Artwork and proofing

Bleed and safe area

A guillotine does not cut to within a hundredth of an inch, and paper moves on press. Bleed is the margin of error: extend any colour or image that is meant to reach the edge past the trim line, so a cut that lands slightly off still lands in your artwork rather than in white paper.

The safe area is the same problem from the other side. Keep text and anything you cannot afford to lose well inside the trim, or a cut that drifts the other way will take the top off it.

Bleed

0.125 in on every side

Safe area

0.125 in inside the trim

Folders

0.25 in bleed — larger die

Resolution

300 dpi at final size. A 300 dpi image scaled up to three times its dimensions is a 100 dpi image, and it will print soft no matter what the file properties say.

Vector artwork — logos, type, rules — has no resolution and scales freely. Keep it vector wherever you can; a logo rasterised at the wrong size is the most common preflight failure there is.

Colour

Supply CMYK. Screens are additive and presses are subtractive, so the brightest RGB blues, greens, and oranges have no CMYK equivalent — they will be converted, and the conversion will shift them. Converting yourself means you choose what happens; leaving it to us means the press does.

Rich black for large areas: 60/40/40/100 rather than 0/0/0/100, which prints as a washed grey over any size.

What preflight checks

• Low resolution

  Effective dpi at trim size, per placed image.

• Missing bleed

  Whether artwork actually extends past the trim.

• Content in the safe zone

  Text or detail too close to the cut.

• Wrong trim size

  The document does not match what was ordered.

• RGB colour space

  Anything that will be converted on the way to press.

• Missing fonts

  Type that is neither embedded nor outlined.

• Transparency flattening

  Effects that will change when flattened.

Some findings block the job and some are warnings you can accept. Either way you see them before you pay, not after.

The proof

A proof shows the artwork as it will be imposed, with the trim and fold positions marked. Approving it is binding: it is what authorises the job to reach a press, and custom print is not returnable once it does. The desk records who approved it and when.

Production days are counted from approval, not from the order. A proof sitting unapproved for a week delays the job by a week — which is why the order page says so plainly rather than letting the date quietly slip.