5 Points to Keep in Mind When Choosing a Print Graphic Designer

If your business uses print marketing–brochures, postcards, booklets, catalogs— to promote its goods and services, you need to understand how putting together these pieces for print differs from designing digital marketing.

Having a basic knowledge of print design will pay off for you in several ways. First, you will know just what a graphic designer needs from you to create the best-printed materials and why they need them. And second, you’ll be better able to decide if a graphic designer has the right skills to do a good job for you.

There are major differences between print and digital graphic design and because of the shift toward online marketing, not all graphic designers are adept at both.

Principles are similar; approaches are different.

The principles of print and web design are much the same, but the way you get there is different. Although many differences are technical and invisible to the end-user, a graphic designer who does not understand the ins and outs of designing for print can cause a lot of problems with the end product.

Here are just a few of the ways a print project can go wrong if it is not designed properly:

• Insufficient bleed could cause copy or photos to be chopped off the edge of a page.
• The use of low-resolution photos could mean that the color photos that looked great on the computer screen as the graphic designer created the piece will be grainy and fuzzy on the printed page.
• If the designer — and your staff –don’t thoroughly review a final proof, a major error that will require a reprint could slip through.

In other words, when a graphic designer isn’t up to speed on print design or working with printers, their lack of knowledge can cost you in terms of time, money and quality of your print marketing.

Before you choose a graphic designer for your print projects, it’s good to vet them. Here are a couple of ways to do it:

• Ask how much of their work is for print projects and how long they have been designing for print.
• Ask current or previous clients about the designer’s work and whether there were glitches in production.
• Ask printers who’ve worked with a designer about the designer’s work. Have they had problems with the files a designer sent them? Were corrections needed? Did design problems slip through that required reprints?

Here are some of the things you need to understand as you work with a graphic designer on your print marketing projects.

1. High-resolution photography is required

Digital photography and improvements in smartphone cameras have made it possible for non-professional photographers to take fairly good photos. Depending on your print project, you might want to use some of these images. However, while the quality of these photos is fine for web use, often they won’t reproduce well for print, where high-resolution photography works best.

When photos are shot at a low resolution, for example, 72 dpi (dots per inch), they have fewer dots of ink so that when they are enlarged or printed, they become fuzzy and blurry. For print purposes, photos need to be 300 dpi at a minimum and sometimes higher if they are to be used in a large format. Clients often supply photos in low-resolution format because they aren’t aware of how this could ruin their project. If you’ve sent a designer an image from your website or off your phone, they should get back to you and let you know that unless there is a high-resolution version of the image somewhere, they won’t be able to use it in your printed piece.

For marketing pieces where photos are essential to the message and design, it is good to invest in high-resolution images either by buying stock photos or hiring a professional photographer for a photo shoot.

2. In graphic design, bleeding is a good thing.

Because printing and trimming printed pages are inexact sciences, graphic designers build in what amounts to a margin for error. It’s called a bleed. As they design layouts using computer software programs, they include blank space around the design marks at the top and sides of the page showing the printer where to trim the page. The amount of bleed needed can vary from printer to printer, so your graphic designer needs to know enough to ask questions and not assume that the bleed they used with one printer will work with another. Another formatting issue that skilled print designers understand is how to design pages to keep paper waste to a minimum.

3. Colorful language: Computers speak one language; printers another

There’s a language barrier between computers and the printing process when it comes to colors. Computers talk in RGB; printers in CMYK. While RGB is correct for a computer screen, CMYK is required for print because it is a process that creates richer, deeper colors on the page. Your graphic artist must check to make sure all images are converted to CMYK. Typically, printers will check files and kick back any that include RGB images, but issues like this obviously slow a project down, as changes must be made before a job is placed on the press.

4. Pick the right paper stock for the particular project

Every day, you touch different types of paper: bond, used for letterhead or printed reports; cardstock, used for postcards or business cards; newsprint, the lightweight and often recycled paper used for newspapers or other publications with a short shelf life. You definitely benefit from having a seasoned graphic designer who understands the importance of choosing a paper with the right brightness and weight for your project. They will understand, and hopefully explain to you, why using a coated paper might be advisable for one project, but unnecessary for another, or how the brightness of a paper will affect the photography and typography in a printed piece. A graphic designer who works closely with professional printing companies will also be up to speed on what papers are high quality and have good values. Printers often have “house” papers that they buy in large quantities so that they can pass on the savings to their customers. The house paper may be fine and worth the savings or maybe you need something nicer than their bargain sheet for a particular project and it is worth it to your client to pay a bit more for better paper stock. A reputable printer should take your direction in this instance.

5. Pay attention to the final proof or you’ll pay the consequences

Your graphic designer should supply a final proof of your project before it goes to the printer. It is your last chance to catch a mistake. Your graphic designer should review it to make sure that all the instructions embedded in the file have worked or that they didn’t forget to mark a trim or fix a photo that was RGB. They should also be looking for issues like bad line breaks and copy that is inadvertently obscured by art or art obscured by copy. As a client, you should also review the proof, using multiple readers and reviewers if possible. This could be:

• A sharp-eyed staff member or a professional proofreader to catch any lingering typos
• Someone who has never seen the project and can look at it with fresh eyes and catch problems others might have overlooked
• The project manager, who has been involved with the project from start to finish and will notice any last-minute revisions that weren’t made or other problems.

Let us know if you have questions about designing your printed marketing pieces. Our staff has decades of experience in graphic design for print and can give you the advice and direction you need. Give us a call or comment below.

Graphic designers are often inventive individuals who enjoy working alone and proving professional creativity with each piece of work. However, they operate in the digital universe almost entirely and sometimes it’s hard for them to figure out the needs and demands of analog behavior.

Although graphic designers have a lot in common with their print design colleagues, there are some things that make the two jobs different. This is the main cause of misunderstandings among print and graphic designers and it usually leads to unfortunate end results when the work gets published.

Misconceptions may occur in many fields, including formats, tools, workflow, and even the basic terminology. If you are a diligent graphic designer who loves working and learning new things, then you should know what makes your job different.

In this post, we will show you five things a graphic designer should learn from print design. Let’s take a look!

Print Design Tips for Graphic Design Professionals

Before we begin discussing the most important tips of the subject, we want to explain the two concepts to eliminate possible confusion. 

According to Wikipedia, graphic design is the process of visual communication and problem-solving through the use of typography, photography, and illustration. On the other hand, print design is a subset of graphic design.

Wikipedia defines it as a form of visual communication used to convey information to an audience through intentional aesthetic design printed on a tangible surface, designed to be printed on paper, as opposed to presented on a digital platform.

The last statement is critical because too many things can go wrong while printing a graphic design product to the physical surface. In such circumstances, it is necessary to identify possible issues and make products that are perfectly suitable for printing. Here are five things you should keep in mind:

1.    Convert files from RGB to CMYK

As you probably know already, colors play a major role in both graphic and print design. However, the way you define colors can vary greatly from graphic to print. Of course, we are talking about the difference between RGB and CMYK.

What does it mean?

RGB stands for Red, Green, and Blue, while CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. The difference is that graphic designers mostly use RGB to create their visuals on laptops or desktop computers, while printers rely on CMYK color schemes to craft hard copies. 

Jake Gardner, a branding expert at the resume help agency, explains that, when these two color standards collide, print colors end up fainter than you might expect: “For this reason, professional print designers will always suggest working in CMYK right from the beginning of your graphic design project.” 

Another option is to convert the file from RGB to CMYK before you order printing. That way, it is guaranteed that what you see is what you get, so you won’t have to worry about the outcome of your work once it is printed.

2.    Take care of the fonts

Another detail that can interfere with the hard copy of your work is typography. Too many times graphic designers use one sort of font just to see it totally ruined and unreadable upon printing. This is exactly why you have to outline the fonts to prevent the disastrous outcome.

There are a few things you can do to ensure the highest quality of typography in print documents. Here are some of them:

–       Font matching: Don’t assume that every device uses the same fonts. You should be smarter than that and make sure to use well-known typography that suits both devices – your computer and the printer. This type of matching is quintessential if you want the copy to come out flawless.

–       Mind the font size: Gigantic fonts always look foolish on print materials, while tiny letters are impossible to read. Finding a balance is essential, so we encourage you to use a font size 10 to 14 for longer pieces of textual content. On the other side, headlines can be twice as big (18 to 28).

–       Take advantage of negative space: Whitespace can impact the readability of the document as much as your font selection. Don’t be afraid of using it to distinguish between headlines, subheadings, and paragraphs.

3.    Beware of proportions and image resolution

Another thing you have to take into account is that digital and print images are not the same. Yes, they look the same when you look at the two variants, but they are totally different in technical terms. 

When it comes to digital images, you will never use inches or centimeters to measure dimensions. Graphic designers use pixels instead and they multiply height and width to calculate the size of a digital photo. 

At the same time, the resolution is simply defined as the number of pixels per image. We use the measure called dpi (dots per image) to quantify the quality of a visual element. Now, how does it affect print design?

This is how it works – online files almost always have a resolution of 72 dpi, while print images should come in a resolution of 300 dpi. When you want to prepare a product for printing, you need to resize the image without changing the resolution.

The only exception occurs if you are about to print a large piece of paper or any other document. In that case, you can apply a lower resolution as well because it won’t jeopardize the quality and viewers will be able to see it at a longer distance.

4.    Don’t forget the bleeds

A bleed is a well-known concept in print design that many graphic designers are not familiar with. What does it mean?

The bleed is a term used to describe the cutting of edges of a paper document. Since printers essentially grab each sheet of paper by the edges to feed it through the printer, no printer is capable of printing all the way to the outer edge of the material.

In practice, it means any piece of text, image, logo, or other visual that spreads through the entire template will end up slightly cut off once the document is printed. Almost every printer out there is making minor moves in the process and thus creating ugly white lines on a document.

This is exactly why you need to understand the concept of bleed margins and prepare digital products for flawless printing. The easiest way to prevent possible problems is to leave a certain margin for the bleed. 

To put it simply, you can leave some space around the edges of the document just in case the printer grabs it while cutting. The usual bleed size is 3mm for all edges of the file.

5.    Proofread before and after printing

The last tip on our list applies to every design niche. Namely, you should never go public with your documents before proofreading and editing. If anything goes wrong with your content, you are at risk of ruining professional credibility and jeopardizing the authority of your client or business.

Bearing this in mind, the first thing you need to do is to proofread the document single-handedly. You should also invite colleagues or even your friends to do the same thing because outsiders can often notice irregularities before you do.

Besides that, we strongly encourage you to make use of proofreading and editing tools. Such apps can get the work done within seconds and they never get distracted or tired. Some of the most popular solutions include:

• Grammarly: It is by far the most frequently used proofreading plugin with millions of users from all over the world. 

• Hemingway: This app can quickly proofread your texts, but it also comes with a useful readability score that reveals how simple or complex your prose is. 

When you are done with the pre-printing proofreads, we recommend you to make a test copy of your design. Sometimes the easiest way to spot a mistake is to hold the actual paper in your hands and read it, so don’t hesitate to do it before making more copies.

Conclusion

What are the differences between graphic and print design? Generally speaking, the two jobs are almost identical, but even the smallest differences can spoil the fun and make the end product useless. This is why you have to learn the secrets of print design and apply them to your digital products before crafting any hard copies.

In this article, we showed you five things a graphic designer should learn from print design. Have you ever made a print design mistake that ruined your graphic design product? Let us know in comments – we would love to see your experiences!

Author’s Bio

Alice Jones is a full-time graphic designer and a part-time blogger from San Francisco, California. Alice specializes in all subjects related to graphic and print design, but she is also a passionate explorer of topics like self-branding and personal growth. She is the mother of two kids and a dedicated long-distance runner.

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