How to set up print ready artwork for flyer printing

Document Size

First things first, you need to set up your ‘Document’ and/or ‘Artboard’ to the correct size. Every product on our website has a technical specification tab, which details what size you need to set up your document and/or artboard.

Bleed Area

When it comes to printing, bleed is your best friend. This is just a little extra 3mm on each border. You may wonder why we need this? It is very difficult to print exactly to the edge of a material, so to achieve this, it is necessary to print a slightly larger area than is needed and then trim the design down to the required finished size. Bleed allows us to trim your flyer neatly and perfectly, ensuring you don’t end up with any white lines around the edge of your design. We recommend extending your background colour or pattern out into your bleed area.

Colour

Like most printers, our printers are set-up to print in CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). That’s because colour work differently on paper than they do on a screen. Have you ever printed something out on your home or office printer and noticed the colour looks a little off to the colours you were seeing on the screen? Before you start thinking you’re going crazy, don’t worry – this can happen if you’re using the wrong colour profile. Your computer screen works in RGB; RED, GREEN & BLUE – NOT CMYK. You might think this doesn’t make a difference to the final product when you’re designing something, but it does.

Resolution

Using an unsuitable image resolution is one of the most common errors designers make when creating flyers for printing. The result is fuzzy print quality, termed “Pixelation”. If you don’t keep an eye on your image resolution right from the start you may end up having to completely recreate your design file from scratch.

You have no doubt heard yourself say ‘It looks ok on my screen; why won’t it print ok?’ The answer is simply that screen resolution is lower than printing resolution. When your artwork is on screen, it is usually displayed at 72dpi. Our printing presses will print your flyers at 300dpi. If your low resolution, 72dpi artwork is printed at 300dpi, your artwork will be pixelated. The best way to comprehend this is if you imagine watching an old black and white film on a top of the range TV, it wouldn’t look as clear as Hollywood’s latest blockbuster. As monitor sizes and resolutions increase, they will be capable of displaying much higher quality imagery, but for now use 72dpi as the rule of thumb for viewing artwork on screen.

Not sure how your artwork will look when its printed?

Within your PDF document, you can zoom in to the artwork. This will show the true resolution, even taking into account that your computer screen will have a lower resolution than our flyer printing presses. The general rule of thumb is to zoom in on your image by 300-400% to gain a good idea of how the image will look when printed.

Save as “High Quality Print”

If you are creating your artwork using an Adobe application such as InDesign or Illustrator we recommend exporting directly from these programs in PDF format. We recommend exporting files at the “High Quality Printing” setting. This ensures that your images and fonts are flattened, so that we open it up to carry out your FREE ARTWORK CHECK before it goes to print, nothing changes or moves.

If you want an affordable flyer to hand out to the masses, then a 150gsm stock would be our recommendation. This thin, silky stock is often used for club flyers. Our Standard 250gsm Silk is a good all-rounder and is often used for higher quality flyers, or takeaway menus since you’ll want them to last a little longer. If you want something to last a quite a while longer such as a gift voucher, menu card or luxurious flyer handout, then a heavier stock such as our 350gsm Silk would be most appropriate.

If it’s durability you need then you may want to opt for a lamination. This not only increases the longevity of your flyers but will also give them a premium (and splash-proof) finish. Choose a high shine gloss lamination, a subtle no-shine matt lamination or a soft touch velvet lamination for an extra luxurious feel.

Currently, we are only able to offer the most popular paper types and sizes online. All of these paper types are bought in bulk to keep our prices as cost effective as possible, savings we are able to pass onto you. However, we are able to print custom size flyers and offer alternative paper types upon request.

Our range of alternative paper types includes an environmentally friendly recycled paper types as well as Fedrigoni’s luxury paper range for when your creativity has no bounds.

If you are unsure as to which paper type would be best suited to printing your flyer, don’t hesitate to get in touch and one of our paper experts will be happy to assist.

Our artwork team is trained to ensure your flyer design is set-up for print and prints as you’ve envisioned. Unfortunately, what we can’t do is check spelling, grammar and contact details (should they be included). It’s important that you triple check these and we would recommend having someone with a fresh set of eyes also take a look. Believe us when we say, even the most obvious errors can be missed.