How do I know my artwork is ready for print?

Your artwork is ready for print when you can tick off nine fundamental things in whatever software you used to build the file. They cover the edges, colour, sharpness, fonts, file type, and the words and details on the page. Anything you can't tick, you should fix before you send so your final result looks more professional.

Don't stress out the printer... their job is hard enough.

With all the new tech available, and how easy most of it is to use, let alone get hold of, small businesses feel they can do all their own artwork. Which is great. We should all have the option to save money and DIY where we can. BUT... and it's a big but... like with any DIY project, you'll reach a point where the easy software assumes you know what you're doing, and it won't tell you when you're getting it wrong. So the job ends up looking a bit "home made". If you don't mind, that's fine. But if you still want to look professional, you'll need some help with the fundamentals. 

Print is where these mistakes will show up the fastest, because your screen will happily show you a finished-looking file and say nothing about where the guillotine is going to cut.

Is there extra image past the edge, and is anything too close to it?

Your printer trims through a stack of paper and it moves slightly. If your background stops exactly at the edge, a cut that's a hair off leaves you a white line. So anything that touches the edge needs to extend about 3mm past it. That's called bleed. Same reason, other direction: keep text and logos at least 5mm in from the trim, or you risk them getting shaved or simply sitting so close to the edge they look odd. In Canva, choose Show bleed in the settings, and choose bleed and trim when you save to PDF. Also don't forget to set some margins to stay in off the edge.

Will the colours and images look the way they do on screen?

Screens make colour with light and printers make it with ink. Regardless of what software you're using, if you're going to print, you need to provide it in CMYK. It's not going to look as bright as you expect - and because graphic designers actually calibrate their monitors - it may look very different - therefore you'll feel the need to change your colours. That's why you should START with CMYK colours, CMYK logos and CMYK images, so you pick your colours more accurately. Better yet, choose your colours using a proper PMS swatch chart. I covered a little about RGB and CMYK in Monday's reel.

Also, an image that looks sharp on screen can print soft (fuzzy or pixilated). It's not actually about the file looking good on your monitor, but about how many actual pixels there are at the size it'll be printed. You want 300 DPI at actual size, and I went through what DPI actually means in an earlier blog.

And if you went and pulled that image off a website, it's almost certainly built for screen and will print badly. It's also worth asking the question whether you're allowed to use it. Copyright infringement can be very costly.

Will the printer see what you see?

If the printer doesn't have your font, some systems quietly swap it for something else. Make sure you export as a PDF with the fonts embedded, or convert the text to outlines. That's also why your printer asks for a PDF. It locks everything in place, fonts, colours and layout, and a PNG or JPG doesn't carry that information the same way.

Have you read it out loud?

No, I don't mean skim or read in your head. I actually mean read it out loud using your voice. Or even use text to voice software to read it to you. Typos have a habit of hiding from the person who wrote them, but they don't hide once it's been printed 500 times. Then check the phone number, date, address and price against the source, not against your memory of typing them.

If you've ticked all nine and it still doesn't look right, that's a different problem, and often quite simple to solve. That's what DIY Support and Guidance is for, and I have a trial code, DIYTRIAL2026, for 25% off your first hour if you want to try it.

The 5-Minute Pre-Print Check puts all nine on one page to tick off, and you'll find it on the freebie download page: andyk.com.au/freebie-old-design