Why it takes forever to get things printed
Your boss and her new favorite hire are exhibiting at a show soon and need 2,500 beautiful postcards to send out before the event. They both turn to you to get them printed up, ASAP. You’re the obvious choice because you minored in graphic design five years ago. But you know what you’re doing, so this should be a breeze.
The design you submitted gets approved by your boss but Cindy has some improvements.. which is great. You finish the layout and save the file. Now it’s time to write your email to the printer with every specification they’ll ever need. All done. Now, on to the next task.
Five hours later and and email comes in from Mike the printer. He’s got five questions about your project and says your artwork is basically useless, but in a nice way. Questions rush in; did I mess up or is he trying to ruin my day?
Mike says your artwork needs bleeds, the logo isn’t vector, and that you need to change your logo from Pantone colors to CMYK. Didn’t I do that already? Is it really that important? So many why’s. You write him back at noon. He responds the next morning. By the time you finalize everything with him, it’s three days later and Cindy is checking in constantly while CC’ing your boss.
So here’s the thing. With taking just a few easy preemptive steps before sending your job to the printer, you can put your job on the fast track to completion:
- First ask if your file needs to be setup as spot color or CMYK. This will depend on the printing process itself. The low cost full color jobs are usually CMYK and the nice brand identity pieces are usually printed using Pantone colors to keep color consistency throughout your identity.
- Confirm the print size. If the color goes to the edge, make sure you add 0.125" in color around all sides. This will get removed from the print but will allow for the bleed printing effect. This is the biggest reason artwork gets rejected by the printer.
- Create your file measurements in inches or mm, but never pixels. Printers will end up having to crudely convert your pixel measurements into inches or mm. Something both sides want to avoid.
- If including a logo, make sure it’s vector art. Rastor JPG’s for logos are always a terrible idea because they’re by nature, pixelated. Somewhere, that stunning logo mark was created as vector art. If you don’t have access to it, redraw your logo in vector and save it for use whenever printing comes up.
This is not everything. But if you check off these four things prior to sending in your artwork, I can promise, it will save you a ton of time and frustration. Make things easy for the printer upfront and behind the scenes, they will go above and beyond for you. Also, the less time the printer needs to spend on your artwork, the more you can negotiate for better pricing. Just don’t tell Mike I told you so.