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Graphic designing, these days, has become as easy that even a new hand can try their creativity. Recent years has seen a plethora of user-friendly designing softwares that made things easy for a designer but made it difficult for a printing house! Each designing software has its own limitations and advantages. It’s a matter of personal preference. Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Free Hand, Corel Draw are some of the commonly heard names in the graphic arts industry. When it comes to publishing softwares, QuarkXpress, Pagemaker & InDesign tops the list. If we apply the theory of ‘all are equal, but some are more equal’, Adobe Illustrator is a sure bet.

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Printing firms are regularly receiving artworks created in MS Office softwares. MS Office softwares (like Word, Power Point, Excel) are created for office specific purposes and at this point in time it doesn’t have the capabilities of professional designing softwares.

Preparing artwork for printing

So you have done a good job. How good it will appear in print is mostly dependent on how you prepare the file for output. There are a few essentials to make good print. Use these check points before sending the file to the service bureau.

Image Resolution: Please ensure that you have not used low-resolution images (want to know more about resolution? Check our FAQ page) taken from the Internet. Most of them of are very low resolution, which will not give good result on offset printing. You can scan photographs and use them, but ensure that it is of minimum 300 dpi resolution. (Read more in the FAQ page)
Color Mode: Make sure that the color mode used throughout is CMYK. This is applicable for images as well as texts or fills.
Fonts: Its essential that you provide all the fonts used in the document along with the artwork. This may not always be possible because of copyright laws. In such cases you can use softwares like Illustrator, Corel Draw & Freehand to make the fonts curve / path so that it lose the properties of a font file.
Bleed: Bleed is important when an image or fill color is touching the crop area. In those cases you have to extend the fills or image further from the crop marks so that the paper color will not show after the final cutting.
Crop & Folding Marks: Now you have to add crop and folding marks to your artwork. Crop marks has to be the exact measurement of the final. The artwork should have folding marks if it has to be folded. If die cutting is involved the die marking also have to be supplied along with the artwork.

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