time and money.
In general, the better prepared your job is for printing, the faster, smoother and better it will run. Certain basic checks bear repeating because we’ve found that if production of a job is slowed, it’s frequently because one of these essential components is missing. Here is a quick checklist for you to use when preparing your files for print:
- Pull bleed areas 1/8″ beyond trim.
- Double-check page/panel sizes.
- When doing a roll fold, each subsequent panel should be 1/16th of an inch shorter than the previous panel.
- For mailing jobs, make sure indicia is 1/4 an inch away from each edge.
- With digital printing, black should be 100% black, as sometimes text is too small to register processed colors.
- If you’ve been showing your client reader spreads, supply your files as single pages.
- Clearly indicate varnish in the file; who knows better than you what you want varnished! Flood varnishing does not require this.
- Make sure your images are hi-res so that your project prints with the quality you expect.
- Search for missing or modified “picture” files and update before supplying us with files.
- Be sure to include fonts, matching color swatches in both main and support files, and all other supporting files.