What does your printing company need from you?
Pronto Printing!
After you have had your design approved for your leaflet, your printing company may require you to ‘ping’ over certain files or pieces of information to them electronically. If your I.T knowledge is a little bit sketchy, then this blog aims to help you understand any jargon and clarify any terminology, so that you can get the printers what they need, first time, to get your printing underway.
Templates:
A pre-designed template that has been formatted for the design software of your choice is a great place to start. ADOBE, In-Design, PUBLISHER, and WORD all have a range of leaflet templates available for free downloading, if you are using their packages. Failing that there are other templates available online, or from your printer service provider. It is always worth taking your printer company’s advice and guidance and any tools that they offer you, as they will want to create a professional and time efficient product, for you, their customer, and they will guide you as to the best way to do this.
Tip: Use your printer service provider’s advice, knowledge, and expertise.
File Formats-the essentials:
A JPEG is a file that is used for compressing, distributing, and using images electronically.
A PDF is a ‘portable document file’ that can compress, distribute, and use files that contain both images and texts.
It is most likely that your printers will prefer you to send over your designed leaflet in a PDF format. This is because information sent in PDF format will maintain its placing and sharpness, making it a higher resolution image and text that won’t alter during the sending process. Essentially, it’s a more reliable and higher quality type of file.
Tip: Where possible save any e-information to go onto your leaflet as a PDF file. If you are unable to do so, then investigate downloading a PDF converter that can do this for you at the click of the mouse.
Bleeding-don’t worry this is painless!
This term simply means that the art and text work should be sent margin free to allow your leaflet design to fill the whole of your leaflet space. To do this you need to set up your PDF page with no margins through your page set up settings.
Image quality resolution:
When selecting images to use from the world wide web, you need to make sure that they are of a high enough resolution to translate clearly and sharply onto your leaflets. The bigger the original picture on your screen, the better the quality it is. As a guide, you should select images that are around four times the size that you require. Doing this will ensure no blurs or pixelated images on your leaflet.
Final checks:
It is your responsibility to check the layout, text, images, spellings, and overall look of your leaflet, before you send it for printing. The printers will check that it is ‘print ready’ but will not offer you feedback, or adaptions by way of improvements or typos. Make sure the version of the leaflet that you send is the perfect and final version that you require.
