Design and Print tips

If you don't have experience of the industry, design and print phrases can seem confusing. So I've put together a simple guide, which will hopefully answer a few of your questions.

CMYK, PMS and RGB Colour
CMYK or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black are the four colours used in full colour printing. Designers will normally produce CMYK format artwork for printed material. If they are designing for the web or screen, they will usually produce the artwork as RGB, which is Red, Green and Blue. PMS stands for Pantone Matching System and this colour system is used to match colours exactly. Designers tend to use Pantone colours (also known as Spot printing) when a client wants an exact shade of colour for their logo or corporate identity.

Digital Images
Scanners and digital cameras create images using combinations of just three colours; Red, Green and Blue (RGB). These are the colours that computers use to display images on your screen. Printing presses print full colour pictures using a different set of colors; Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK). So at some stage your RGB file must be translated to CMYK in order to print it on a printing press. This is easily done using an image editing program like PhotoShop, PhotoDeluxe, or Corel PhotoPaint and can be done by your designer.

Will my printed design look exactly like it does on my computer monitor?
When you view designs on screen, you are looking at RGB images. Most print is printed in the CMYK format so there may be a slight difference in the shade of colour.

High resolution and low resolution
Digital images are made up of lots of tiny coloured dots. Images and pixel artwork is usually produced in a high or low resolution format. High resolution normally refers to images 300 dpi or above, dpi stands for dots per square inch. If you are using images for print they need to be at least 300 dpi. If you are viewing images on the web or screen you normally only need them to be 72 dpi. This is known as low resolution.

Bleed on documents
Bleed is the term for printing that goes right to the edge of the paper. If you want this effect then your artwork needs to have a 3mm bleed area around the outside of the document. This gives the printer some leeway when it comes to trimming your document to the correct size.

Die Scoring or Die Cutting
A steel rule die is manufactured, which is composed of thin pieces of steel that will be used to stamp a line or rule on the printed material. To die cut is to cut the printed piece almost like a cookie cutter.

Saddle Stitching
This is when two staples are added into the centre of the document on the fold line. Magazines and newsletters are typically saddle stitched.

Perfect Binding
Magazines and books are normally produced in this way. They have a squared off edge and glued pages.

Perforating Pages
This is the creation of holes either by die or a bindery rolling process, for tear off forms or coupons.

I'll do my best to answer any other questions you may have - just email: hello@eberle.co.uk