Now you’re talking our language … Printing Terms and what they mean so that your projects look their best.
Printing terms are confusing especially if you don’t use them every day. My husband recently had a project for his work and he asked me what he needed from me to get the project rolling. When I quickly rambled off that I needed a print-ready file with crop and bleed marks he simply said I wasn’t speaking his language and that he had no idea what I was talking about. It got me thinking how often am I speaking in printing jargon where other people may be confused or googling what I tell them.
Here are a few terms to get you started. The fun part about printing is that every print shop puts their own spin on things. There are old school terms and newer terms that designers and lay people like to use.
Print-ready file: The file has at least a 300dpi. This means it won’t be pixilated when it’s printed. This can be tricky because for fast loading your photos online such as Facebook or Instagram you want it lower. You consciously need to make sure it's the original photo when you want to design something. Also, Canva has become an amazing tool for people to be able to easily design something fast and free.
Here’s our guide for properly downloading a Canva File for print.
The problem is even if you download for print, we notice the resolution can still be too low for really great quality printing. We're here to help and our design team at Swift Printing will check your files if you’d like. We can let you know if we need to make adjustments to make your print game perfect.
Crop Marks: These are those little lines on each corner that let our prepress team know the size of a piece. They also let our pressmen/women know where to trim the project.
Gutter: A gutter is an extra margin designed to allow room for trimming, binding or other finishing options after the project is printed.
Bleed: This means that ink goes all the way to the edge of your design. (I always think of an infinity pool.) You need the design to spill over the crop mark to make sure you don’t see any white on the edge of your project. Industry standard is .125 inch around each side.
Sections: For booklets that are stitched we use the term sections. Let’s say you have a 48 page booklet including a cover that has a finished size of 8.5 X 11. That means it’s 12 sections. We would print on 12 X 18 inch stock (most of the time) making 4 pages per section. Then it’s folded in half, stitched, and you’ve got your 48 page booklet. I think I need to write a whole article just on this topic now that I’ve started… (I’ll put a pin in that for now.)
Stitched: This means it is to be stapled at the fold.
Four Color Process: Is when CMYK are layered over one another to give us all the colors. Lots of lay people use the term full color. It is essentially the same thing.
CMYK: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black. Why is it K and not B? I’ll tell you in this article. https://www.swiftprinting.com/swift-times/why-isnt-it-cmyb
Spot Color: It is when one pre made color is laid down vs. 4 color process.
Registration: Making sure the layers of colors are in alignment. Have you ever looked at a magazine or a news paper that your eyes just can’t get into focus? Sometimes you can see some yellow and magenta to either side of the letters. That is due to poor registration. There is a formula to correct this, but what I’ve learned over the years is that most corrections are made by the pressmen/women. Just like any craft, experience is key. If you see someone looking down at the paper with a loop that is normally what they are checking.
Loop: A magnify glass that allows someone to see the registration or screens.
What are you favorite printing terms? Be sure to share them with me!
