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Artwork & Design
From Newspapers, magazines, billboards, business cards, flyers and other printed materials, a graphic designer or a qualified person in that field has taken the responsibility to prepare the files for printing. Problems can always arise between the designer's final idea and the actual finished product.
Nowadays with access to computers most clients wish to prepare their own artwork or design. Design might be easy to express but artwork needs skill and although artwork can be prepare perfectly in terms of alignment and colours but it still has to be prepared for printing.
In printing, artwork must be prepare to avoid the edge of the material having important information or the image, colour not reaching the edge of the paper to give it a nice finish. Even the use of RGB colour format can make the image turn into another colour even though the colour looks great on your computer screen. We use CYMK not RGB.
Images can now be produced using a digital camera. These images are always in RGB, the printing industry uses images in CYMK format and if supplied in RGB without the right conversion, your images would turn out slightly different from what you expected them to be.
Printers can now send files directly to printing plates, or use new digital printers with no plates at all. With the help of an Adobe PDF file (Portable Document Format) where everything is collected together from an original work document done in an Adobe application (InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator) or another computer program. The PDF will end up with the images and fonts included, as well as the color information. This is only possible to do as long as you know how to convert your document or graphic file to what is required by the printing press.
There are certain things to look for before you prepare any artwork for printing that can make all the difference. Here are some helpful tips for you to prepare your artwork for the printing.
- Getting an overview of the entire job is important. Make sure to ask questions about the final output. Know the size, shape, how many pages there will be, etc. Determine if it is a process colour (CYMK) job, single colour job, a spot color job (black and/or more colours). Do any of the colours overprint? Are there repeated items like captions that need to be the same throughout the entire document? Is there a certain style like drop caps or an effect that should be throughout the document? These are all important questions that need to be asked and answered in the design phase, and communicated to your graphic artists and shown to your printer in the form of a simple colour proof.
- You must proof-read all of your documents before your send it for printing. You can never go wrong with an experienced proof-reader but if you're not sure about a simple word or phrase, you can always look it up in Google. There are plenty of online resources that can help you with spelling issues. Just make sure that your quotes are the right way. Always check your hyphenation and eliminate double spaces.
- Scale your logos in proportion, otherwise you would be upset to see a squashed or stretched logo in your printed material. Be sure to check with the original layout if you have any doubts.
- Ensure that the fonts in your documents are installed correctly by doing a simple check by going to the font menu in your application, check if there is any faux bold or faux italic fonts, replace them with the defined bold or italic font from the font menu. If you have to make any changes to the font style, be sure to check the line breaks and the flow of the words. This will ensure that no extra lines have been created or have been altered.
There are a number of other factors to consider before proceeding with printing. But, these tips can help you get started. If you are precise, diligent and careful you will be able to eliminate all of the unnecessary mistakes that might arise. Mistakes are made because some simple things have been overlooked. Careful planning is the best way to assure that your final printing job is a success.
We are unable to explain more to you, unless we are able to see the file that your are planning to use. We would not have this problem if we are preparing the artwork for printing from your design or ours. Each individual might have his or her opinion of the design of your document and purely personal.
