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File Preparation
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Your Green Guarantee gives you peace of mind and includes:
• Paperless Ordering
• All Jobs produced in an FSC Certified facility
• All Papers are FSC Certified, Chlorine-free, Acid-free and/or Recycled.
• All Digital Workflow
• Soy inks for Offset printing
• Simitri Toners for Digital printing
• Chemistry-free full color production
• Film-less platemaking (plates recycled)
• Eco-friendly packaging
• The option to add the Green Guarantee logo to your job, discretely, yet with pride.
• The option to include the FSC logo and our certificate number on your orders, please allow 24 hours additional for our external FSC audit to take place.
• The option to include a green tag line on your finished product that states that you are “Printing Responsibly” with a link to our educational blog.
• The option to include a green tag line on your finished product that lets the world know that you printed on FSC Certified, Chlorine-free papers with Soy inks.
Let us know what you are comfortable with and we will layout the artwork for your approval.
Filed under: Design, Environmentally Friendly Printing, Events/Sponsorship, File Preparation, Green Guarantee, Products, Recycled Paper, Technology, Templates, Waterless Printing on December 13th, 2007
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File preparation is very important to the quality of you final output. To help you get it right, we prepared two file prerparation guides:
Color printing and stationery file preparation guide
Large format file preparation guide
If you have questions after perusing the guides, don’t hesitate to call. We want to make sure you’re happy with your final results.
Filed under: File Preparation on June 12th, 2005
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Follow the checklist below to make sure your files are print ready.
The following products all print in spot color (Pantoneâ„¢) PMS colors only, which means your artwork needs to be vector, and the best program to use for vetor output is Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, or Quark.
Photoshop will not give you the ability to print spot color at all. Photoshop files can be used to print anything in CMYK, Full Color. See below.
Letterhead
Envelopes
1-4 Spot color Pocket Folders (Full color folders, see below)
1-2 Color Business Cards
The following products all print in CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) 4 color process, a.k.a. Full Color.
Coop Business Cards
Coop Postcards
4cp Pocket Folders
Inkjet Posters
Banners
Promoplanesâ„¢
Brochures
Giclee Fine Art Prints
The following product prints in RGB.
Digital C Prints or Photoprints
# *Images:* Before placing or embedding your artwork into any layout or illustration application, please make sure your images, photos, and raster graphics are saved in CMYK mode or grayscale mode, not RGB (they will not print correctly and it will cause our system to detect a problem and halt the production of your proofs and production of your job entirely). You will receive a message letting you know that your images need to be converted to CMYK mode.
# *Fonts:* There are thousands of fonts and that means that there are an unlimited amount of potential font based problems, to make it simple, include a compressed folder with all the fonts you used in the project; ones used in Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, InDesign, or any other popular graphics software programs. Send both screen and printer fonts for Type 1 fonts. Send the same format (Type 1, TrueType, OpenType) as used in the document. Send all the fonts used, including fonts in EPS graphics (or, convert fonts in graphics to outlines before placing in page layout application). By outlining the fonts in Illustrator or other EPS capable programs, you can outline your fonts which turns them into vector (or shaped) graphic elements as opposed to editable type. Since we are not in the business of editing copy, this should not cause any problems. If you want to leave your files in an editable format, make sure to include ALL the fonts used.
# *Page Layout:* When using programs like Adobe Page Maker, InDesign or Quark XPress, make sure to include in a compressed packaged folder of all the elements that are used to create your layout; logos, images, photos, vector art, fonts, etc…this way when we open and decompress your files we can see everything that was used to create your project in one convenient concise folder.
# *File Size:* If you feel that your files are too big to simply send over the internet, call us first, you may be surprised – OR use these tools to help you; www.stuffit.com (Mac Compression Software) or www.winzip.com (PC Compression Software). These programs will shrink or compress your files and make them smaller without compromising the integrity, quality or stability of your files included in the compressed, stuffed or zipped folder. Our file upload form can safely upload files up to 100mb. If you have a file bigger than 100 mb, please call us and we can walk you through uploading the exceedingly large file to our ftp server.
# *Illustration or Vector Art/Type:* When you create vector art for your graphics and type you are ensured of good crisp printing. Vector art is the sharpest type of graphic format there is, there is no bitmapping or rasterizing that happens, in other words there is no fuzziness when you zoom in on your artwork, the integrity of the art or type is flexible and will scale to whatever size you choose, especially when printing large posters, banners, photo C prints or giclee prints.
Filed under: File Preparation on June 11th, 2005
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*Goals and Design*
When preparing your files for output, you need to determine the goals of the project and then choose a medium and create a design that will best meet your goals.
For example, if you are a Marketing Manager given the task of producing a giant banner for a product launch, you need to make sure your design will translate well when printed very large and viewed from a distance. If you’re preparing for a trade show, you need to consider both distance and the fact that people will be darting by your booth, requiring your visual content be potent enough to catch wandering eyes.
The best solution when designing for large-format printing is to keep it simple and direct. Subtlety and complexity are difficult if not impossible to see at a distance and when competing for viewers’ attention.
The bottom line is to create a message that the medium can support.
*File Preparation Tips*
When blowing up images to large sizes from computer-generated image files, it is important to make sure the files were created in formats and resolutions that will assure quality results when printed.
There are three main issues to be aware of and if you’re careful, you’ll be amazed when you unfurl your product from the carton.
Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: File Preparation on June 11th, 2005