Print marketing campaigns can represent a sizeable investment quite fast, and therefore your artwork needs to be absolutely PERFECT when printing it to avoid any mistakes that could limit the impact of your campaign. Such mistakes happen, which is why today the Gogoprint blog would like to remind you to be extra careful with regards to 4 elements in particular:
Ensure that there are no spelling mistakes in your text
Typos can have quite disastrous impacts on your print materials, because they strongly damage your credibility. Why would people trust in the professionalism of your service if you cannot write without mistakes? Therefore, always get 2 or 3 people to proofread your writing, since spelling mistakes are always hard to spot in your own writing. Don’t rely on spell-check either, since that isn’t completely safe either. Making sure that your text is empty of typos is the easiest and most important printing mistakes to avoid.
Make sure that the resolution of your images is high enough
The second easy to avoid, but with potentially disastrous consequences, printing mistake is including images in your artwork with a low resolution. As we explain in one of our tutorials on how to set up artwork, it is crucial that the images used have a resolution of at least 300 dpi. Lower resolution results in blurry prints that absolutely bomb your credibility and professionalism.
Test-print your design before sending it in
The fact that a design looks good on your computer screen does not mean that it will look as good once printed. To make sure that it works in print version, print it out on your home or office printer and check if font sizes, image resolution, spacing, and lay-out work. If not, you can always adjust and print again to check until you are satisfied. Believe us, this will save you a lot of stress and potentially a lot of money too. It is not exactly pleasant to be presented with thousands of copies of a design that is not what it should be. Our designers and artwork closers always test-print what they are working on to check if it works.
Be careful with DIY design
Although professional design software is widely available these days, it is recommendable to only use it if you really know what you are doing. If you are not comfortable with design software, it is an understatement to say that your best efforts might not produce professional results. Therefore our tip is: know yourself, and hire somebody if you are not 100% familiar with design software. Proper professional design has an invaluable impact on marketing, so it is the biggest priority that your design doesn’t look amateurish.
These 4 mistakes represent the most common printing mistakes, and therefore we want to help you avoid them. At Gogoprint we are committed to highest quality printing so if we detect these mistakes during our artwork filechecks, we will contact you. However, not all printing houses do so, and it would be cool if you could be nice to our artwork closers who already have so much work :) So please remember these pro-tips, and create great artwork!