A GUIDE TO PRODUCING YOUR OWN ARTWORK

Producing your own artwork can save you both time and money but please remember that the production of commercial quality artwork takes both skill and training.
When you send your artwork we will check it and give you a call with any problems we can foresee.

Below is a rough guide to producing your artwork. If you have any queries about your artwork please contact us - our advice is free.

Unless you are sending artwork on a disk, please try to avoid the following:-
1. Text under 8 point and rules under 1 point
2. Light or thin text reversed out of black solids (please try to use bold or heavy text.)
3. Very fine tints. (Tints printed at 300dpi or less work best).

Artwork produced on computer and supplied on disk gives by far the best result as no intermediary process is required to make plates. N.B. We cannot be held responsible for unsatisfactory work where the artwork does not meet our specifications. If you have any doubts please call for advice.

Where colour artwork/images are supplies on disk please ensure they are converted to CMYK before you send them. The same applies to colours created in DTP packages. Please create your colours using a CMYK colour model as we cannot be held responsible for inaccurate colour matches due to scans, text or fills being sent as RGB files/models.

Standard Paper Sizes

'A' - The standard ISO size for printed matter, stationary and publications

Leaflets
When doing the layout or artwork for your leaflet you must always leave a 10mm margin around all four edges of the sheet unless you are using bleeds (see below). If you are doing the artwork on A4 to be reduced to A5 a 15mm margin.

Booklets
When producing artwork for booklets always leave a 10mm margin around each page. You must remember all booklets are produced with the pages in multiples of four and remember the cover counts as four pages. (i.e. a 14 page document plus front cover = 15 pages and will require a 16 page booklet leaving 1 page blank).

Bleeds
Where work is require to bleed off any paper edges this must be indicated when ordering or requesting a quote as it does incur an extra cost due to the use of non-standard paper sizes and trimming.

Artwork Quality
Please try and ensure all artwork is a good, strong, black image on white paper. On typewritters it is advisable to use a cabon ribbon instead of a fabric one. Try to avoid dot matrix printers as letters tend to be bitty.

Please try not to send artwork for booklets printed on black itself. Always send it on a separate, single sided sheets as sometimes we can accidentally pick up show through images when printing.

Black & White Photographs (Halftones)
Photographs require screening to break the continuous tone up into dots of differing densities before they can be printed. We will be happy to do this for you at a cost of £5.00 per photograph.

Photographs that have already been screened can be incorporated into you artwork providing they have been screened at 100lpi or less.

Where artwork is sent on disk we can, of course,scan your photos on our scanner and incorporate them into your artwork.

Compatability
Artwork on disk can be accepted in most of the popular software formats (PC or Mac). Please call for details. Files can be sent on floopy, 100Mb Zip disk or via the internet (recommended for small files only - if large files are sent you may have to pay out a small download charge).