Our design guideline templates on the right, will help you ensure your design/layout will meet all your expectations. You might not do this everyday as we do, but all you need is a little help! They will guide in your layout and provide not only the overall dimensions but the trim, safe and bleeds lines so that all your content and images will print and display just as you want. Complete PDF Templates can be downloaded on the right
Below find a Quick Reference Image and Print Ready File Specs
Design Tip: If you are exporting from your company's design center, try to Export or Save to the setting/choice similar to "send to commercial printer" or hi Res PDF. If you are unsure of all these try to select the highest quality you can and we will adjust all here, prior to print. If we make any non print ready changes, we will send you a proof.
For Signs or Display, Posters and Print orders
For signage graphics or layouts, we recommend composing your files using vectors art and not photos/images if possible.
We also recommend you flatten your files prior to uploading/submitting. This will allow you to see any transparency issues as well as provide you a better representation of the final colors. All files need to be flatten prior to being printed.
Print Ready File/Layout Instructions:
• Bleed: 1/8″ overall (.125 of an inch) will be trimmed off each side of your product. Your Final PDF file then should be .125” larger than the card you have selected. So a Jumbo Card is 5.5” Tall x 8.5” Wide. Your submitted file would be 5.75” Tall by 8.75” wide (added .125 to the left, right, top and bottom).
• Trim (cut) Line: This is where we will cut your card down from a much larger size press sheet to the final size that you ordered.
Borders- If you card has a border design, that border needs should be at least 1/4″ thick from the bleed line to ensure a balanced look.
• Safe Area: This area is close to wear the card is trimmed to its final size.
Elements (i.e., text, graphs, tables) too close to or over the trim edge maybe trimmed further than you think due to manufacturing tolerances. Make sure no critical text or part of any image leaks into the Safe.
Images bordering the trim should be expanded to the Bleed line so that that they “bleed” off the page.
• Images/Photos: CMYK @ 300dpi (1200dpi for Bitmaps) Hi Res Print.
• Flatten File: We recommend you flatted your final print ready card as you output the file. Especially if you are using transparencies or mask. This will assure that you exactly how your cards will look. Flattening at times can adjust all colors overall. All products we print are “Flattened”. This is part of our service so if you don’t flatten the card, it is fine, as we will at no charge. We just want you to beware that this can impact the entire card at times, based on how it was originally composed.
Prep your work for printing by saving a high-quality PDF for uploading. All files must be tagged with a color profile, ideally AdobeRGB or P3, but anything in the RGB colorspace will work. We do not support embedding any other colorspaces (like CMYK). We’re currently unable to accept TIFF, PSD, PDF or RAW files for printing.
We print most products at 300 DPI or higher, so in general we recommend uploading the highest resolution file you have and we can take care of resizing your image to accommodate the final print size. In most situations we don’t recommend using tools like Photoshop to artificially scale up your file to add extra pixels that weren’t in the original capture .Make sure your background extends to fill the bleed line to avoid having any white edges
