To print to a professional standard we require you to submit correctly presented artwork. Make sure whoever is undertaking your design fully understands what we require. If artwork is wrongly presented then we cannot print from it and would require you to resubmit. Taking the time to read and understand the following artwork guidelines will save a tremendous amount of time and stress for all involved, especially you!

CMYK Colour Mode

Our print products are full colour and we require artwork to be submitted in CMYK colour mode. Please do NOT submit artwork in RGB mode or include any elements within your artwork which are in RGB mode. RGB is used to view images on screen and is not suitable for printing from.

Resolution: 300dpi (dots per inch)

Artwork must be at the correct resolution to ensure professional quality print. Elements off the web are at the far lower resolution of 72dpi and would look awful in print. Be careful not to include such elements in your artwork and always check the resolution of all elements included in your artwork.

Bleed is one of the most misunderstood areas in artwork preparation. Bleed refers to a margin round all 4 edges of a piece of artwork which is trimmed off when the print is cut down to its finished size. Bleed extends all items running to the edge of a design beyond the trim, in this case by 3mm.

The table above summarises finished print sizes, artwork sizes with 3mm bleed and has example artwork files for download as PDFs.

  • High resolution PDFs with 3mm bleed and crop marks are preferred.
    Colour or greyscale images used in artwork must be at 300dpi (dots per inch) whereas monochrome (line art) images should be set at 1200dpi.
    All fonts must be embedded when creating PDFs.
  • PDFs of artwork generated in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign or Freehand can contain hidden layer information which can lead to problems when printing.
    Artwork must be flattened prior to saving to PDF to avoid this problem.
  • If you are having problems creating PDFs then we can accept TIFF or EPS files.
    Please avoid sending jpegs as they compress data resulting in a loss of quality when printing.
  • Do NOT send us open documents unless specifically requested.
  • We cannot print from Microsoft Word or Publisher files.

If you have any doubts about what we require please contact us to discuss the options before you start your design.

We would prefer that you did NOT send us artwork by post unless there is no way it can be sent electronically.

  • For files under 10Mb, email is fine.
  • For files above 10MB please use one of the many free file transfer sites. We recommend www.yousendit.com
  • Steps for www.yousendit.com
    • Register using your email address and a password of your choice
    • You will receive a confirmatory email with a link to activate your account.
    • After activating your account you type in the email address for the recipient (info@bigbyteproduction.com), use the browse button to locate the file you want to transfer and press send. You can additionally add comments/instructions (up to 100 characters) in a dialogue box provided. The file then uploads in the background and does not rely on email.
    • Once the file has completed it's upload you will receive a similar email to the recipient by way of confirmation that the file has sent successfully.
    • You can only send one file at a time (maximum size 100MB).
    • You may therefore wish to ZIP files so that you can just upload one file as a folder containing many items.