printing guidelines

Printing Guidelines

• Artwork Size
• Colour specification
• Fonts
• Paper Sizes
• Envelope Sizes
• Office Books
• Brochure Options

All files submitted must abide by the following printing guidelines. Customers will be notified if any submitted files do not meet these guidelines. We will try to assist you in getting your file print ready wherever possible.

All images/photos submitted in the artwork should be at least 300dpi for best results.
If provided with low resolution images, the printed result will be pixelated images.

Artwork Size
When setting up your artwork, it must be the size of the trimmed and finished print.

Bleed Area

• It is necessary to include a 3mm bleed area on each side of your artwork. Without bleed, during the trimming process, a white edge may be left behind on the edge of your printed item.
• In order to avoid this, we use bleed, an overlap of 3mm extending off the edge of the artwork to ensure that there will not be any white margins.
• Example: A4 print size = 210 x 297mm, bleed area = 214 x 301mm
  A5 print size = 148 x 210mm, bleed area = 152 x 214mm

Safe Area

• It is a guideline for you to avoid your content from being trimmed off. Any critical information should be kept within this area.
• Please note that the safe area for all artwork is 4mm on each side from the trim line.
• Example: Trim Line = 90x54mm, Safe Area = 82x46mm

Colour Specifications

• We print in CMYK, please do not submit files in RGB colour mode as the colours are not achievable for the standard CMYK printing. Files provided in RGB colour mode will automatically be converted into CMYK colour mode before print and this process can distort colours.
• RGB colour mode is for computer screens and the colour that you see on the screen can be different from what you print as every computer screen has varying contrast and brightness and thus will display colours differently.

Fonts

• There are a lot of fonts that we do not hold in out library, therefore your artwork needs to be pathed in order to ensure there will not be any missing text, font substitutions or uneven line ending.
• Ensure that your fonts are at least 7pts and above. Text lower than 7pts may be visible on your screen but will not be printed out well.
• Fonts with thin strokes will also not be visibly printed.
• Please note that light coloured strokes of fonts and on a light-coloured background should not be thinner than 1pt. Likewise, dark coloured strokes of fonts on a dark coloured background also should not be thinner than 1pt.
• All lines and strokes of fonts should not be thinner than 0.25pt.

Paper Sizes

The most convenient and distinguishing characteristic of ISO paper is that each format has an aspect ratio equal to the square root of two (1:4142) which makes it simple to enlarge or reduce a document for printing on another ISO paper format. The most popular series of the ISO standard is the A series. The most widely used paper of this series is the A4 format. All paper sizes of this series have a name that consists of an A followed by a number. The larger that number, the smaller the paper.

A fit for any envelope

The consistent aspect ratio of the ISO papers makes it easy to fit larger paper sizes into smaller envelopes. This can be done by simply folding the larger papers in half until you reach the desired size. The most common envelope sizes are shown below.

Office Books

Office books can be designed to your specifications to include your logo, contact information, forms, fields and tick boxes etc. Allowances need to be made for binding and perforation. Having the pages makes it easy to tear and sequential numbering helps you to keep track of your  records.