Artwork Guidelines

This brief and simple guide should help you achieve the perfect printed article.
Contact us

Bleed

Bleed is a printing term used to describe the zone outside the trim area. Elements that touch the edge of your print need to extend for 3mm beyond the trim edge where the product will be cut.

Bleed prevents white edges caused by slight paper movement during trimming.

Safe area

The safe area – or the margin – is the space inside the trim line where no text should be placed. When trimming anything outside the safe zone could be clipped. We like a margin of 5mm if possible.

typography

The text in your artwork should be outlined or embedded. It is recommended that the font size is at least 7pt to ensure it is legible. Please avoid super thin font weights where possible, especially if printed in colour.

Trim and Crop Marks

Trim is where the product will be cut. As it’s very difficult to print exactly to the edge of a sheet, it is necessary to print onto the bleed area and then trim down to the required finished size.

Crop marks allow us to see the exact size of your document and show us where to cut it.

Colour

All artwork should be saved in CMYK. Colour printing typically uses ink of four colours: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. For best results, set your software to colour profile: Fogra 39 (ISO 12647-2:2004) this should be the default if you select PDF/x-1a:2001 when creating you pdf. Your artwork will be converted to CMYK and colour variations may occur.

File formats

We like to receive artwork in PDF format at 300 dpi resolution. Try to export your PDF as a PDF/x-1a:2001 where possible. We can accept high resolution JPG’s for some products where appropriate and will always help you with other formats if we can.