FAQ

How To Order Printing #1 TIME

The #1 BEST thing you can do as a print buyer is to give us enough time to print your job right. Please please please, give us, and yourself, time to proofread, time to print samples, time to schedule your order with other jobs in process, time to allow for unforeseens like press service or paper shortages. We can fix any problem, if we have time!

How To Order Printing #2 PRINT-READY

“Not print ready” means “we can’t print it.”

The #2 BEST thing you can do is to send us art that’s print-ready.

Before you buy from Etsy, or make on Canva, or create in Word, Publisher, etc., please call us! Your files must comply to print-ready specs. Non-compliant artwork will delay your order and increase your costs.

The most common problems are …

  • Insufficient Margin: All live elements must be away from the edge of the paper. Margin size depends on final print size.
  • No Bleed: Any elements printing “off the edge” must include extra image outside the cut line.
  • Low Resolution: We usually need at least 250dpi at final print size. Low-resolution images will look pixelly. No, Photoshop won’t fix that. (Artificial intelligence might.)
  • Bad Page Count: Saddle-staple booklets require page counts divisible by four (4,8,12,16,20,etc.). Other page counts will cause blank pages.
  • Bad Trifold Layout: Margins, gutters, and column widths are strictly mandated, or your print piece will fold off-center and look horrible. Even the template included in MS Publisher is wrong.

These concerns are not hard to comply with, but due to the nature of printing, they are not negotiable. If your art doesn’t comply, we can fix it … but it costs you time & money.

Please also see our Templates.

How To Order Printing #3 PRO TIPS

Communicate details. If we don’t know something, we can’t act on it. Deadlines especially we often don’t know until it’s too late.

Communicate, period. Read the emails we send. Reply to the questions we ask. Somehow since Covid and AI, this common practice seems to have fallen in a deep rut. Nobody’s perfect but let’s both do our best unlazily and attentively.

Understand document submission. When you give us a document that we must alter in any way, makes changes & repairs, convert for print, fix margins & bleed, or whatever other changes from your source … please understand that if you then alter your source and resubmit, we must makes those changes all over again from scratch, which costs you time & money. Please ask us about particular changes to any proof we provide, and we’ll go from there. Please don’t assume that sending us revised files is the best or even the only way to respond to a proof.

Avoid ldquo;per sheet.” We always refer to final quantity. “I need 100 cut in half” could mean 50 cut to 100, or 100 cut to 200. If you want 100 flyers, say 100.

Single artwork files. Please submit a single copy of your artwork at 100% final size, not “2 per sheet” or whatever imposition you think we would want. Most people impose wrong anyway (bad spacing), and even if the imposition spacing is correct, it might well not be the one we need for print.

Books as single pages. If you have a 24-page book, we prefer a single PDF with 24 pages. Avoid trying to create 2-sided print sheets that cut & fold into a book; we will take care of that on our side.

What Is Bleed?

Please see our FREE templates to set up your project with proper bleed & margin!

Bleed is “printing off the edge” of the paper. Bleed requires extra image area that is trimmed off after printing.

What Is Margin?

Margin is the space between the edge of the paper, and the “safe zone” where your important content is printed (text, pictures, logos etc.). Print tolerances allow for a small amount of drift from sheet to sheet of a print job. If your content is too close to the edge, we risk cutting off part of the content. Thus all content that does not “bleed” (see above) must remain within the safe zone. Typical margins are 1/5″ to 1/4″ for a business card, 1/2″ to 1″ for a flyer, up to several inches for a banner. Margin is also a perceptual design element that simply makes the print job look better.

What About ChatGPT?

AI is a powerful tool, but most AI content generators do not offer quantitative control over many crucial aspects of printing, such as proportion, margin and bleed, or text size. We will do what we can with your AI content. Sometimes it will be fine. Often is is nearly unusable. We cannot recommend AI as a reliable graphics tool for print projects. To demonstrate this for yourself, try using a print template with AI. Good luck!

What About Canva?

Why Is Canva So Bad!?

Canva is popular and easy to use. But it is consumer-level software. Unless you understand the requirements for print-ready artwork, Canva is full of pitfalls. For example, setting an image to “background” actually resizes and distorts the image, and it’s not easy to put it right. There little-to-no support for bleeds or even margins. There is little attention to print size or proportion. In many important respects, you are “on your own.”

With Canva, as with any software, you must understand your tools and your craft, if you want good results.

Before you begin your design, please see our Templates. You will get better print results if you start with a proper template!

To Bleed, Or Not To Bleed?

Canva’s “bleed” function DOES NOT WORK WELL. Bleed is built into our templates, so if you follow our templates, DO NOT use Canva’s “bleed” function.

If you failed to follow a proper template, and it’s “too late” to fix your file, then we might get something usable from Share: Download: PDF For Print with Crop Marks & Bleeds checked.

What About Etsy?

Some great artists sell on Etsy! Unfortunately, some of those great artists are untrained in “pre-press” or “artwork for print.” For example, we commonly receive artwork with no bleed. Sometimes if you ask your Etsy artist for print-ready art with bleed, we’ll get it; sometimes we won’t. It’s hit & miss. But one way or another, we can still print it …

What Is A Proof?

A proof is a digital or printed advance sample of your order, for your review before printing, so you can request any corrections to the text, color, size, etc. When you request changes, we will provide a new proof. Once you approve a proof, we can send the order into production. Normally we will not proceed to print without an approved proof.

Email & Text Messages (SMS, MMS)

We provide digital proofs via email. Please always reply by email for our records & order history.

We do not support text messaging directly. If your cell provider supports email-to-text, on request we can send your proof to your phone’s SMS/text messenger, via our email. You can reply to the text, and we will receive your reply via our email. Please note, however: Many cell providers are discontinuing email-to-text service. Please provide a working email address where you can receive and reply to your proofs.

We will also provide “hardcopy” printed proofs on request when feasible.

What Is PDF?

The short answer is, we don’t know! PDF is a container, and anything might be in that container: text, raster images, vector objects, hyperlinks, form fields, you name it.

The longer answer is, PDF is “portable document format,” meant to be a universal file type that anyone can view or print with the free (or pro) Adobe Acrobat software. The upside is that PDFs are robust — a document doesn’t change or suffer damage from computer to computer, unlike for example an MS Word document that will lose fonts and change pagebreaks. The downside to PDF robustness is that PDFs are often difficult to edit if they’re not print-ready.

What Is A Source File?

Source files are the documents that you originally create in whatever software of your choice, e.g. MS Word, or Adobe InDesign. We sometimes ask for source files when we need to repair something in your artwork to make it print-ready.

Source files might be difficult to move from one computer to another. Some quick tips:

  • Whatever your software, send a PDF in addition to the source files. If nothing else, it is a reliable reference for us.
  • Adobe usually offers a Package function that will collect fonts & linked assets in a folder, which you can zip & send.
  • Publisher is different in every version but usually offers a “Collect For Print” or “Send To Service Provider” option that collects fonts & linked assets in a folder, which you can zip & send.
  • MS Word won’t include any non-standard fonts. Please manually collect any such fonts and send them with your .DOC(X), and don’t forget a PDF version also.
  • For Canva, source files are online-only, so please instead try Share: Download: PDF For Print and click the Crop Marks & Bleeds checkbox:

What Is DPI?

What Is Vector?

There are generally two kinds of digital image: Raster and Vector.

Raster is pixels, little dots, on a screen or from a printer. Raster depends on DPI, “dots-per-inch,” at final print size, also called “resolution.” Usually we want 250 to 400dpi at final print size, no enlarging or reducing. Enlarging an image means fewer dots per inch (low-resolution), which makes the image look “pixelly.” Conversely, reducing from too-high resolution can cause blur.

To understand this in simple(!) arithmetic, the DPI, “dots per inch,” of an image is literally just the number of pixels (dots) divided by the print size in inches (per inch). If the image is 1,000 pixels wide, then at 4″ wide, it’s (1,000/4)=250dpi, or at 5 inches wide it’s (1,000/5)=200dpi. It’s that simple.

When designing print piece in raster format, e.g. in Photoshop, best practice is to start with actual desired print size at the desired resolution. Your software will work with the proper number of pixels. The less you follow this practice, the more trouble you will endure.

  • Don’t forget to add bleed area if you need it! 8.5×11 + bleed = 8.75×11.25 or more.
  • Note also that enlarging 8.5×11 to 12×18 is not proportional and might look distorted.

There is usually no way to increase the resolution of an image faithfully. “No, Photoshop won’t fix that.” Recent AI upscalers can sometimes help … sometimes not.

Vector is object-oriented, wireframe artwork. Fonts are usually vector objects. Vectors are not subject to resolution problems of rasters: we can nearly-always enlarge or reduce, to whatever scale, without loss of quality.

Vectors are almost always better than rasters, if we can get them. Some imagery, however, like photographs or scans, are always rasters.

What Is Proportion?

Proportion is the ratio of height to width. If we want to resize your printing, proportion can be important if we want to avoid stretching and distorting the image. For example, if you send us artwork at full-page size, and ask us to print it smaller at half-page size, your image will stretch and distort because the proportions are different.

What does it mean, “Please discard your source file as it is now obsolete”?

When you send us a file, we will convert it to our inhouse workflow. Conversion takes time, often a significant amount of time, and includes many changes such as spelling, punctuation, formatting, color, and more. If you then make changes to your original file and send it again, all our work is lost, and we must start the conversion again from scratch, an inefficiency that costs you more time & more expense. Instead, once we receive your file for conversion, your best practice is to discard your original file (it is literally obsolete! throw it away!), and then specify any further changes as comments or markups on the proofs that we provide.

If you need copies of your files, we are happy to provide them. You paid for them and they are yours. But please understand that the files will exist in whatever format(s) we use inhouse for that project. If you can use those formats, great. If not, sometimes files can be converted; otherwise we can arrange in advance to use a format that you can accommodate. However, it is always best for a project to exist as a single original asset (with backups, of course), not as multiple instances that can diverge into confusion.