Most files that reach us would produce a noticeably better result with a few small corrections. The steps below raise print quality and cut the time lost to fixes.
1. Start at the right size
Open your design at the real print size. A design enlarged afterwards can look fine on screen yet print soft and blurry. If you work to a scale, state it in the file name.
2. Leave bleed
Trimming can shift by a millimetre or two. Extending the background colour or image slightly past the edge removes the risk of a thin white strip after cutting. For the same reason, keep text away from the edge.
3. Lock down the fonts
Outline your text or embed the fonts in the PDF. Otherwise, if the font is missing on our machine, something else is substituted and the lines shift — one of the most common and hardest-to-spot problems.
4. Check the colour mode
Printing is produced in CMYK. RGB files can still be printed, but bright blues, vivid greens and neon tones dull down when converted. If you have brand colours, tell us up front.
5. Read it one more time
Check the phone number, the address and the web address once more before the run starts. The most expensive mistake in a design is a typo that goes unnoticed into print.
If anything is unclear, send us the file and we will check it together before printing.