Hello inkheads! Let me start off by wishing you a very happy June!
Summer is my favorite time of year and luckily, PrintFirm’s celebrating the season with lots of exciting sales and promotions. I’m also planning a few more of those free print product giveaways you guys like so much. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but there will be another gnarly Go Skateboarding Day contest this year…
If you’re on our email list or you received one of our postcards in the mail, you’ve probably noticed that most of the deals and discounts require print ready artwork. Our customer service department’s gotten a lot of questions about what the heck qualifies as a print ready file, which brings me to the point of today’s post. Have no fear, new printing friend—I’ll give you the full breakdown for your future projects!
What is a print ready file?
Ok, I think I understand where the confusion comes from with this phrase. After all, the words ‘print ready’ are fairly ambiguous. At first glance, the term sounds as though you’re simply prepared to place your order. It’s a little more complicated than that, though.
We define the phrase ‘print ready’ the following way:
A complete design that’s technically correct and can be printed immediately after uploading.
Phew! That was more than a mouthful.
Now let’s break this bad boy down into parts to figure out what you need to send us to get your project onto the press.
If you read the definition carefully, you’ll see that there are really 2 parts to the equation that both lead up to the exciting culmination of your printed marketing campaigns. And said parts are inseparable because without each component intact, it would be impossible for us to produce the paper collateral.
Let’s use a real life example to explain what each part means. Pretend you have a postcard you made 5 years ago. You lost the native InDesign file, but you’ve got an old copy of the postcard and want the exact same design the second time around.
Does your artwork pass the print ready test?
Answer: NO!
Why not?
Because we can’t print your old postcard as is, at least not without scanning the physical item first.
Even though you want an identical design on your postcards, your artwork would be filed under incomplete. Don’t get me wrong—we would absolutely be able to accommodate you in this situation, just not through the discounted offers reserved for ready to print orders.
The technical side comes into play when you send us a file that’s not properly formatted in some way or another. Let’s say you ordered a standard 4″ x 6″ postcard, yet you sent us artwork for a 5″ x 7″ piece. We would have to put the order on hold until you correct the problem and submit updated artwork. As soon as you make the corrections, we’re good to go!
If you’d rather we make the corrections for you, we’d be happy to do so for an additional cost. You see as soon as someone from our team starts working on your file, you’re no longer in the print ready category. Makes sense, right? We’re able to offer you super low prices because we’re literally just putting your file to print. Anything beyond that eats into our overhead, which means you wouldn’t get low prices for very long because we’d go out of business.
5 Common circumstances without proper artwork
Hopefully we’re clear on what’s acceptable—now let’s go over the common situations that don’t quite make the CMYK cut. Here’s a list of the types of files that don’t qualify as print ready along with the reason why. I assure you, there’s a method to our ink madness!
#1) Hard copies of printed pieces- The fictional postcard example above would fall into this group. In that scenario, you had an old copy of a postcard that you wanted printed again. The physical copy can’t be printed again on its own—I’ll tell you what we can do with physical copies of artwork momentarily.
#2) Photos of prior print jobs- Pictures of the last postcard you sent out presents similar problems as hard copies do. Don’t worry, we can still help you if all you have is a picture of a campaign you’d like to run again, just not through the same process as someone with a file that’s ready for primetime.
#3) Isolated/Incomplete design elements- We run into this instance a lot with small business owners. You have your logo, contact info, maybe even a background image or pattern to use in your business card design. The only problem is that none of these elements are put together in a single file. In other words, your card design still needs to be designed. Design includes arranging elements on your layout, too, not just creating graphics from scratch. After all, you don’t want us to literally print just your logo on a 2″ x 3.5″ card, right? I didn’t think so.
#4) Web elements- Along the same lines as hard copies and disconnected design elements, screen shots of your website or your logo on your website won’t work for this purpose. Besides, you don’t really want us to print out low res graphics from the web. You wouldn’t be very happy with your marketing materials if we did!
#5) Files you want edited- This case comes up when clients want to reprint a previous design with a few, usually minor, modifications on the artwork. For example, you want us to replace your old logo with your new brand identity, or fix your company address. While these are indeed small changes, they’re changes nonetheless. Since our creative department would have to work on your files…you guessed it— they’re not print ready.
Alternative printing options
You don’t have to abandon your dreams of launching that big campaign in the near future if you don’t have a file that’s ready to upload. We have plenty of other ways to get your job done such as:
High resolution scan
A high res scan would be your cheapest option in situation #1 where you have a hard copy of a postcard you used before. The price of a scan depends on the size and type of the item; please note that this cheapest method won’t be as sharp as the original. Only use this option if quality isn’t your priority.
Pre-designed templates
There are plenty of places online where you can download professional design templates. This might not be a good idea unless you’re able to customize said templates with Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. No access to pro software? Try our free online design tool. We’ve got template galleries for many popular products, including hundreds of business card designs. Best of all, you don’t have to worry about formatting your file because the tool will do the work for you!
Custom design
Our creative team will take the lead and build your campaign from scratch, recreate a design you used in the past from a photo, or create a layout with elements you provide. No job’s too big or too small—we have different packages to suit your needs.
I hope this post clears things up for you. Did I miss your question? Ask me anything about our procedures in the comments below!