10 Common Printing Mistakes

Avoid These 10 Common Printing Mistakes

A good printing job conveys professionalism and makes you stand out from your less savvy competition. Take advantage of this idea to give a boost to your marketing. Here, we’ve outlined 10 common printing mistakes that will take your print job to the next level.

Top ten printing blunders to avoid at all costs:

1. Not including enough bleed on your artwork 

If you’re new to design, you probably don’t understand that the guillotines that printer companies use to divide your design aren’t incredibly accurate, so if you don’t leave at least 3mm of space (typically around an eighth of an inch) your images could be completely off center, or get cut off.

Bleed on your artwork resource here

2. Small text on a black background 

Again, this is probably new news to you, but colored and black inks don’t mix. Don’t put small words on a solid black background, because the letters and colors will blur together and the entire thing quickly becomes illegible. Stick with solid white text with no black or other color.

3. The worst of all: spelling blunders 

One of the easiest ways to be ridiculed or passed to the side is to have spelling errors that you forgot to edit in your print. Take the time to double check to guarantee your document has no spelling or grammatical errors. Have someone else proof the document if you’re not sure about an error and don’t simply rely on spell-checkers.

240 common spelling mistakes here

4. Forgetting that borders should be quiet 

In general, keep all information about a quarter of an inch away from borders to ensure that you won’t lose any information when everything is cut and formatted for your needs.

5. Low resolutions 

Double check and make sure that your image is at LEAST 300 ppi- 400 ppi or it won’t look very good on your document- in all reality it would probably be impossible to decipher what the image really is.

Low resolution vs high resolution resource here

6. Raster versus Vector text 

Use solid, defined lines. This means using vector type fonts before anything else. If you don’t, your image won’t be sharp.

Resource from Design Shack

7. Making your black and white images color

Convert images in drop boxes to guarantee that they stay black, and don’t mix with cyan, magenta or yellow- because then you’re just wasting ink.

8. Not locking down layers on your document 

When your design is perfect, lock it down. It’s easy to move something unintentionally and screw up your whole document- so take care.

9. Not supplying a hard copy 

Make sure that you go in there with printed proofs, to show that you know what your design should look like.

10.Terrible design taste (don’t take it personally) 

Take your print job seriously- it defines who you are, what your business does, and how well you’re going to operate. If you fail to convert your ideas into print or media, don’t give up- there are a plethora of resources out there to provide you with information to get you headed on the right track.

How to tell if you have a top notch design

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