Computer Arts Projects - Printing Tips

The Printers eye view article displayed here outlines the 13 most common pitfalls when submitting artwork for print.

I won't go through everyone but ones I thought might need explaining are:

Imposition: This refers to printing multiples and Rik Penny says "Don't impose jobs yourself as all printers should have imposition software and different ways of approaching the task." This is particularly important when trimming a print job as different printers are set up in various ways.

Spreads: Penny states that a job should never be supplied to printers in spreads as the reprographics dept will have a nightmare trying to split the pdf files into single page documents ready to impose them. Spreads are fine for clients but not for printers.

Inner Margins: When printing a perfect bound book it is vitally important to leave a big enough inner margin otherwise the text will read into the gutter and force the reader to bend the spine back, thus breaking the glue and result in the book falling apart. 15-20mm is the reccommended margin width

Outer Margins: When printing large saddle stitched documents it is important to note that the middle sections will trim shorter than the outer pages. You'll need to plan your designs accordingly and either leave a big enough margin width so as not to impose on the content or offset pages during imposition.

Cutter Guides: These should be created and supplied as an illustrator file due to the fact that printers use computer controlled routers, which can only use vector artwork, not bitmaps. Set them up as a spot colour and label them 'cutter' and set them to overprint.

Saddle stitch binding: When designing a document that will be saddle stitch bound it is important that the pages are dividle by four as 8, 12, 16, 20 and so on. It is impossible to achieve this without it.

Roll fold: Roll folding relates to folding pages and accounting for shorter pages as a result of folding. When designing a an a4 document for example always make the first page the size of the document and then decrease the page by 1mm in succession.