Quite often we are given a disk and told that it’s ‘print ready’ artwork and good to go! But is it really? We will look at every job where ‘print ready’ artwork is brought in to us and if we feel that changes could be made to improve that job we speak with our clients before we go to print. Our clients spend a lot of money with us and we want their job to the best it can be.
We were approached by one of our clients to produce a corporate Brochure for them to promote the product they sell, which is aimed at the top end of that particular market.
The client supplied the artwork, which historically had always been of a very high standard.
However on closer inspection we found that the way that the artwork had been laid out meant that a percentage of the image that appeared on one page would need to register when it was folded with the page before or after it. This process is fine and used quite often by designers.
When this process is used care needs to be taken when printing as the colours must match exactly, otherwise when the sections are folded and saddle stitched together, the images, when brought together won’t match.
The other area that requires particular care is in the folding and gathering of the sections to make sure that when the sections are stitched together the images register and are not out of alignment.
When the first digital proof was put together it became apparent that the text on some of the pages flowed across from page to page, this caused us concern as although our presses and finishing equipment are very accurate it would have been incredibly difficult to register text as well as the images and wouldn’t have looked good at all.
We liased with the client and made adjustments to the artwork files to reduce the risk of this to a minimum.
The client also wanted the cover to be predominately solid black with the companies logo on the front and back cover, which is square and printed in Red. The client also wanted the companies name reversed out of the solid black and set in a ‘crossed’ pattern on both the front and back covers.
The Client then explained that he wanted spot gloss UV varnish on the companies logos and where the companies name was revered out to enhance it.
We explained to the client that to add spot gloss uv varnish would be fine for the logos, however to register this process with the reversed out text would again prove to be very difficult and any slight miss register would have an extremely detrimental affect on the look of the cover.
We recommended to still have the company name set and laid out in the format that he wanted, but to apply the gloss spot UV varnish directly to the solid printed cover and that this would leave a much better look to the final finish.
The finished brochure looked extremely good and is one the best catalogues we have produced.
