Print Ready (or Press Ready) is the term used to describe a printable file that meets all guidelines and specifications required to produce a perfectly printed document without alteration by a pre-press team.

Many times a day, we receive artwork that will print at an unacceptable quality level. We wouldn’t accept it, nor would we expect you to either. Thankfully with our eagled eyed production team, we’ve developed processes and software to spot many common issues with artwork before we print.

We’re pretty flexible with our printing, but the rules of print ready artwork don’t bend and to ensure you get the best print possible we ask that if you are supplying your own artwork you follow our guidelines below.

A print ready file has:

  1. Artwork supplied at the correct size
  2. 3mm bleed supplied on all sides of the artwork
  3. All RGB/Spot/Pantone colours converted to CMYK. We will convert all files, but in doing so there might be slight colour variations
  4. A safe area of 4mm on the inside of the graphic to ensure no critical text is cut off
  5. All images within the design are at least 300 dpi (high resolution)
  6. All images are embedded within the artwork
  7. All fonts are outlined or embedded
  8. Artwork supplied as pages and not spreads
  9. Multi-page artwork is supplied as a single file
  10. No files with multiple jobs or artwork types in a single pdf
  11. Black text is set at 100% black and not a colour mix of CMYK. Using a mix of CMYK to create black can cause an over saturation of ink on the page
  12. Registration black is not used…..ever
  13. White Text is not set to overprint. If this is the case, the white which is unprintable will not show on the final printed file.

We understand the above list looks daunting and this is why our production team are only too happy to lend a hand in identifying issues if they arise. We can fix some of these issues quite easily but others do take time and may incur a charge.

We always recommend you have artwork designed by professionals. Within our graphic design studio, Kaizen Brand Evolution, each of our graphic designers is not only University educated in graphic design but they have also been given in depth training and guidance within our own four walls to ensure our files print as they should, each and every time.