For a designer,
online printing can be a different world altogether. Unlike a traditional printing company, online printers have different needs and options that an old school designer might have trouble dealing with it.
In this article, I will help some of you old school designers out there in online printing. Below is a list of things you should learn to focus upon in order to make it easier and better for you to design even when dealing with the online printing technologies.
1. Get the proper templates – Printing templates play a large part now in designs. If you want your project to go on smoothly, you have to acquire templates from the printer that you want to do business with. The templates that you get are usually ideal, because they already have the proper guidelines for folds, sections as well as printing bleeds that help make cutting your designs in paper better. So if you are a serious designer, do not forget to use templates.
2. Be aware of color modes – Now, if you are really an old school designer, or maybe a newbie in layout designs, it is important that you are aware of color modes. Since you will be designing a lot in the computer, you should know that computers display things in RGB (red green blue) while online printers use CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow Black) in printing. Thus, when you are designing something for online printing, you should convert your drafts to CMYK color mode first. This should help you see if the right colors are indeed set in your design.
3. Check your drafts three times over – It is also crucial that you check your drafts three times or more. For a lot of designers out there, errors in typing, grammar and image quality can be trouble, especially when these errors are passed on to printing. You always have to prevent this from happening by checking your drafts three times. In fact, it is good for you to let other people do the checking so that they can see all the errors with far more objective eyes. With these proper checks, your output would look much better and of course more professional.
4. Know about file formats – You might also want to read up about the different file formats. Different online printers may use different file formats depending on the software they are using. Typically, it is best to use different file formats when you send files. This should assure you that you would be delivering a proper file that can be used.
In my experience, it is actually good to send three basic types for printing. First, you should send the original document format for design, such as a Photoshop Document or CorelDraw file. Second, you should send a zipped or archived format of the document as a backup. Finally, a high-resolution image file is also good to send so that the printer can easily see the design.
With all these file formats; you will not go wrong in online printing.
5. Use only reliable companies – Finally, to make sure that there are hitches, you should always hire reliable online printing companies. Do not just hire the first name you see in your search engine. Always check for reputation through testimonials, reviews and printing samples. Only hire the best ones that impress you with their work, as well as with their price.
There you have it. Those are the things to watch out for and learn when you are a designer that going to use online printing. Remember these facts well. Applying the things you learned here would result to a good output.
