Design Layout
When designing your own files for printing you must setup your file(s) properly for printing.
1. Document Size - Make sure that your document is sized properly. While we can print most custom sized documents, there are some standard sizes for common items we print. Here is a list of the most common document sizes which we print:
Business Cards - 3 1/2" wide by 2" tall (landscape) or 2" tall by 3 1/2" wide (portrait)
Postcards - 6" wide by 4" tall (most common size)
Letterhead - 8 1/2" wide by 11" tall
Brochures - 11" wide by 8 1/2" tall (standard size)
#10 Envelope - 9 1/2" wide by 4 1/8" tall
Rack Cards - 4" wide by 9" tall
A2 Invitation (see product page)
A6 Invitation (see product page)
A7 Invitation (see product page)
A8 Invitation (see product page)
All of our products will include the size for standard layouts on the respective product page under the product description.
2. Bleed - if your design has color that goes to any edge of the printed piece with no margin, this is called bleed. In order to print bleed correctly, we recommend your document be designed 1/8" larger on each side than the actual finished piece, which will increase it 1/4" overall. This allows us to print ink beyond the edge of the document and then cut or trim the bleed area away, leaving you with ink printed right to the edge of the sheet. Be sure not to put any design element (text, pictures, graphics, etc.) to close to the edge as it could get cut off when trimmed to final size. We recommend a minimum margin of 1/8" to the inside of the finished trim size for anything that does not bleed.
3. RGB vs. CMYK vs. Spot Color Printing - When you look at your computer monitor you are looking at what is known as and RGB color space (also used by desktop inkjet printers). This means the colors you see are made up of combinations of Red, Green & Blue (RGB). When we print your job we print using CMYK color spaces. Most modern desk top publishing applications allow you to specify your file's color space as either RGB or CMYK. Ue CMYK. We recommend using US Sheetfed Coated or US Sheetfed Uncoated when exporting your file to a PDF. Adobe Acrobat can convert your RGB file to a CMYK using either of these two profiles when exporting as a PDF.
Spot colors - if your file uses spot color(s) such as Pantone 348U (green) for example, the color information will be converted to the closest CMYK matching values. We recommend designing in CMYK as most modern offset and digital printing presses now print exclusively using CMYK.
CMYK printing is used for all full color commercial printing. We strongly recommend you use a professional graphic designer or our design services for CMYK printing. All graphics, fonts, photos must be build using CMYK not RGB. Problems will occur with printing CMYK documents which have RGB color profiles or embedded photos or graphics using RGB files. We are not responsible for errors in printing resulting from files given to us by customers which contain RGB profiles.