Design tips to get the best results for your print

You’ve got your website and a shiny new logo, you’ve put together a design in Photoshop and now you send it to us to print – what could be easier?

Well first of all the colours are RGB and we need CMYK, there’s no bleed included and the images are too low res for print.

These are some issue that we come across regularly that affect how well a design will print. We’ve listed a few points that are worth considering while you design so you’ll always be happy when your print arrives.

Colour Settings

Our print processes use CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black) inks to create colour. Websites use RGB (Red, Green & Blue) light to create a colour. Colours might appear a little different when the are converted as there’s not always a direct match from RGB to CMYK. Create your designs in CMYK and you’ll know what you’re getting.

Image Resolution

Images for print need to be much higher resolution than images for websites, if you’ve used an image on your site that you want to include in print, get the original version at as high a resolution as you can.

Bleed

We’ll always need a bleed area around your design for print. This means if there’s any movement when the finished print is trimmed you won’t get white lines at the edges of your print. Go for 3mm bleed as standard and you can’t go far wrong.

Four Colour Black

We’re going back to CMYK again. Black text, when converted from RGB to CMYK, tends to be made up of all the CMYK channels. When RGB black is printed this could make your design look fuzzy and less sharp than it should. Mis-registration can also occur as there’s so much ink applied through each channel. Make all the black text 100%K and you’ll be fine.