Tips & Tricks

Create a New Document
- New File (File>New>Project)
- Select "Print" as the Layout type
- Specify the width and height of your artwork. This should be the trim size of your artwork.

Create your Design
Design your artwork as you normally would while keeping in mind the specfications below about bleeds and colors.

SPECIFIC DESIGN TIME INSTRUCTIONS BLEEDS
Please keep bleeds in mind when you are designing your artwork. If your artwork has a white border, then bleeds are not required. However, if your artwork is NOT white on all four sides, then you MUST include bleeds in your files. In QuarkXpress, this area should be extended past the page borders, as indicated by the blue lines in the above picture. Please click here for more information on bleeds.

BORDERS and SAFE AREA
The cutting process for printed materials has a mechanical tolerance of about .0625 or 1/16 of an inch. When using a border in your artwork, it is essential that your design use at least .125 or 1/8 of an inch of white space from your border to the cut line to maintain a symmetrical appearance. Click here for more information about borders.

It is also imperative that no text or essential parts of your artwork come within 1/16" of the trim line. Again, due to the mechanical tolerance during the cutting process, any content within 1/16" of the trim line may be cut off.

RESOLUTION
For optimal results, your image must be at least 300 DPI (dots per inch), also known as Pixels Per Inch (PPI) at the final output size. Please do not attempt to change a low resolution image to a higher one by changing the DPI in your imaging software. Doing so will result in a blurred output.

SOLID BLACKS
If you want to have an area of solid black within your document, using 100% Black will not result in a nice, rich and saturated black. To obtain these results, instead using a rich black color, represented by the following CMYK values:
C: 60%, M: 40%, Y: 40%, K: 100%.

COLLECT FOR OUTPUT
- With your artwork in its final stage, choose "Collect for Output" from the file menu.
- Navigate to a folder where you'd like to save all the files.
- Please make sure the in the "Collect" section, "Layout", "Linked Pictures", "Embedded Pictures", and "Fonts" are checked.
- Click Save.