So, you've designed your own business card, brochure, or flyer and now you need to get it to us. First off, that's awesome, we are more than happy to work with designers to turn their work into hard copy printed products.
Bleeds
A bleed is when you create a design with images or shapes that print right to the very edge of the paper. In order to complete this effect, we need to images and shapes to extend or "bleed" approximately 1/8" past the limit of the actual design. In production, we will print the image on a larger that required sheet of paper with the extended design, then cut to the final size.
Colours
In digital printing, colours will be produced in CMYK so to ensure you are getting the appropriate look, be sure to design in CMYK. Typically, digital production printing tends to print about 10 - 20% darker than seen on a screen, so it is best to accommodate for this extra level of darkness.
Canva
If you have designed your file in Canva, you can add Graphic Press as a contributor by sharing the file to our account print@graphicpress.ca. By sharing it with us, we can go in and make any slight adjustments to make sure it prints exactly the way you envisioned it.
Adobe Illustrator
We subscribe to adobe creative cloud so you can add us as a contributor to your files or send them as a .ai file in an email. Create your design with the appropriate bleeds and margins, and expand all of your fonts so that they load properly on our end.
Corel Draw
Corel is our primary design software. Similar to Illustrator, be sure to design your file with appropriate bleeds and convert all of your fonts to curves so that they load properly on our end.
For more information, check out this handy-dandy video from a great pro in our industry.