Printer’s Bleed

If you haven’t designed print ready artwork before then one of the most important factors to take into consideration is printer’s bleed.

Firstly, you need to understand how a commercial printer prints, the following applies to the majority of printed products, however, as an example:

Say you require 5000 300gsm A6 Flyers, these are not printed onto individual A6 pieces of card like some people think, instead we print 8 x A6 Flyers onto SRA3 card, this is slightly larger than standard A3 at 450mm x 320mm. We then trim the printed Flyers down to the required A6 size.

So what is a bleed?

It is not possible to print all the way to the edge of your A6 Flyers, to achieve this we have to print a larger area than is needed and then trim the card down to the required size.

Images, background images and fills which are intended to extend to the edge of your Flyer must be extended 3mm beyond the cut line to give a bleed. A finished A6 Flyer is 105mm x 148mm, you would assume that your artwork should be the same size? You'd be wrong! You need to add a further 3mm onto each edge of the artwork, this is the bleed, this means your artwork should now be 111mm x 154mm.

What will happen if I don’t add a bleed?

There is very small element of movement when trimming artwork, this can be as small as 1mm-2mm, however, this can cause problems. If you supply your A6 Flyer artwork at 105mm x 148mm and there is 2mm of movement to the left when trimming, this means that on the left handside of your artwork will be a 2mm white border, although very small this will still be noticeable and will not look good. This scenario also applies to the top and bottom.

Another point to bear in mind is if your content is too close to the cut/trim line, there is a very small chance that it could be cut off.
Therefore, ensure all content such as text, logos, etc, sit around 5mm in from the cut/trim line or 8mm in if including the bleed.

The above is print industry standard and applies to all commercial printing.

Print Ready Microsoft Word Documents!

If I had £1.00 for every time a customer said to me “I have print ready artwork” and then supply a Microsoft Word document, I would be a rich man sat on a beach somewhere drinking cocktails. Unfortunately this is not the case so I thought I would post some information for those looking to design their own artwork for print.

If your chosen design software is Microsoft Word then STOP NOW!

Microsoft Word is capable of creating some complex layouts for brochures, newsletters and similar that will print great to your desktop printer, but it is not a professional design program that is suitable for producing flyers, posters, banners, etc.
More importantly, Microsoft Word is not designed for creating digital files for commercial printing.

If you don’t require high volume printing, Word may work fine for all your needs. However, if you intend to have your artwork printed commercially, be aware that while some printers will accept your Word files, you can often expect to pay dearly for them to re-draw your artwork from scratch, which is the case 99% of the time.

Commercial printers require certain specifications with regards to the artwork they print, such as bleed, CMYK colour mode, resolution, the list goes on, unfortunately Word cannot address any of these requirements.

The only time a Word document design would be of any use would be to give your chosen professional graphic designer a rough idea as to what you are looking to acheive. Your rough layout ideas will be a huge help and time saver for your designer, which in turn may save you some money if they are charging by the hour. They can then turn your ideas into a professional looking brochure, business card, flyer, poster, etc.
If you choose to do this then don’t spend hours tweaking and perfecting the design, it will be used as a rough guide only.

It is possible to design your own artwork, but you really need to be using professional design software like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Corel Draw or similar.

Quick update for Folkestone Printing.

Just a little update to everything happening in the world of Folkestone Printing!

We’re pleased to welcome the forth of our large format poster printing machines into the business, to help us keep up with the heavy workload that has been steadily increasing over the summer period from nightclubs, bars, restaurants and festivals to name just a few. The second Canon iPF8000s machine will enable us to produce full colour posters faster than ever, from A4 size up to over 1 metre wide and up to 30 metres in length (just in case you need an extra large one!).

With the introduction of the new poster printer will enable us to turnaround most short run poster jobs in minutes, instead of hours!

Upload your file in our online shop or drop in your usb drive – go and have a coffee or drive to us and your poster should (he said) be ready. Can’t say fairer than that can you?!

If you’re not local to collect, we aim to get your posters delivered next working day to most UK mainland addresses….

Right, I’m off to grab a coffee myself and prepare for the rush – now that the word is out!