Every job that leaves the studio goes out as a print-ready file, and the phrase gets asked about more than anything else on the quote. It is not a formality. A print-ready file is one where the printer cannot accidentally make a mistake with it — where the answer to every decision they would otherwise have to guess is already in the document.
Bleed, and why the white border is not your friend
A printer prints on a big sheet and cuts it down. The cutter is a machine, and a machine is allowed to be a millimetre off. If your artwork stops exactly at the finished size, a millimetre the wrong way shows a sliver of unprinted paper along one edge — the thin white line people then spend an afternoon blaming on the design.
Bleed is the fix: the artwork runs past the trim edge, usually 3mm on every side, and the trim line cuts through it. Nothing important sits in that zone. Phone numbers, addresses and QR codes go inside the safe margin, which is another 3 to 5mm in from the trim. So a finished A5 flyer is 148 × 210mm, and the file you send is 154 × 216mm with the outer 3mm sacrificed to the blade.
Colour mode is not a switch you flip at the end
Screens make colour out of light. Presses make it out of ink, and ink cannot reach the brightness of a backlit phone. A file built in RGB carries colours that a CMYK press physically cannot put on paper, and the conversion happens at the printer's end, on your deadline, without you.
Build in CMYK from the point where the job is a print job. The colours that move most are the bright ones — electric blues, vivid greens, hot pinks and anything that glows on a screen. If a brand colour lives in that range, agree a substitute before the first layout, not after the first proof.
Resolution means "at the size it will be printed"
Three hundred dots per inch at final size is the working number for anything someone will hold in their hand. The important part is at final size: a photo that reads as sharp on a phone at 1,000 pixels wide turns to mush when you stretch it across an A3 poster.
Large format gets away with less, because nobody stands thirty centimetres from a pull-up banner. Something in the 100 to 150 dpi range at full size is normal for banners and boards, and the file stays editable rather than becoming a two-gigabyte monster.
Fonts, and the black text trap
Outline the fonts, or embed them. An outlined file renders the same on every machine, which means the proof you approved is the sheet that comes off the press.
The other classic is black text. Pure black made of four inks looks richer on screen and prints as a registration problem — four plates have to land in exactly the same place, and when they drift a fraction, small text goes blurry and ghosted. Body text and anything thin should be single-plate black: 100% K, no cyan, magenta or yellow. Reversed white text over a dark background is the same argument in reverse — knock it out, do not overprint it.
Get one proof before the run
Ask for a single printed proof, at final size, on the actual stock, before the press runs the quantity. It is the cheapest money in print. A colour that looked wrong on screen can be fixed on a proof in an hour; the same colour across five thousand flyers is a new job.
Bring the proof to the press side and compare under the same light you will judge it in. Ghalamoor and gloss reflect differently, and a colour that sings on one can look tired on the other — which is a decision worth making before the run, not after delivery.
If any of this is your printer's job, that is fine
Send the brief, the sizes, the quantity and the deadline, and say what the item has to do for you. Ask us for the source files as well as the press file, so the artwork stays yours and can be reprinted anywhere. That is the whole difference between a file and an asset.
Before you attach anything, these are the six things worth a second look:
- Bleed on all four sides, 3mm, with nothing important inside it.
- CMYK, not RGB — and the brand colour checked in CMYK, not on a backlit screen.
- 300dpi at final size for anything held in the hand, 100 to 150dpi for large format.
- Fonts outlined or embedded, so the proof you saw is the sheet you get.
- Body black as 100% K alone; reversed text knocked out, never overprinted.
- One printed proof on the real stock, approved before the quantity runs.
Every one of those is a question the printer would otherwise be asking you, on your deadline, with the press waiting.