Resource
Artwork guidelines
Ten checks that decide whether your file goes straight to plate or comes back with questions. None of them is difficult; all of them are cheaper to do now than to discover at proofing.
Send us what you have either way. Prepress checks every file that arrives and tells you what is missing — you do not need to get this perfect before asking.
One-page checklist
The same ten points as a single printable page. No email required — give it to your designer.
The checklist
Ten points to check before you send a file
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Supply a print-ready PDF
PDF/X-1a or PDF/X-4 for preference. They exist precisely to remove the ambiguity that causes reprints: fonts embedded, colour space declared, transparency handled predictably. We can work from AI, INDD, CDR and PSD files, and from JPG or PNG at sufficient resolution — but a correctly exported PDF is the only format that looks the same on our system as it did on yours.
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Build in CMYK, not RGB
Screens emit light and can display colours no ink can reproduce. Converting late means vivid oranges, bright greens and electric blues shift toward duller printable equivalents, and the first you see of it is the proof. Working in CMYK from the start means what you approve is what can actually be produced.
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Add 3 mm bleed on every edge
Extend any element that reaches the edge of the finished piece 3 mm past the trim line. Cutting varies by a fraction of a millimetre, and without bleed that variation shows as a white sliver along the edge. Do not fake it by scaling a finished design up — on packaging it will no longer match the dieline.
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Keep content inside the safety margin
Hold text, logos and anything that would look wrong clipped at least 3 mm inside the trim — more on packaging, where creases and corner tolerances take space from the same area. Type sitting 2 mm from an edge looks tight even when it is cut perfectly.
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Images at 300 dpi, at final printed size
The qualifier is the part that matters. A 300 dpi image scaled up 400% in the layout is effectively 75 dpi and will look soft. Check resolution at the size the image actually appears on the page, not at the size the file was created. Web images at 72 dpi are almost never usable for print.
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Outline or embed all fonts
A font that is neither embedded nor outlined will be substituted, silently, and the first sign is usually reflowed text on the proof. Outlining converts type to curves and is safest for logos and headline work; embedding keeps the text editable, which is useful on anything that will be versioned later.
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Small text as 100% K — not rich black
Body text built from all four inks is printed by four separate plates, and any registration shift leaves coloured fringes around every letter. Set body copy, captions and fine detail in black only. Use rich black for large solid areas, where the extra depth is worth having and register is invisible.
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Define spot colours deliberately
If a brand colour has to be exact, specify it as a Pantone spot ink and name the coated or uncoated variant — 286 C and 286 U are different colours. If it does not need to be exact, convert it to process before sending, so an unintended fifth plate does not appear on the quote.
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Check overprint settings
A white or light element accidentally set to overprint disappears completely at output, because white in CMYK means "no ink". It looks perfectly correct on screen in most design applications, which is what makes it dangerous. Check the setting rather than trusting the default.
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Put the dieline on its own layer
For packaging, supply the dieline as a separate named layer in a spot colour, set to overprint, and clearly not part of the artwork. Cut, crease and perforation belong on separate layers, because each becomes a different rule in the steel die. A dieline merged into the artwork gets printed.
Formats
What we accept
| Preferred | PDF/X-1a or PDF/X-4, CMYK, fonts embedded |
|---|---|
| Also accepted | AI, INDD (packaged), CDR, PSD, EPS |
| Images | TIFF or PSD preferred; JPG and PNG at 300 dpi final size |
| Not usable | Word, PowerPoint, Publisher, screenshots, web images |
| Colour mode | CMYK, with spot inks named where colour must be exact |
| Resolution | 300 dpi at final printed size (large format: lower is fine) |
| Bleed | 3 mm on every edge |
| Maximum upload | 25 MB through the quote form; a link for anything larger |
Sending it
Four things that save a round trip
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Name files so we can tell them apart
Company, job, size and version — for example acme-monocarton-90x45x120-v3.pdf. "final-final-2.pdf" has caused more wrong-version print runs than any other single thing in this industry.
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Send one file per item
Separate PDFs for the carton, the leaflet and the label, rather than one multi-page file — they go to different processes and often different presses.
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Up to 25 MB through the quote form
Larger than that, send a download link in the notes field. We accept PDF, AI, CDR, JPG, PNG and ZIP.
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Tell us what it has to match
A previous job, a physical sample, a Pantone reference or a competitor pack on a shelf. Any of those is more useful than a description of the colour.
After you send it
What prepress actually does with your file
Preflight checks every point on this page automatically, then a person looks at the things a machine cannot judge — whether an overprint was deliberate, whether a black was meant to be rich, whether the dieline layer is meant to print. After that comes colour separation, trapping, screening and imposition.
None of it changes your design. All of it is what stops the press finding a problem that the file could have told us about.