File formats
Print-ready PDF is best — it carries fonts, images and colour settings in one file. We also accept AI, PSD and INDD with links and fonts packaged. Avoid Word, PowerPoint and Canva exports for anything where exact colour or trim matters.
Bleed and trim
Add 3 mm of background beyond the finished size on every edge. Cutting moves by a fraction of a millimetre, and without bleed that movement shows as a white sliver along the edge.
Safe area
Keep text and logos at least 4 mm inside the trim line. Thin borders running parallel to the edge are the hardest thing to cut perfectly — a border that is 1 mm off on one side looks like a mistake.
Resolution
300 DPI at final size for anything held in the hand. Large-format banners and backdrops can be lower, because they are viewed from a distance — 100 to 150 DPI at full size is usually enough. An image pulled from a website is typically 72 DPI and will not print sharply however it is scaled.
Colour
Supply CMYK. Screens show RGB, which produces bright blues and greens that ink cannot reproduce; converting late is what makes a printed colour look duller than expected. For brand colours, give us the Pantone reference.
Rich black
Large black areas printed with black ink alone look grey. Use a rich black build for big solid areas, but keep small text in single-colour black so it stays sharp.
Fonts
Outline them or embed them. A font that does not travel with the file is substituted, and the layout changes without anyone noticing until it is printed.
Die-lines for packaging
Packaging needs a flat template marking cut, crease and glue. Ask us for the die-line for your box size and place your artwork onto it, keeping important content away from creases and glue flaps.
What our artwork check covers
We check size and bleed, resolution, colour mode, fonts, and anything sitting too close to the trim. We do not proofread your text — spelling and phone numbers are yours to check, and they are the errors that hurt most after 5,000 copies.
