By Janet Conner, Client Services Director, MSGPR
You spent the evening getting the flyer just right. The photo’s centered, the colors pop, and the headline is in that pretty script font you found. You send it off, and what comes back has a white sliver down one edge, a fuzzy photo and your pretty font swapped out for plain Arial.
Nothing went wrong at the press. The file just wasn’t ready for it. A file that looks perfect on screen still has to meet a few rules most people never see. Here they are in plain English.
CMYK color mode. Computer screens mix red, green and blue light (RGB) to make color. Printing presses use cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink (CMYK). If you convert your colors before you send the file, a bright screen blue won’t print as a dull purple.
High resolution: 300 DPI. Screens show images at about 72 dots per inch, which looks fine on a monitor. Print needs 300 DPI so photos and graphics stay crisp instead of turning into a blocky, pixelated mess up close. A photo pulled off a website or out of a text message is usually 72 DPI, which isn’t high enough resolution for print.
Bleed and trim lines. Printing is done on large sheets that get cut down by a mechanical blade. That blade can shift by a hair. So designers extend background color and images past the edge of the page. That extra is called bleed, and it’s why you won’t get an ugly white sliver along the border.
Outlined fonts. If you used a special font, the printer’s computer may not have it. When that happens, it swaps your font for its system’s default font, like Arial. Turning your text into outlines (vector shapes) locks the words into the artwork so they look the same on any machine.
If you do your own desktop publishing: package your files. That means sending the layout along with every photo, art piece and font it uses, all in one folder.
A word about AI-made art
More people are bringing in art made with AI tools, and most printers will turn those files away. Here’s why:
- Low resolution. Most AI images are built for web viewing at 72 DPI. Print needs 300 DPI.
- Made-up fonts. AI is known for inventing lettering that doesn’t exist as a real font, so there’s nothing to install or fix.
- Nothing is embedded. The art and design pieces aren’t built into the file the way print needs, and the result can come out looking like a broken puzzle.
AI can be a fine place to start an idea. Just plan on having the final piece built properly for print.
