Artwork Guidelines

Excellent Printers, established since 1980, have for over three decades been committed to offering a complete range of Design, Print and Web facilities and experience, along with a friendly, reliable and cost effective service. With our comprehensive facilities for design, digital repro, printing and finishing we can co-ordinate a full range of services.

As one of the fastest growing Design, Print and Web Design and Development Company in UK, USA & Europe - We are a diversified group with leading technology dealing in Graphics Design, Printing, Web Design, Promotion, Branding, Web Development, Web Optimisation SEO, Content Management System, Software Development, Multimedia Presentations, Shopping Cart Sites and much much more...

At Excellent Printers we want to make life easier so that you can order all your printing requirements online at a cheap and affordable price without having to worry about price, quality and delivery of goods on time.

These are probably the three things that really worry anyone ordering; well now your worries are no more.

Simply choose any of the items above and you'll see that price is extremely competitive, we never compromise on quality and you can be rest assured that the goods will arrive fast.

We can print from any of the templates that are provided or simply upload your own artwork and we'll be only too happy to print from what you send.

To upload your own artwork please make sure that you follow the guidelines below to upload artwork for printing

TO UPLOAD YOUR OWN ARTWORK FOR PRINT, PLEASE FOLLOW THESE GUIDELINES BELOW:

TO GET THE PERFECT RESULTS IN PRINT FOLLOW THE RULES BELOW:

• Make sure you allow for at least 4mm for Bleed (if required) in your design, filling this area with the background colours or images of at least 4mm outside the trim lines. Ensure all important parts of your design are kept within the Safe Area.

  BLEED: It is very difficult to print exactly to the edge of a sheet of paper or card and so, to achieve this, we have to print a slightly larger area than is needed and then trim the paper or card down to the required finished size. Images, background images and fills which are intended to extend to the edge of the page must be extended beyond the trim line to give a bleed of at least 4mm, further explained in the diagram below...

  

  SAFE AREA: Make sure that all your text matter is at least 4mm away from the trimming lines.

• When your design features a mix of photography and text, make sure your placed photographs are at least of 300 dpi, and your final design is saved with the fonts embedded as a PDF.

• Where possible designs featuring graphics or text should be submitted as vector based PDFs. To keep your text in vector format, we recommend applications like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign and more recent versions of Adobe Photoshop. Please note, saving text in JPEG format could sometimes result in 'fuzzy' edges, and so all graphics and text designs (basically, any non-photographic content) are best submitted as vector based PDFs. This will ensure your lines and text are nice and crisp. If you upload bitmap-based content (JPEG's or PNG's), there may be some fuzziness around your text.

• For the best quality in lithographic printing we use a 4 color ink process (CMYK). Please be aware that screen colours (RGB) may appear duller or lacking in contrast when printed, and so always supply your colour artwork in CMYK, we don't offer any spot color or any pantone matching, so it is best to remove them from your PDFs and ensure only CMYK colour values to get the best results.

• When using text/line art in your designs:

  • Make sure text is at least 8pt - very small text can look good on screen but may not print well.
  • Try to keep text in bold when reverse out text is used to give the best effect
  • When printing lines in a solid or dark colour, make sure they are no thinner than 0.5pt. If you're using a lighter colour, we recommend 1pt.
  • Make sure all fonts are embedded or outlined in the artwork you upload

CHECKLIST BEFORE YOU SUPPLY ARTWORK

Trimming: Please provide crop marks around all your supplied artwork.

PDF Files

Please supply all your artwork as high resolution (300dpi).

Make sure you prepare your PDF file as below.

• All colour artwork supplied is CMYK and not RGB
• Resolution - Select High Resolution
• Compression Settings - For colour and greyscale this should be down sampled to 300dpi with the auto compression set on high
• Font Embedding - Must be set to "embed all fonts"

Illustrator

When saving the file make sure that you Include all embedded images and convert all text to curves. Save as a EPS file.

Photoshop

For quality in printing Set Resolution to 300dpi when starting your new document. Save file as either TIFF or JPEG.

Other files not listed above must be saved either as a EPS or JPEG as well.

Please note: If you need us to make changes to your file (JPEG/EPS), we will require you to re-supply new artwork as either a PSD, PDF or AI file as we are unable to make changes to any flattened images (JPEG / EPS / TIFF).

Indesign

Please ensure that all fonts and pictures are used in the artwork you are supplying to us are in a separate folder using the "package" function under the "file" menu. Also compress the document using Stuffit or WinZip before uploading or sending your order via e-mail.

Please include a PDF. This will be for our reference to make sure that nothing is missing or has moved on the artwork you supplied. Please note that if this is to be proofed first it could cause a longer delivery time.

Imposition

Please make sure that you do not supply your files imposed or as "printers pairs", and make sure you only send one version.

Artwork Bleed

It is essential that the minimum bleed is 3mm around your artwork. This is for cutting and trimming purposes. For example: A6 size with bleed would be 111mm x 154.50mm. Save your artwork as any of the above formats. Please note that there is at least a 2mm tolerance for cutting on all jobs.

Make sure that the colour is set to CMYK and not RGB.

Microsoft documents

We cannot use the formats below for printing and so convert them to pdf with embedded fonts:

• Word
• Excel
• Powerpoint
• Publisher
• Works

The best way to do this is to save from the software you are using – in the Save As and choose the .pdf format. If you are having difficulty then below is a link to a website that can convert any of the above files into a useable PDF, it is easy-to-use and will do it for you right there online. IT'S FREE!

www.convert.neevia.com

Please note that it is important when supplying a PDF from a Microsoft document, care is taken to ensure any spot colours, fonts, pictures etc that are created are as you want them to be printed from your original document.

Please also supply a screen shot of your Microsoft document before conversion this can be done by the following:

• PC operators – There is a "PRINT SCREEN" button on the keyboard

• Mac operators – Press the "Apple" and "Shift 4" keys, then highlight the area you wish to copy. This saves a PNG copy to your desktop

Wirobound and Perfect Bound Brochures

Please allow a space of at least 10mm allowance on the edge of the artwork that will be wirobound. Failure to do so may lead to some of the artwork being "chopped off" and obscured by the wires or fall within the binding for perfect binding.

Proofing

At excellentprinting.co.uk we will make every effort to provide an error free product; your cooperation is required as well. The final responsibility for proofing is yours. A proof can be sent to you via e-mail (a fee of £5 will be charged) or by post (a fee of £10 will be charged) if you request this when the order is placed.

The proof which is submitted to you is so that you can make sure of the accuracy of your printed item. You are responsible for making sure of the complete accuracy of this proof. After you sign the Proof Approval Form, you are responsible for any errors or omissions not indicated at this time.

If you require any help please do not hesitate to contact us