Artwork for Printing

Artwork can be supplied as either print-ready or as artwork that we can prepare and print for you. Print-ready Artwork means that your artwork needs no further adjustment before we print it for you.

If your supplied artwork is not print-ready we are able to work with many different file types. Feel free to discuss this with us and we can supply you with a quote for any design work or time needed to convert your artwork into a print-ready format.

Please continue reading for some guidelines and how to supply print-ready artwork.

Download Specifications as a PDF

File Formats

Files not matching our specifications may print incorrectly. If artwork is supplied not matching specifications, we will ask you to re-supply files so your product looks it’s best.

Documents supplied in Word, Publisher, Photoshop or other similar image and text editors are usually not print ready. Depending on how the file is setup, we might be able to make small adjustments, however this will incur a fee for the time required to make changes.

We accept high quality/press ready, CMYK, 300dpi file types at the required printing size, which may include bleed area:

We will typically ask that you supply artwork as a high resolution PDF with:

• CMYK colour
• Crop marks
• 3mm bleed
• 300dpi (dots per inch) resolution
• Embedded or outlined fonts
  

Safety Margin, Bleed and Trim

Safety Margins are necessary to keep important information away from trim lines, information you do not want accidentally chopped off. We recommend 4mm safety margin for small print products (business cards, labels etc.). For larger products we recommend making the safety margin further away from the trim lines.

Bleed spreads past the trim and allows for background colours and other graphical elements to go past the trim line. When the printed product is trimmed, bleed guarantees the design meets the product edge, the design will not have any small lines (usually white paper) showing.

Trim is the size of a product, keep all important information away from this area.

Borders, Edges and Alignment

All printers move slightly during the printing process causing movement in alignment.

When artwork is border-less or has a wide border, printer alignment movement may not be noticeable. However, when artwork has a narrow border close to the trim line, any slight movement in alignment becomes very obvious, resulting in uneven borders after printing and trimming/cropping.

We recommend that graphics, borders and strips around or across the edge of your artwork be at least 4-5mm wide/tall (with additional 3mm bleed on relevant sides) or if thin be inset 4-5mm from the trim line.

Examples of what movement in alignment can do:

 

Colour

Colour should be supplied in CMYK (unless PANTONE is required). Supplying files that are not CMYK may print discoloured or produce an unexpected outcome.
Printing colour variations can occur, as seen below:

Fonts

Please supply files with fonts outlined or embedded, at a minimum of 6pt, this helps to preserve your brand/image integrity as we may not have the fonts that you have used on our system. If a font is not outlined, supplied or embedded this may result in our systems or printer automatically changing the font as it is being printed.

Image Resolution

Ensure all supplied graphics and images are at a minimum of 300dpi for best printing results.

Download Specifications as a PDF