Design for Graphic Designers

• Design Tutorials
• Design Templates
• Design Specifications

Design Tutorials

Getting your PDF Print Ready

To supply your file "Ready to Print" please setup a PDF according the our guide below.

Getting your PDF Print-Ready Size: 0.25 MB Right Click to save PDF file Download / View

How to Convert from Macromedia Freehand MX to Adobe PDF

Converting from Freehand MX to PDF Size: 0.3 MB Right Click to save PDF file Download / View

How to Convert from CorelDraw to Adobe PDF

Converting from CorelDraw to PDF Size: 0.3 MB Right Click to save PDF file Download / View

Design Templates

Product / Size	InDesign Template
Presentation Folder	-	Landscape
Almost A2	Portrait	Landscape
A3	Portrait	Landscape
A4 ZFold / Tri-Fold Brochure	-	Landscape
A4 / Letterhead	Portrait	Landscape
Greeting Card	Portrait	Landscape
A5	Portrait	Landscape
A6	Portrait	Landscape
A7	Portrait	Landscape
DLE	Portrait	Landscape
Business Cards	Portrait	Landscape

Macromedia Freehand MX template pack. The Freehand template pack contains : business cards, rack cards, A4 Z-fold flyer and more.

Design Specifications

The finished size of your business card is 90 x 55mm. The supplied design needs to be 94 x 59mm to give an extra 2mm bleed which will be trimmed from each side. Within the finished size is a 4mm buffer area, this caters for up to 2mm misregistration that is inevitible in digital printing. Place text and important graphics inside the buffer space shown by the dotted line. Frames or borders are discouraged as we can not guarantee even borders. If you need exact measurements, then ask us about offset printing. All images must be at least 300dpi and in CMYK colour. Convert all fonts to paths or outlines.

Designing your own business card can be a cost effective and rewarding experience whether you are a graphic designer or not.

Handy List of Ideas to Include

Ideas for the Reverse of Double-Sided Business Cards

Map to your office
Bulletpoint list of products/services you offer
A space to write in quotes
A space to write in the next appointment time

Bleed and Card Size

The finished Printable Solutions Business Cards are 90 x 55 mm. "Bleed" is a printing term used to indicate the area that will be trimmed off after the job is printed and cut to the finished size. The design you'll be making will be 94 x 59 mm, this allows 2mm of 'bleed' on each size of the card. Since the bleed area will be trimmed off during the cutting process, there can be no text or other important information in the bleed area. It is recommended that important elements of your design, such as text have a minimum distance of 4 mm from the edges of your card, this is 6mm from the edge of your design.

Note the Document tab where the size is 90 x 55mm and the bleed is 2, also note the blue guides that indicate the 4mm buffer area in the Freehand MX screen shot below.

Click the thumbnails for full-sized image

Minimum Artwork Resolution is 300 dpi

Make sure your artwork's resolution is at least 300 dpi. This resolution will ensure that your design will appear crisp and sharp instead of blurry and pixelized. Graphics from websites are usually unsuitable and are at 72 dpi. As a guide a 300 DPI 94 x 59mm bitmap will have 1110 x 697 pixels.

Convert your graphics to CMYK colors

Your files should be saved in CMYK mode before you send them to us for printing. When we receive a design file in RGB mode, we automatically convert the files to CMYK mode for printing. Not every RGB color has a CMYK equivalent, and the result could be more than just subtle color shifts.

Designing for Digital

A four colour grey will come out better than a grey that only uses K (Black) and when using solid blocks of colour, the more toner-heavy colours will look richer than the lighter colours. Four colour black can be used to achieve a really glossy effect, CMYK - 40,40,40,100 looks great, but 100,100,100,100 is so dark it will bleed into surrounding colours.

Dealing with Fonts

If you are designing in a vector graphics program like Macromedia Freehand, please convert
all fonts to paths prior to sending your design. Once fonts are converted to paths, we will not
be able to edit your text but we also won't need your designs fonts installed.

Unsuitable files for designs

We do not accept Microsoft Office documents. MS Office is not a desktop publishing program, and we just can't get reliable, accurate reproduction of Office documents as you created them on your computer. If you must do your design in MS Word, PowerPoint, etc, you must send us a PDF or other accepted publishing format - the Office document is useless to us. If you don't have Adobe Acrobat to create a PDF with, have a look at the section on dealing with unsupported formats, below.

Preferred types of files for designs

It doesn't matter if your file comes from a Mac or a PC.

Macromedia Freehand, TIFF, PSD are all prefered types of files.

Dealing with unsupported formats

If you have a design in one of the unsupported formats listed above, or any other format we don't list as supported, we can't print your design as-is. You'll need to find a way to convert it to one of our accepted formats. Adobe Acrobat can create PDF files from almost any file you can open and print on your computer, so this is a good choice. Make sure you have Adobe Acrobat (which is not free to download) not Adobe Acrobat Reader (a free download from Adobe and often installed on people's computers).

If Adobe Acrobat isn't an option for you, and you can't convert the file to an image, you can as a last resort print it out and scan it in at 600dpi. This will result in an inferior quality ad unless you have a very high quality printer and scanner, but it's better than nothing. Just send us a JPEG (saved at maximum quality) or TIFF of the scanned ad.

Finally, we're always happy to do the design for you in-house. You can fax us a print-out of your file to use as a guide and we'll make up the design from that. You will have to provide us with any logos, images, and fonts you want used - and we can't use them if they're embedded in a Microsoft Office document (MS Word, Publisher, etc). Of course, there is a charge for setting the design.

Spelling & Proof reading

Proof read your information and consult a dictionary if necessary. It is very easy to make a spelling error or accidentally enter a wrong number. Our systems are automated and we do not manually transfer your text - the responsiblity of proofing lies with you. Please be sure your information is entered correctly, take your time.

Resources

Xerox Docucolor 6060 PPD

Some designers will want to download the PPD (Postscript Printer Description) for the Xerox Docucolor 6060. If you don't know how to use a PPD, don't worry about it.