RESOURCES

It is helpful to use guidelines in your artwork for print-ready files. Guidelines such as the safe zone, the trimming zone, and the bleed help designate where your product will be trimmed, as well as help you keep important elements such as text and graphics away from the trimming margin. Please provide us with a bleed all around your artwork, and make sure to keep all critical elements such as text and graphics within the Safe Zone.

In printing terminology, the bleed is the extra margin on a print product that is meant to be trimmed off when the product is trimmed to its final size. Bleed basically means that the color and graphics on a product “bleed off the page” to ensure continuity of the color to the edge of your product. For the best results, please download the product templates from our download templates page.

When we print products such as bibs, business cards, or postcards, we do not print on paper of that size. We impose them for print, which means that we organize several copies of your item next to one another on a large sheet of paper, print, and then trim each individual item to its final size. Jobs cannot be trimmed perfectly on the trimming line each time. During the trimming process, a product may be trimmed within or beyond the trimming line. As a result, the product may have a white edge, or a portion of the artwork from the surrounding jobs. Thus, we require a bleed on each individual product so that when the product is trimmed, there is an extra margin to prevent imperfections.

A full bleed is required for all print-ready files. We use a .125″ bleed, so a 2″ x 3.5″ business card will have a bleed size of 2.25″ x 3.75″.

You will see bleed shown on our proofs as a green line.

The Safe Zone is the area where all the critical elements (text, images, logos, etc.) must be placed, so that they are not trimmed off when the product is trimmed to the final size. Please make sure to remain within the Safe Zone, as elements on the Safe Zone line may be cut off during trimming.

You will see the Safe Zone shown on our proofs as a cyan line.

The Trimming Zone, or the trim line, is where the product will be trimmed to its final size. The trim line indicates the final size of the product. Please keep in mind that variations may occur during the trimming process, and we cannot guarantee that your product will be trimmed perfectly along the trim line.

You will see the trim line shown on our proofs as a magenta line.

Borders are not recommended due to cutting shifts. If your product is not trimmed exactly on the trimming line, borders may appear uneven. Especially for small products such as business cards, even half a millimeter of cutting shift may cause the borders to look uneven.

Crop marks are lines on the design that serve as a guide for where the image or product will be cropped. To create crop marks in Photoshop, follow the steps below:

• Open your file in Photoshop
• Choose File > Print
• Select “Output” from the drop-down list on the pop-up menu
• Check off “Corner Crop Marks”
• Click “Print”

You may submit your files with crop marks that are added outside of the design itself, but please ensure that crop marks are not within the design, as we will not remove the crop marks from the design.

Color options for pre-press printing are divided into three categories:

• Full Color Front/Full Color Back, or Four over Four (4/4): Four-color print job with color on both sides of the paper.
• Full Color Front/Grayscale Back, or Four over One (4/1): Full-color print job on the front, and black and white (grayscale) on the back.
• Full Color Front/Blank Back, or Four over Zero (4/0): Four-color print job on the front, and no printing on the back.
• Grayscale Front/Blank Back, or One over Zero (1/0): black and white (grayscale) print job on the front, and no printing on the back.

CMYK indicates Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Keyline (Black). These 4 colors of ink are used for offset printing. Cyan is a shade of blue found in the 4 primary color printing process. Magenta is a shade of hot pink found in the basic 4 color printing process.

We require that you provide us with digital files in CMYK or RGB color mode, but strongly suggest that you work in CMYK for print. Please provide all black and white artwork in grayscale color mode. We do not accept any other color modes.

RGB indicates Red, Green, and Blue and is primarily used for electronic and photography purposes. These 3 colors combined in various percentages create any color in the visible spectrum. Various products use RGB because it offers the widest range of colors.

We strongly suggest that you convert your files to CMYK for printing. Any other color mode will not produce optimal printing results. Using images that are in RGB color mode may ruin the appearance of the final printed material. We do not accept files in any other modes.

Grayscale color mode, also known as black and white color mode, is composed of two colors: black and white. It is used to reproduce an image with different shades of gray.

A computer monitor represents only one form of black. In print, there are several ways to represent black, including “rich black”. Rich black is a darker, deeper black that combines a percentage of all the four CMYK inks. The values we use to to create our rich black are: C = 44, M = 37, Y = 39, K = 95.

For gray densities, we recommend that the file have the following color values: C=10, M=10, Y=10. For the K value, anything under 100 would be considered a gray.

We are not able to use art that has “Live” fonts. This is because we most likely don’t have the font you used to create your art. But it’s a simple fix; In Adobe Illustrator, select your live text, right click and select “Create Outlines”. This ensures the fonts will print how they were intended. It’s possibly to create outlines in other design programs, like Canva. Just follow their specific prompts.

For the best results, check that your fonts are no smaller than 8pt and lines no thinner than 1 pt. Inverse art and negative space text need even larger sizes to print well. If your design has small elements, it’s helpful to print it out to size to ensure everything looks good when printed and legible from a distance.

Please follow the following steps before you submit your files.

• Fonts must be embedded in PDF files. (Some fonts have copyright restrictions and will not embed in PDF Files.)
• Embed all images and outline text in Illustrator files.
• InDesign – Package your files with the fonts and images included.
• Flatten all layers when working in Photoshop.

When creating a file with a vector-based software such as Illustrator, follow these steps to outline fonts:

• Select “Type”
• Select “Create Outlines”

When trying to outline fonts in Photoshop, simply just flatten the image.

Embedding a font means storing your font information in the file so that when your file is opened on a different computer, the fonts do not vary in appearance. If your fonts are not embedded, a different font may be substituted for your document. To prevent these variations, embed all your fonts in PDF files.