Please provide crop marks around all your supplied artwork. Printers don’t print right to the edge of the paper, so many of our products are printed on larger paper and then trimme. Crop marks indicate where the product will be trimmed to the appropriate size.
A 1/8” (3mm) bleed is required on all four sides of your artwork. This means you must extend any image or graphics past the edges of the printed piece (e.g. a business card is 3.5”x 2”, but the file required to print a batch of business cards is 3.75”x 2.25”). Failing to provide bleed information and crop marks can result in the printed product showing a thin area of white on the edge after cutting.
We request all your artwork be supplied as a high resolution (300dpi) PDF file. It is important that you prepare your file in the correct way. These options must be set for commercial printing:
Colour needs to be set as CMYK not RGB (RGB artwork will be converted to CMYK and this could affect your colour).
Images used in any file should have a resolution of 300dpi or higher. Lower resolutions result in a poor quality image print. We discourage using images that are copied from the internet; they are normally 72dpi and not suitable for print.
Fonts should be embedded in PDF files. In Adobe Illustrator, embed all images and convert all text to outlines. In Corel Draw, convert all text to curves and finally if working in Adobe Photoshop, flatten all layers.
Vector images will retain their high-quality at any size. Programs like Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, or Adobe Freehand uses vector graphics. Vector file extensions include .AI, .EPS, .CRD and sometimes .PDF. Vector images should be used for all text and logos if possible.
Raster images are composed of a collection of tiny dots called pixels. When these pixels are small, and placed close together, they fool the eye into forming a single image. Because they contain a fixed number of pixels, a major disadvantage of raster images is that their quality suffers when they are enlarged or otherwise transformed. Raster file extensions include .JPG, .PNG, .GIF, .TIFF, .PSD and sometimes .PDF.
We would also recommend fonts and logos to be vector for print for maximum clarity.
For products such as business cards, we would recommend customers to avoid borders. If the border is too close to the cut-line, it may results in the final product to be off-centre slightly.
Although our team makes every effort to provide an error free product, your cooperation is required as well. The final responsibility for proofing is yours. A proof can be sent to you via email. The proof is submitted to you to ensure the accuracy of your printed project. You, the customer, are responsible for ensuring the complete accuracy of this proof. After signing our Proof Approval Form, you are responsible for any errors or omissions not indicated at this time.
Following these guidelines ensures that there will be no delays with your printing. If you have any problem, please don’t hesitate to contact our design team who will be happy to help you.